Liberals these days seems obsessed with promoting social change and supporting these changes not by facts and logic but by pointing to popular support as the reason why the subject ideas should have further popular support. Apparently this is a logic circle that completely escapes them.
Kiwiblog and Whaleoil for example are two blogs who want to keep certain social issues in the public eye, and frequently do this by highlighting polls that ostensibly show support for whatever the proposition might be.
Kiwiblog has run a number of articles this week where the main point has been polling results that favour the blogger’s liberal viewpoints.
Let’s leave aside for the moment, the utterly phony and banal questions that underpin these polls. Let’s just think about whether the fact that an idea might have popular support is a good reason to further support that idea.
Questions can only be answered effectively if the respondent is informed on the issue. Let’s for example take an extremely simple illustration. If you asked a collection of five year olds if eating ice cream three times a day was a good idea, they would say yes. Because all they know is that ice cream tastes so good. They don’t know that there are serious side affects to loading up with sugar and dairy products.
Later on in life they will answer the question differently because by then, more responsible adults will have passed on information to them, and the youngsters have processed that information and therefore developed a different view to when they were five.
But here is the rub. If no one had given them this information, they’d probably still vote for ice cream.
The Nazi party rose to power because Joeseph Goebbels was very well skilled in propaganda techniques. Adolf and his Brownshirts were extremely popular in Germany in the 1930s. Apart from a few recalcitrants like Sophie Scholl, (executed for delivering anti-Nazi pamphlets) the people loved them. Movies, newspapers and radio fawned over these jack booted totalitarian goons.
So we have a whole citizenry seduced by a ruling class whose main talent is lying about who they are and where they are going. By the mid 1940’s the truth of the Nazi party was brought home to the German people and nowadays there is no tolerance for Nazism at all in that country.
If we go back a lot further we can identify Rome as another great country that was brought to its knees by leaders who seduced the people with ideas that were plainly wrong.
You can include Italy and fascism in this argument too if you choose. Mussolini was once wildly popular, with newspapers, and magazines and radio gushing over him and his ideas.
So in all of these cases we have citizens cheering for ideas that eventually brought them terrible misery. They cheered only because they were ignorant, and they were ignorant for no one had told them the truth. The ruling class had refused to allow any other opinion other than that which was fashionable, and they had lied about their ideas anyway. So the citizens had no true understanding of what they were cheering for, and if they would have been fully informed, they would have been horrified by that truth.
So we have clear historical indicators demonstrating that the popularity of an idea is not any test of whether an idea is good if the population is not fully informed on any issue.
Just as in Italy and in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, the fascists and Nazis controlled information, so today in NZ we have the liberals/ progressives who similarly have very tight control of the information going to the people. So the polls are worthless, not only because of their one dimensional questions and the leading nature of those questions, (the misnomer “marriage equality” for example) but because in general the population is completely uninformed regarding any viewpoint that might counter liberal progressive doctrine.
So if the polls are worthless, so are the conclusions that they drive. Hitler, the Nazis, Mussolini, Fascism, Caligula, social liberalism, were all once high in the polls but these mendacious leaders and their wrong ideas eventually brought ruin upon the people who worshiped them. Popularity is no measure of whether an idea is good or not, and when Whaleoil and Kiwiblog run these worthless polls, they are only doing the same propaganda as Joseph Goebbels and other henchmen of other lying leadership cliques.
I’ll finish off with the disgusting report on Grace Carroll’s treatment in front of the Select Committee on homosexuals redefining marriage. Grace is a brave and beautiful young girl who has been bullied by cowards and who wasted her time and her honesty and her courage appearing in front of what is obviously a kangaroo court and a farce and a disgraceful exercise in political duplicity. Just another adventure in propaganda and another example of political leadership lying en masse to the people.
Where are the honest politicians who will call this fraud out for the disgraceful confidence trick it is upon NZ citizens? Is every politician in the house a coward and a liar? Are we today in New Zealand going through a similar process as experienced by the Germans and Italians in the 1930s?
One could be forgiven for thinking so.
TrueblueNZ 
13 responses to “Opinion Polls- Hitler, Mussolini and Caligula Would All Have Been So Popular”
“they were ignorant for no one had told them the truth”
You’re giving people too much credit IMHO. You can lead a horse to water…
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Another brilliant post Red.Agree wholeheartedly.
I felt so sad reading about the treatment of Grace.What a brave young lady.
As for the gay Mp that was on the committee I have nothing but contempt
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“Is every politician in the house a coward and a liar?”
That’s a trick question, right?
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“But here is the rub. If no one had given them this information, they’d probably still vote for ice cream.”
Red, I think you give post-pubescent children of all ages (I hesitate to use the term “adults” or “grown-ups” because for so many those are terms that just don’t apply) far too much credit. The voters of America had been given the information; in small doses in 2008, then in large chunks in 2012. And they still voted for free ice cream.
Just like the voters of Greece
Just like the voters of Portugal
Just like the voters of Ireland
Just like the voters of Spain
Just like the voters of New Zealand
And (it saddens me to say) just like the voters of Australia might very well do in 226 days from now.
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I dunno if they have. (been given the information)
If you don’t read the internet, there’s virtually no information resource out there that counters current liberal/ progressive doctrine.
Take NZ for example- anyone getting their news from The Herald or The Dominion or TV 3 or TV One or Radio New Zealand would not get anything but the New York Times/ BBC political world view.
After years of this, they have no clue there actually is another perspective.
We read the internet so we’re more or less OK. But we are a relatively small force. There are millions of voters who do not, whose only source is the mainstream media, and they are consequently drenched in one sided liberal/ progressive bullshit.
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Ms. Carroll had a nasty experience for standing up for her beliefs and you are quite correct in your argument that popularity is a poor method for judging a moral value. Eugenics was once a popular program supported by the left and when combined with social Darwinism we got the horrors of Hadamar. A fact that the left loves to ignore.
I hope that Ms. Carroll continues to stand for her beliefs and to defend them.
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Excellent post, Red
“Later on in life they will answer the question differently because by then, more responsible adults will have passed on information to them, and the youngsters have processed that information and therefore developed a different view to when they were five.”
And therein lies the problem; there are no responsible adults anymore to pass on information to them. Half of the kids these days don’t have fathers; they have part-time fathers at best. Then they go to school and don’t see men their either; all they get there is far-left-loonie indoctrination. Then they go to university and get the same there. Then they watch television and get more indoctrination there. Then they go to Kiwiblog and Whaleoil and guess what they find there………..ICECREAM!
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Great post, Red.
But by invoking German Fascism you invite cognitive dissonance in those who ineivtably fail to get the point. (Not your fault.)
For their benefit, let me say: Nazi Germany wasn’t some freakish exception to reality, nor was Hitler some cartoonish red-skinned devil Who Must Not Be Compared to Anyone In the Real World (see also Godwin’s Law). Italian Fascism didn’t even have a racist component. What it had in common with German Fascism is what’s being talked about here.
Nazi Germany was a social and political phenomenon that involved the most cultured and educated nation in Western Europe. It was popular among the elites of the day in Europe, Britain, America. It was also, despite the NSDAP’s totalitarian ends, a fruit of German *democracy*.
I recall William Shirer in his history of the Third Reich say that, although they were popular electorally, that they achieved their ends through intimidation. This led to exclusion of contrary opinion. Sound familiar?
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“I dunno if they have. (been given the information)”
Nobody needs to give them the information. They are too lazy to find it for themselves. Isn’t this what being a RESPONSIBLE adult means?
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The left have always been superb political operators. The normalisation of what was once abhorrent Statist pap is testament to that.
I can’t get away from the fact that whosoever controls the schools controls the outcome, except for the rare minds independent of their engineered peer group. The Jesuits and the Communists knew it…….neither of these organisations has been destroyed, they have merely morphed
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They want a law passed at least partly based on the results of dodgy polls but are strongly opposed to a referendum on the same issue.
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OT….but interesting.
From the SEAL shooter that got Bin Laden…..
“Flying in, we were all just sort of in our own world. My biggest concern was having to piss really bad and then having to get off in a fight needing to pee…….. I used one of my water bottles instead. I forgot until later that when I shot bin Laden in the face, I had a bottle of piss in my pocket.
I would have pissed my pants rather than trying to fight with a full bladder.”
So diseased old Robin Bain fought young strong Stephen for his life on the bed with a full, read full, bladder.
Bwaaaa…….you gotta love the Statist NZ official BS….they wouldn’t even try it on in a smarter country.
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So to expand slightly, no bladder pun intended….
…..sick old Robin, knowing he was going to get the rifle, go from bedroom to bedroom to shoot his 4 family members and eventually write a exculpatory note for David on the computer and then shoot himself…..which must have been his plan……that same Robin, amazingly, declined to have a piss with a bursting bladder before all the activity.
That same Robin, amazingly, declined to have a piss with a bursting bladder before all the activity…… bwaaa.
Not only that, he controlled his full bladder while engaged in a life and death physical fight with Stephen…..bigger bwaaa.
David was not there to meet him when he came inside because Robin was as regular as clockwork with his arising. David never contemplated shooting him in his bed before he went paper delivering and not for the reason that it would mean no suicide. Robin was never always set up as the patsy.
I
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