Stuff s Thoma Manch taking part in an online press briefing on Xinjiang organsied by the PRC embassy last week.
Photo: Robert Kitchin of Stuff (used by permission)
Are you confident you are on the right side of history?” Newshub political editor Tova O’Brien asked foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta on the
Newshub Nation show the weekend before last.
But the minister was not about to commit to following suit on national television.
“I m willing to get information about what we could do. I m open to getting advice about this issue, she told Newshub Nation.
There was plenty of that before our Parliament debated the issue on Wednesday.
Louis Menand’s new book traces the decline of a defining ideal.
ILLUSTRATION BY LINDSAY BALLANT
In America today, the right has a monopoly on the word “freedom.” Conservatives talk about “freedom” at every opportunity, while liberals and leftists do so only with embarrassment, shielded with qualifying clauses. “First they came for our Free Speech, then they came for our Free Markets, next they’ll come for our Free Shipping on orders $50 or more with promo code: FREEDOM50,” Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina tweeted on January 28, 2021. Cawthorn’s tweet which rewrites Martin Niemöller’s famous denunciation of German quietism in the face of Hitler’s rise as a sales pitch for his official campaign webstore is a joke, of course: a play on different senses of the word “free.” But it’s a joke only a conservative could make, because it relies on the assumption that freedom, of whatever kind, is a self-evident, and preeminent, good. A
Review: Louis Menand s The Free World Traces the Decline of a Defining Ideal newrepublic.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newrepublic.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.