
One of my comic heroes Victor Borge used to call Bolivia ‘Oblivia’.
I’m sure he meant no disrespect. He was just playing with words.
But it’s an apt description, all the same.
Of all the basket-case countries in South America, Bolivia is right at the bottom of the basket. GDP per head: around $5,000.
You may think those folks in the photo are Maori 150 years ago. They’re not. They’re Bolivians today.
(I took out the colour to trick you.)
And yet Marxist Maori professors like Ranginui Walker, Margaret Mutu and Nin Tomas, profess undying admiration for the Bolivian Constitution.
In fact, they cite it as their blueprint for a written constitution for New Zealand.

This is Evo Morales, Bolivian coca grower turned president, holding up his sacred text.
Morales is a good neighbour of fellow Latin champions of freedom Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
And here he is warming up for an indoor soccer game with his buddy that great peacemonger president Ahmed Ahmadinejad of Iran.
Morales’ constitution is based around ‘pachamama’, the idea that human beings are equal with all other living things, but some humans are more equal than others.
(Yes, you guessed it, the ‘indigenous’ ones.)
The concept of pachamama is named after the earth goddess of the same name. This elegant lady here…
Now this racist doctrine is no doubt quite popular with Bolivians.
After all, 85% of them are at least part-members of races that actually are indigenous to Bolivia.
(55% fully Amerindian, 30% Mestizos — part-Amerindian, part-European.)
But here in New Zealand, precisely 0% of our people belong to races that are indigenous to (ie originated in) New Zealand.
Of course, I hear the Grievers howl, up to 15% are part-members of a race whose leaders say they’re ‘indigenous’ to New Zealand.
They say it with a straight face, too.
Despite their legends declaring – loudly and proudly – that they’re ‘indigenous’ to the other side of the Pacific!
Such is the double standard of Griever Maoridom. You gotta love the cheek.
Now I’d like to hand over to essayist/commentator Colin Rawle, who will spell out the extreme danger to New Zealand of going down the path to Bolivian oblivion.
(Subheadings mine.)
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Colin Rawle:
I have recently had the dubious pleasure of listening to Radio N.Z’s broadcast of 8th March, 2009, titled Constitutions: Bolivia today, Aotearoa tomorrow?
It was the question mark at the end of this title which made my blood run cold.
Not for nothing is the new Bolivian Constitution widely referred to as “revolution by constitution”.
However, such a departure from reality would not result in a bloodless coup. Far from it.
A better recipe for armed counter-revolution or civil war is hard to imagine.
Revolutionary, in the worst sense, is exactly what it is.
And being aware that these are the constitutional changes (under discussion even as I write) which rebellious Maori and their “liberal” white patrons would dearly like New Zealand to adopt, I have the following to say:
An excuse to upend Western values
The bedrock ideology of the new Bolivian-type social engineering owes more than a little to Marxism.
It holds the erroneous dogma that all human inequalities, of any sort, arise purely out of economic/social circumstances.
Any question of individuality, of personal attributes, qualities, failings, responsibilities and accountability is dismissed out of hand.
Here is the imagined justification for turning traditional Christian-based values and social institutions, millennia in the making, on their heads.
Here is the imagined justification for attempting to terminate the great democratic project which, against the most implacable opposition, has been evolving in Western civilisation since the Greek/Roman age.
Marxist madness now everywhere
This type of “thinking” which I have characterised as essentially Marxist (the absolute nadir of materialism as a social/political philosophy) has, since the early 19th century, remorselessly permeated every nook and cranny of the international Western world, and therewith, to a great extent, the entire world.
It is now so ubiquitous, so entrenched, that it is like the very air we breath.
It has become virtually invisible, unnoticed, and thus all the more destructive.
The so-called “march through the institutions” is an established fact for those with eyes that see.
The global resurrection, or exhumation, of narrow, heirachical, parochial, tribalism is but one malign result of this “programme”.
It is no less than an attempt to nullify two millennia of hard-won social evolution, and replace it with a stage of development which most peoples transcended centuries or even millennia ago.
If such a complete abandonment of common-sense proliferates as the rest of political correctness has, it can only lead to pan-social catastrophe.
Zealots destroyed Zimbabwe
Nothing it seems, has been learned by the vast social errors, of which Zimbabwe is only one example.
The crime of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, when it was still a success story by any yardstick, was only that it was British/Western-administered and not yet perfect.
Therefore, it had to be “liberated” by an alliance of Western Marxist/socialist zealots and racists, who have always been incapable of seeing the potential good in things which are not yet wholly good.
They want to create utopias overnight.
But that is not they way of the world, nor of human nature.
Zimbabwe Aotearoa?
The Bolivian experiment will make a present-day “Zimbabwe”, North Korea or a similar totalitarian dictatorship out of any country, including New Zealand, which is foolish enough to ape it.
The Bolivian utopian fantasy speaks of Bolivia being comprised of some 36 indigenous “nations”, some of which are less than 100 individuals.
Nevertheless, each “nation” is to be self-determining and have its own ethnic laws.
In practice, this simply means that Bolivia would have no practicably enforceable law.
Anarchy, violence, and social collapse is the likely outcome.
Equality by theft
True to its Marxist/communist provenance, the Bolivian constitution seeks to impose “equality” by confiscating or nationalising private property.
This must then be leased back by its previous owners from some sort of state/indigenous peoples’ bureaucracy.
This is to fly in the face of human nature.
People, human beings by virtue of their very idiosyncratic individual personalities, are never equal, save in the “eyes of God”, so to speak, or under enlightened man-made laws which understand this.
It is impossible to make everyone equal in the sense that socialism means it.
The very most that can be done in this regard is to strive to afford every person the same opportunities.
Now there is a worthy social goal.
Extremely difficult to achieve, granted. But at least not impossible!
Here we see the vast gulf between the world-view of the atheist and the theist – of whatever creed.
Misguided separatism
Social improvements must, and will, come. We are not at the end of history.
But only if humanity can recognise and overcome such sheer anti-progressive insanity as exemplified in the Bolivian constitution model.
“Self determination for all peoples” is still the ridiculous demand.
Such fine-sounding catch phrases roll easily off the tongue.
They find immediate knee-jerk acceptance among a well-meaning populace.
Nevertheless, scores of bloody conflicts attest to the impossibility of such an ambition in today’s cosmopolitan world of some 210 nations, but 3,500 different “peoples”.
The principal underlying cause of all modern racial/ethnic conflict in modern times can be attributed less to individual tyrants than to the misguided ambition of “self determination for all peoples”.
People, not peoples
“Peoples” are an abstraction.
So-called “peoples” are actually comprised of individuals .
“Peoples” in the abstract, cannot have rights.
Of equal importance, nor can they have the commensurate responsibilities.
Only individuals have certain unalienable human rights.
And they have them not by virtue of their race, ethnicity, or nationality, but by virtue of being human.
If it were understood that “peoples” can only be liberated by liberating individuals – all individuals – then universal equal rights could be achieved in a non-discriminatory way.
However, even in a “democracy” such as ours, those who revert, or cling, to tribal mentality (which requires an enemy), will endlessly invent reasons for animosity and conflict.
Maori manamania
In New Zealand, Maori extremism is dominated by emotion.
Historical facts and logic play no great part.
This is why factual, logical arguments with radical Maori are so spectacularly ineffectual.
Nor, as history and current events show, does endless largesse, and appeasement remedy the situation.
Because from the Maori standpoint, everything is about pride – mana!
Charity is very acceptable in the moment. But there is no mana in it.
Only in retrospect do they realise that it adds to their dependency and humiliation.
Thus for a warrior people, it turns to ashes in the mouth.
Tribalism destroys democracy
Clearly, tribalism is not only incompatible with democracy, it is destructive to it.
Obviously, none of these observations apply to sensible Maori people, who have educated themselves to an awareness of all the opportunities that modernity offers them.
All racial/treaty problems since the time of colonisation can, in large measure be attributed to the great gulf separating democratic European consciousness from tribal consciousness.
If the British had understood this they would never have entertained the idea of a treaty with Maori.
They would have known that, regardless of whether or not some of their own might transgress it, it would certainly be used, for just as long as tribal mentality remained dominant as a means to gain the advantage.
Tribalism is about dominance
This is typical of tribal consciousness – a stage of social development which all peoples have experienced at some time in their history.
Obviously, tribalism is pre-democratic and non-democratic.
One of its characteristics is a constant striving for dominance, supremacy.
(In anticipation of the inevitable knee-jerk reaction this, I’ll quickly add that the non-rebellious Maori tribes which adopted Christianity and remained loyal to the Crown and the Treaty of Waitangi, were already at that time transcending tribalism.)
The West’s rejection of the West
The only thing that has changed since the West’s 1960s psycho/social revolution to allow this aspect of neo-tribalism to break through into outer events, is the rejection by many New Zealanders of their magnificent spiritual/cultural heritage.
This dismissal of “old fashioned” morality and values, and weakening of moral fibre, has undermined a democratic social ideal which was forged over millennia out of a demand of the human spirit for freedom and legal equality.
These “old” values should not be discarded in favour of anachronistic tribalism, racial privilege and separatism.
For they are the only foundation upon which a civilised social future can be built.
Will tribalism triumph?
Whether through apathy, ignorance, or whatever else, the ramparts of democracy have not been adequately defended.
Tribal mentality is flooding the breaches.
The only choice New Zealanders will finally be left with is whether to surrender to tribalism, or overrule it.
And by “New Zealanders”, I mean all people who value this status, this privilege, above all distinctions of race, tribe, or country of origin.
“They whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad”.
Thus goes the ancient aphorism, and there is no lack of historical precedents to prove the point.
Depending upon one’s belief, “life”, “the world”, or “God” will always forgive a certain degree of human error.
Yet there has to be a limit.
Reject the blueprint for oblivion
There is no way that society can for much longer survive the currently prevailing level of social blindness of which the racial/treaty madness is a good example.
If anything resembling the Bolivian experiment is taken as blueprint for constitutional change in New Zealand, it will destroy our country.
We have no excuse.
Our very humanity should disqualify us from such foolishness on pain of consequences too severe to bear thinking about.
Unless clear, rational thinking and goodwill wins the day, social ruin awaits us.