ACT Party No 10 Shawn Tan has been spending a bit of time on frogblog recently. Yesterday I happened to stumble across a frogblog post from a couple of years ago signed off “Shawn Tan” under the blogname “RedGreen“, asked Shawn if it were him, and he confirmed it was, before he became “enlightened” by the ACT Party.
So I went looking for other posts by the “RedGreen” Shawn Tan, as opposed to the “enlightened” Shawn Tan, and came up with:
This one: We applaud your defence of dear Rodney but his personal blog is riddled with personal attacks on the Greens, and those who post there haven’t got much nicer things to say either.
And this one: Except that ACT wouldn’t consider human rights causes *their* issue. Some of the worst human rights abuses stem from developing countries with heavily deregulation and hence the proliferation of carte blanche anti-worker and anti-union policies in place. To expect laissez-faire advocates to be concerned about human rights is much akin to expecting Hilter to be concerned about the rights of Jews. ACT – Advocates of Corporate Tyranny
And this one: Yes, the National Party is now very much a right-wing entity – all elements of centrism they once had or were thought to have have now been purged – thanks to the ‘ACT-isation’ of its policies. We should be shuddering at this thought.
But perhaps the most telling is this one:
Sometimes the best way to defeat your enemy is to infiltrate them, and use their weapons against them.
Seems Shawn might have been playing Secret Agent Man all along:
There’s a prize for anyone who can identify Shawn in the video.
5 November, 2008 at 9:41 am
Bit of a stretch…are the Greens ACT’s Super Enemy Number One!?
5 November, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Hey, I remember Shawn – I offered to billet him & Max when they came down to the 2006 AGM.
Unfortunately, my then-flatmate, who was supposed to be out of town, threw a wobbly at midnite & asked them to leave, whereupon they slept in Ben W’s lounge.
Geee, I hope that experience wasn’t instrumental?
I do recall them making it to all the sessions of the AGM, and being participants in the YG fora, as well as later being involved with union issues in Auckland with the Radical Youth/Unite! unionist crowd.
That’s a bit of a shift, isn’t it? What can have come over him???
Surely it’s not the power of the yellow blazer?
5 November, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Shaun’s gotta be the one in the mask being spanked with the table tennis bats.
Sir Roger Douglas and Rodney Hide will be the ones behind the masks spanking him.
5 November, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Hi Anarkaytie,
Yep, that was me.
And Max and I are currently flatmates.
No luck converting him though; he’s a stubborn one.
I’m not sure if it was the radiance of the yellow jacket, but it certainly was the radiance of economic liberalism which spurred me to change my politics.
And I might be a supporter of the repeal of the Anti-Smacking Law, but I’m not really into spanking – I’m not that kinky, sorry.
5 November, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Shawn Tan said: And I might be a supporter of the repeal of the Anti-Smacking Law…
Now, this is one of the bits of where ACT is coming from that I just can’t get Shawn. ACT claims to be libertarian.
Yet they support the coercion of children and young people under the threat of physical violence.
“Do what Daddy says, or you will get a smack” is where ACT comes from, rather than “Do what Daddy says because it will be best for you and the rest of our family, and I’ll explain why”, which is where the Greens come from.
Shawn, how can self-procliamed libertarian party justify a policy that will permit vhilfren being beaten into submission. ACT’s policy, in that regard, actually seems rather authoritarian to me, and contrary to the principles your Party is founded on.
6 November, 2008 at 12:21 am
Toad- my consistent problem with libertarians (even some of the left-libertarians that are more “left” than “libertarian) is that they tend to be concerned with their own liberties first and foremost. If it’s not a freedom they can use, what use is it?
I may be an individualist, but not to THAT degree.
Then again, I’ve always thought parenting as a concept is completely anti-libertarian in the first place. Clearly children should try to raise themselves without any help from their parents to establish their self-sufficiency
6 November, 2008 at 2:29 am
Toad:
I’ve heard a lot about the Left saying that the Right skews the Anti-Smacking debate. But let me remind you of what you said:
“[H]ow can a self-procliamed libertarian party justify a policy that will permit children being beaten into submission?”
What policy? Beating children into submission?
See, this is where you resort to misrepresentations to further your case.
Nobody wanting the repeal of the Anti-Smacking Law wants to beat their kids into submission.
BJ on frogblog talks about exaggerations; this has to be one of the most heinous exaggerations I’ve heard in awhile.
What we want is a return to the original legal position, BEFORE Section 59 was repealed.
Are you telling me that parents used to beat their kids into submission before the law changed, and got away with it? Even when the previous position was “reasonable force”?
Is beating a child into submission exerting reasonable force? Come on Toad, you know you’re stretching this a bit too far.
The Anti-Smacking Law is authoritarian because it involves the state entering the homes of ordinary citizens, telling them how to discipline their kids.
This, my friend, is a coercive intrusion into the private sphere, and hence a violation of individual rights and liberties.
And that’s why liberals and libertarians cannot support this draconian piece of legislation.
6 November, 2008 at 8:46 am
The State IS authoritarian by its very nature. Period. It’s only ever been a question of degree.
For a party which advocates a “zero tolerance for crime”, it seems weird to me that ACT does not want to fatten the law books, so that when it comes time to “throw the book at them”, it actually has some force. That’s what we do by setting a speed limit at 50 km/h, yet not getting too concerned when people drive at 58 km/h. Have you committed that crime, Shaun? When are you going to hand yourself in?
We are appalled that people get off on technicalities; but we’re grateful we have law books filled with technicalities so we have a greater chance of securing convictions against those who deserve to feel the full force of the law. Of course, many of those technicalities then get abused and at times systematically enforced against minorities and not against others, but that’s another story.
Section 59 was toothless. People who did beat their children into submission got away with it. Period. It had to change.
If you and/or ACT have a more constructive suggestion whereby you can guarantee children freedom from being beaten into submission, then suggest it. Parliament could not find one.
And if you can’t offer one, and that’s because you don’t believe laws have any useful effect and people are better left to make their own decisions in their own interests, then get out of politics – you’re in the wrong place.
The libertarian freedom that ACT represents is a mirage. It is not the freedom to prosper and determine one’s own destiny. It is the freedom to compete, and for the strong to get stronger through claiming the prizes of that competition. That is the only result of the ACT philosophy on a planet with finite resources.
I’m proud that the Greens had the guts to stand up and say “something needs to change here, and we believe the best change is to repeal section 59″. And I’m prouder still that they have an open mind to using market forces where the market acts in a way to protect and enhance our society and our environment, and to seek to restrain or circumvent the market when it acts as ACT would want it to.
6 November, 2008 at 10:18 am
Shawn, Paul:
The problem with the existing law, pre re-peal of Sect 59, is that children did die.
See Crown vs Kahui, for example. Or the murders of the Aplin girls by their step-father in the Wairarapa. Or Coral Burrows, murdered by her drug-crazed step-father.
Because of the ‘reasonable force’ defense in law, neighbours don’t want to lay a complaint, because the guy will probably get off, and they’ll get in trouble for saying something about it.
This is not about parents in your leafy big-city suburbs, administering a tap on a bottom well-padded with an expensive organic cloth nappy; this is about parents who don’t have the social skills, were probably physically abused themselves, and in certain contexts, such as religious sects, are encouraged to beat their children (both polynesian and pakeha sects are guilty of this, btw).
And the corollory to the beating of children, is domestic abuse of their mother.
Stop the children from being beaten, and the mother can often escape teh abuse being meted out to her as well, because she meets an agency which says, ‘this is not acceptable’. A child who accepts his/her mother being beaten, will grow up to believe that this is how adults can be treated.
See the domestic abuse case against former Police officer Mr Hilterman, of Tauranga, for example, where his ex-wife, a Doctor, has publicaly stated that the predjudice against her case from Police was untenable, and the punishment meted out by the Court to her ex-husband is laughable – whilst convicted, his sentencing gave him 150 hours of community service, as a response to 10 years of domestic abuse, including assaulting his children.
Charges were thrown out on juvenile assault, sending a message to other victims that it’s not worth trying to get a conviction on this kind of abuse.
See http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominionpost/4749955a6479.html
And as an aside: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominionpost/4751501a6479.html
Brad Shipton, rapist and former policeman, is out on parole.
Tauranga surely has a lot of problems these days.
6 November, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Paul:
“If you and/or ACT have a more constructive suggestion whereby you can guarantee children freedom from being beaten into submission, then suggest it. Parliament could not find one.”
Nobody can guarantee anything.
If that’s the case, can you guarantee that no innocent parent will be implicated as a child-abuser now that Section 59 is repealed? If so, I’ll recite to you some real-life examples of this happening.
Moreover, to state that Section 59 ought to be repealed becauase there were parents getting away with child abuse is akin to saying we should abolish the unemployment benefit because some people abuse the system and get away with it.
You don’t fix cracks in the wall by demolishing the entire wall – that’s just ludicrous.
In order to better oneself, one has to compete. Betterment and competition are intrinsically linked. And everyone has the opportunity to be strong.
The misconception that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because of free competition is starting to wear thin. The rich are rich because they have exercised personal responsibility; the poor on the other hand haven’t. Wealth has to be earned, not handed to you on a platter by the state.
Sure, those who work hard ought to be rewarded accordingly, whereas those who don’t pay the price. Why should it be any different? Should the lazy be rewarded as much as the industrious?
This is egalitarianism gone completely beserk.
6 November, 2008 at 8:10 pm
“Are you telling me that parents used to beat their kids into submission before the law changed, and got away with it? ”
Yes, that’s why some of us campaigned for DECADES to get an archaic law changed.
6 November, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Kakariki:
If that’s the case, then my analogy stands true (see above): Following your logic, because there are beneficiaries out their who abuse the system and get away with it, let’s repeal/remove the welfare system altogether, and hey presto – problem solved.
And that’s why I think your (the Greens’) rationale for repealing Section 59 is both shallow and simplistic.