Posted on 10/10/2007 5:47:12 AM PDT by Argentine-Firecracker
I recently wrote about my Wife's experience while serving at a hospital in Tanzania with a 24 year old New Zealander. The girl was well versed in anti-American propaganda and felt compelled to heap abuse on my Wife. The Wife is quite capable of defending herself, but she lacks my background knowledge of American foreign policy and world history. During our brief phone call, I provided her with some basic facts to combat the Kiwi's propaganda regurgitations. Afterward I decided to dig deeper into the youngster's bigotry and did some research into New Zealand's attitudes towards Americans. What I found changed my mind about wanting to visit the place anytime soon.
Part of New Zealand's anti-American bigotry is no doubt due to size. New Zealand has four million people - roughly the same number of Americans who eat in their sleep or believe they've been abducted by aliens. Living in a tiny nation may make one cheer any victory over comparative giant - even in such a yawner sport as yachting. However New Zealand shares similar history and culture to the United States. It is a former British colony with an established democracy and similar religious background, with more Protestants than Catholics, and more Buddhists than Jews and Muslims. New Zealand has spent most of its time since independence under European-style socialist governments. However over the past decade it has become a strong advocate for free trade, especially in closed agricultural markets.
Yet Only 29% of New Zealanders had a positive view of the United States in 2004. That puts it on par with Pakistan at 30% and below Russia (43%) and China (42%). So much for the idea that shared cultural ties can bind people together.
(Excerpt) Read more at deanesmay.com ...
Obvious DHTH ping.
One of the nicest and most fun women I ever went out with was a Kiwi. One of the greatest guys I ever had as a friend was a Kiwi. But in the last twenty years the nation has taken a hard turn to socialism, starting with Lange in the 1980s.
Yeah, the Kiwis are hardcore. Steinlager is pretty tasty if one can find it fresh.
China could invade and occupy New Zealand with two RO/RO ships.
America has always been nice to New Zealanders.
Americans love Peter Jackson, Lucy Lawless, The Flight Of The Conchords, Zoe Bell and Crowded House.
Yes NZ is Socialist and left-leanoing, and helen clark is still PM..
40 years ago Kiwis still remembered that American soldiers, sailors and marines had saved the country from invasion by the Japanese...
Now a new generation has grown up that forgets, doesnt care, or never learnt about all NZ owes to the US....
Kiwis fought along side Americans in France in WWI and Europe and the Pacific in WWII, and the freezing cold of Korea, the steaming jungles of Vietnam and the hot sands of the Ist Gulf War...
Now the NZ army is in Afghanistan and Iraq where at least two of the soldiers hasve been awarded with the Victoria Cross (Shades of Charles Upham)
Much of the current problems stem back to 1970 when 28 “coffins” were pushed/pulled for miles up and down NZ roads to represent the 28 NZ soldiers killed in Vietnam, and the Green Peace crowd who picketed the American nuclear subs and battleships/cruisers in the 1970’s and the French bomb tests on remote Pacific islands.
Unfortunately they were influencial in convincing the left-leaning pacifist types in Parliament to cave in to the idea that there should be change for change sake in the NZ relationship with the US. Indeed in Nov/Dec 2000 NZ people were hoping that Gore would win in the courts and called President Bush terrible names eventhough he was not in office yet..
The love for the US that the immediate generation after WWII was instilled with appears to be eroded, and in its place what? Much the same as our own young people are left with ...a bankrupcy of goals, motivation and morals..and an incvreasing demand for someone else to be responsible for providing a living while they selfishly indulge in erstwhile pursuits...and who is that someone? The govt, subsidized by the over-burdened tax payers...
> Yeah, the Kiwis are hardcore. Steinlager is pretty tasty if one can find it fresh.
We have much, much nicer beers than Steinlager — we send that offshore because nobody drinks it here.
I’m partial to “Epic” or “Buxom Blonde”, available at the Cock & Bull Pub. Delicious!
Thanks for the ping!
I would say that all serious American beer drinkers know that the imported beer is "special swill." It's still better than our mass-produced swill, however.
I will point out that the USA has been nothing but supportive of New Zealand for the entirety of our relationship - and yet there is apparently tremendous ill-will towards us there.
So the answer to the leftist question of "why do they hate us" is quite simply: "because we exist."
There is rationale, no grievance, no excuse for this - it's just pure orneriness.
Interesting article, if a tad simplistic and shrill.
Naturally, I belong to the 29% of New Zealanders with a high opinion of America. I question that statistic because lots and lots of US ideas and concepts have a very high and immediate up-take here: the Rap and Gangsta lifestyle are two that come immediately to mind.
I think the Anti-American sentiment hasn’t come without some provocation. The article talks about denying US Warships the right to visit NZ ports. Strictly speaking, that’s untrue. US Warships are indeed welcome to visit our ports, providing only that they are not nuclear powered and do not carry nuclear weaponry. US Navy policy (sensibly) has been to neither confirm nor deny the status of its vessels and, as a consequence, can’t visit as a result.
The Anti-Nuclear stance arose because of the blase attitude that the likes of the US and France had toward testing nuclear weaponry in the South Pacific which, quite rightly, the South Pacific peoples consider to be their “back yard” and their “homes”. The Pacific Ocean is vast, but the Polynesians have been reliably navigating between the islands for many centuries. These tests displaced entire communities and rendered their home islands uninhabtable. On another thread I have described this behavior as “boorish”.
As Auckland is the largest Polynesian city in the world, it is no small wonder that some of the resentment arising from these tests spilled over into our society. The US had alot of credibility in the South Pacific during WW-II, and that credibility was wantonly squandered for the sake of a few tests — a really unfortunate choice, in my view.
Our current government under Clark is very Left, and Clark herself seems to have an ill-disguised dislike for many things American. Paradoxically, she is also in favor of establishing a republic.
I don’t think our biggest threat is from Islamofacists from within: it is certainly from Islamofacists from without.
And it is indeed naive for NZ to assume that the US would come to the rescue from an external threat.
The F-14 cancelation was an outrage: our airforce has now no airstrike capability. That was purely ideology-driven, one of Clark’s first decisions upon seizing power. I believe she still labors (no pun intended) under the delusion that NZ exists in a “remarkably benign strategic environment.” She is only kidding herself.
I appreciate all you have to say. I’m no NZ expert. I just keep track of what I perceive to be anti-Americanism around the world.
For what it’s worth, there’s a new US State Department blog (http://blogs.state.gov/), which, as far as I’m concerned, would benefit very much to hear from people like you... Now, the big IF is whether they would actually hear... But I’m not that jaded yet, so I think they would...
> But in the last twenty years the nation has taken a hard turn to socialism, starting with Lange in the 1980s.
I believe you do the late David Lange a disservice.
In fact, I think you will find that Lange was the beginning of an entirely different trend: one that opened NZ’s previously-closed economy to the Free Market.
New Zealand has always had a social bent. The Free Market experiments of the 1980’s and 1990’s were a departure from the norm. Helen’s form of Socialism is a revert-to-type, but with compound interest.
> China could invade and occupy New Zealand with two RO/RO ships.
You’ve said that before ad-nauseum. China probably won’t. Indonesia, on the other hand, just might.
Cite where I've said it or anything like it in the last year.
We were there in 2001 and didn’t experience very much hatred. One man, our host at a hunting lodge, did ask me why we had elected someone as stupid as George Bush as our president. I was soon to learn he got all his news from CNN International so it was no wonder. The media is not our friend.
typo........ that should read “my Texas cousins who immigrated to New Zealand in the 50’s”.
> Cite where I’ve said it or anything like it in the last year.
You haven’t said it in the last year, because you didn’t seem to be around much. But you said it often enough when “NZ” and “Defense” came up on threads earlier that it got dull. Hordes of sex-crazed Chinese males my yet invade NZ: if they do it probably won’t be by RO-RO technology. They will more likely be using 747’s and a Free Trade invitation from our Prime Minister.
> Cite where I’ve said it or anything like it in the last year.
You haven’t said it in the last year, because you didn’t seem to be around much. But you said it often enough when “NZ” and “Defense” came up on threads earlier that it got dull. Hordes of sex-crazed Chinese males my yet invade NZ: if they do it probably won’t be by RO-RO technology. They will more likely be using 747’s and a Free Trade invitation from our Prime Minister.
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