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I Have Changed

Entry 2192, on 2021-12-16 at 11:34:37 (Rating 2, Politics)

I have been looking back over some of my old political blog posts, and I have to say my opinions from then until now seem to have changed considerably.

For example, over seven years ago, in a post titled "Another Three Years" from 2014-09-21, I commented on how I disapproved of the National Party (New Zealand's conservative party) winning another there years in government, although I did say that party was far more moderate than in the past, and that I was fairly relaxed about the outcome.

But the more significant change from then to now is my attitude to New Zealand's libertarian party, Act. Back them I called them the "ultimate extremists" and suggested they supported a "totally discredited economic ideology". Yet, at the last election, I voted for them!

So what's happened? Well, I always say I am prepared to change my mind if I can be shown new evidence, or if the facts change, so maybe this is the ultimate example of this. But also, politics has changed. Act looks far more moderate today, and the leftist parties I would have supported back in 2014 now appear to me to have the more extreme political ideology.

So the political landscape has changed, but I have also changed. There's a quote about this that I think is relevant; it is that "A man who is not a Liberal at sixteen has no heart; a man who is not a Conservative at sixty has no head." - Benjamin Disraeli.

Of course, we would now say a "person" rather than a man, and I have issues with the conservative label too, because I have to emphasise here that I am not a conservative. If anything, I am a libertarian, although I'm not fully supportive of that political affiliation either, especially in regards to some parts of its traditional economic agenda.

So I have seen the evidence that leftist policies can be problematic, and that the left are at least as badly influenced by unwavering dogma as the right. I am also now more of an individual thinker, and less influenced by the attitudes common in the environment I work in (a university) and by those espoused by the left-leaning media.

At the same time, the Act party now has a far more reasonable and likeable leader (who coincidentally took over the party on the exact day I wrote that old post), while the parties on the left are now pursuing an anti-democratic agenda which includes more central government control, race-based policies, and repression of alternative ideas through so-called hate speech laws.

So going back through those old posts is a bit embarrassing in some ways, because it looks like I have swung from the moderate or even extreme left to the opposite position on the right. Was I totally wrong in the past, or now? I can't have been right both times, could I?

Well there are two ways in which I could...

First, as I said, politics has changed in those 7 years, and now it is the left who seem to be trying to oppress my individual freedoms. They are the tyrants and the ideologues. In the past, from my perspective at least, these labels belonged more to the right. So maybe I have remained consistent and the politicians have changed.

And second, my priorities are now different. In the past I might have preferred a government structure with more input into the lives of its citizens. I might have thought services controlled by government were preferable to the same thing supplied by the private sector. But now I realise that is rarely the case, although I still think some services shouldn't be privatised (social institutions, like prisons, for example).

Now I just want the government to leave me alone, to the extent that is practical, because I'm not an anarchist... yet! I now realise the government is at least as incompetent as any large private corporation, and at least as evil. Corporations are still controlled by laws, but the government can just change them whenever they want. Our current crop of despots have even changed the law retrospectively after they were caught breaking it. If they can do that, what's the point in even having laws?

In fact, I would be a lot more confortable with governments if our country had a proper constitution, limiting the power of the ruling class. And I would also be more comfortable if we had two assemblies so that there was a second potential barrier to the more problematic ideas our leaders might want to implement. However, these are big ideas, which are separate from the subject of this post, so I will leave the details for a future time.

But while politics has changed over the seven years I mentioned above, I don't claim that I have remained constant, because although politics has changed, it is not enough to make me reverse my previous allegiance. I have changed too: I am more individualistic, less naive, and more practical. So while looking back at my previous self is embarrassing in some ways, it also shows how I have grown. I now use my head more than my heart.

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