Politics, they will insist, is not a philosophy class, it’s a blood sport, in which principles serve a purely decorative function. Another way of demonstrating the importance of first principles in politics is to illustrate the difference in effectiveness between a government that works from these principles, and a government that sets them aside. How, then, is it possible that New Zealand’s pre-eminent conservative party – National – is languishing at around 25% in the opinion polls? A genuinely conservative party, operating from first principles, would have crafted its responses to Covid-19 according to the two core principles of the conservative world view: order and hierarchy. By defaulting to the core conservative principles of order and hierarchy, National would also have curtailed the rampaging success of the Act Party.

Source: New Zealand Herald November 14, 2021 23:20 UTC