Before you carry that flag – before you cast that vote, before you cheer that candidate – I ask one thing: know what is behind it. My family paid for that knowledge with their bodies, their decades, their country, and their lives. The least you can do is learn it before you celebrate it.
Over time, institutions – such as the public service or the industrial relations system or higher education – become adept at building up defences and seeing off zealous reformers. The only option is to break with.
The past should be neither lied about nor judged by the present.
Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln both exemplified a great American tradition.
How to conquer the music biz and blow it all up in the suits’ faces.
Only one civilisation spent blood and treasure to end the trade and then spent the next 200 years beating itself up about it.
Christianity is not nostalgia. It is the operating system that once made this country work. Time to reinstall it – before the hard drive crashes for good.
New Zealand was founded on the liberal promise of equal citizenship under one law for all. The Māori seats mock that promise. Abolish them.
It is lunacy that my year-six son has had a Mayan Day where he ate tortillas but has not visited the nearby ruins of a Roman villa, the site of the Battle of Cheriton or learned anything at all about Alfred the Great, our local hero.
NOTE: I was asked to be the guest speaker at the Cromwell Anzac Day service. This address is similar to one I gave at the small Southland community of Waikaka in 2023.
The majority of Christians in history have seen war as legitimate, if regrettable.
It’s the best argument for remigration we could ask for.
A culture that has progressively replaced shared obligation with individual entitlement has eroded the sense of collective responsibility, without which self-governance is merely a slogan.
The point here isn’t to argue whether Jeff Bezos should or shouldn’t pay more tax. The point is that Congress’s approach is entirely wrong. They should instead invest their energy into ensuring maximum productivity… which ultimately means fewer regulations, and in general staying out of the way.
War always comes with a price but you have to weigh up if is it a price worth paying. Churchill thought so and so does Trump.
