This week on Green Planet FM we focus on politically correct thinking, and the harm it is doing to the green movement. Dennis Frank interviews one of the pioneers of conservation in Aotearoa.
Dr Robert Mann was a founding committee member of the New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies, and co-author of the NZ Govt submission to the World Court for the lawsuit against French nuclear testing in the Pacific. He's now retired from his career as university lecturer in biochemistry and environmental studies.
Dr Mann has been a scientific advisor to cabinet ministers in our government, serving for 8 years on the Environmental Council Working Party on Energy, and 11 years on the Toxic Substances Board. As an active conservationist he was a branch chair for Forest & Bird, and was for 12 years a director of the Environmental Defense Society.
He discusses his contributions to the environmental movement with a focus on the political interface with the power structure at the time, and profiles three ideologies that have used the culture of political correctness to leverage sectarian benefits from our common wealth to the disadvantage of everyone else.
We idealists supported the rainbow coalition of the '70s to rectify historical oppression of minorities according to the principle of natural justice. Those who came into power in the '80s & '90s as a result have been covertly attempting to defeat democracy by eliminating free speech. Dr Mann informs us of some of his experiences with these people.
The political left and political right pretend to oppose each other but both destroy nature in order to obtain wealth. That's not the only area of traditional collusion between the left and right. They both also use state power to impose conformity of belief and behaviour upon the populace and quell dissent. They appoint people who think like them to positions of authority, so we get political correctness infecting our institutions.
These people do their best to ensure that alternative views and opinions are suppressed. So wherever you find censorship, you know it emanates from traditional collusion between the left and the right. It's vital that we not allow public service media to be controlled by people acting against the public interest.
Boys are taught to be heroes via fairy tales, myths, legends and history, from an early age. For us teenagers of the '60s the warrior archetype was wrong, so we tried to be peaceful warriors and set out to save the world from war-makers, polluters, exploiters and other evil-doers as heroes are meant to do.
If someone spends their life campaigning for these good green causes, we should reward them for such public service as elders who can pass on their wisdom to the young. Excluding them from public debate is not only morally wrong, it deprives future generations of role models essential to their survival.
Political correctness is a culture poisoning our society. Since it now emanates primarily from liberal socialists, Dennis Frank advises members and supporters of the Green Party to abandon their deviation to the left.
The green movement is neither right nor left, but in front. It's political arm will be more effective if it remains attached to it's body, and starts to demonstrate evident connection to it's brain.
If the Party becomes consistent with the green movement sceptics and swinging voters will be impressed by such emergence of authenticity.
A selection of Dr Mann's writings: http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm
(particularly the 1989 & 1991 articles on PC)
The top sites on gene-tampering: http://www.psrast.org
(incl. a Mann article)
http://gmwatch.org