Pushed from New Conservative to National: human flourishing, the empathetic Left, and the fear of conceding

Who would you vote for today and why?

My values align most closely with the late Māori Party, but in their absence, I'd have to go with the New Conservative Party. These are values which I think promote human flourishing, though I don’t always like how the party portrays or communicates those values. Then there are also strategic considerations. I have voted for the New Conservatives a few times before, but I will be forced to vote for the National Party this election. Because of how the political system is set up, small parties like New Conservative need to be above the 5 percent threshold of the vote before they get a seat in Parliament, and I just don’t think they will get there. But no one thinks they will meet that threshold, so the party doesn’t get much platform or attention—which then makes it even harder for them. Personally, I think they should be focusing their energies on just winning one electorate seat rather than going for the 5 percent, but they don’t seem to be taking that approach.

While strategically it makes more sense for me to vote for National, I am not happy with the National Party. They maybe have about 10-15 MPs who hold similar social values to the New Conservatives, and I think these MPs might have more influence if they moved over to New Conservatives, rather than try to influence National from within. As things stand, my problem with National is that they try to pretend they don’t have social values: that their politics is based on economics rather than any clear commitment to a particular set of social values. That means they don’t do enough when the Labour and Greens keep pushing their own value-laden bills through Parliament. In fact, probably about 2/3 of National members agree with those Labour values and vote for them; or if they don’t, they are too afraid of the wrath of the media to vote differently. So those members are basically Labour, but just with concern for economic issues.

How do you perceive parties and voters on the Left?

People on the Left are often driven by empathy; they see emotional suffering and make decisions based on a misguided sense of compassion. I think people on the right need to listen and pay attention to this emotion, and to people who are hurting. When they don't, the Left gets very angry with people they perceive as unempathetic—who, in reality, are just people who don't agree with their particular solutions or approaches. For those who don't think about the far reaching consequences of their attempts at altruism, it's easier to label anyone who disagrees with them as simply hateful and uncaring.

However, people on the right do care most of the time; they just disagree with the left’s solutions. Often because the solutions hurt more that they help, while often making things worse for the people they say they're helping. The Left is always wanting to pass various values-based laws that, unfortunately, I find to be deeply problematic and damaging to society. These are laws around hate speech, euthanasia, abortion, gay conversion therapy, and so on. Much of the motivation for these laws is more to do with politicking than substance. On the substance part, they are often onto something very important, but their solutions are off kilter. For example, the gay conversion therapy is presented as dealing with an extreme problem that I don’t think reflects reality. I agree that actual coercion and ignorant practices are a real problem. But the bill ends up limiting LGBT people who just want to explore these sensitive topics with a trained counsellor. I say this speaking from experience, as a married bisexual who has benefitted from such counselling. This is very difficult to talk about because people are very scared of being accused of repressing a person's sexuality and oppressing LGBT people.

How do you think the New Conservatives are perceived by others?

The New Conservatives are often accused of dog-whistling, and there’s some truth to that. I don’t love the term ‘dog-whistling’ as it’s often used to dismiss what are actually substantive positions. But it is true that the New Conservatives haven’t spent enough time talking to people on the Left, really trying to understand their perspective in order to communicate New Conservative’s values persuasively to empathetic, compassion-driven voters. It's all too easy to just criticise the Left for their failings, forgetting that we should love all people, including our enemies, requiring us to go to the greatest lengths to share and communicate in a way which will be understood by even our enemies. We should be prepared to give a good defence for our hope to anyone who asks for a reason, but to do this with deep gentleness and respect. Frankly most conservatives fail to do this time and time again, making excuses for themselves, and so in some sense, they are rightfully perceived by the Left as uncaring and uncompassionate.

What do you think about the state of our politics and what can we do about it?

The heart of the problem is that our culture generally—on both sides of the political spectrum—no longer believes that it’s possible to persuade our opposition. I strongly believe we can, and I see it happen all the time. But New Zealander’s think it doesn’t matter how strong your arguments are, or how strong your evidence is: you can’t persuade your political opponents and you can’t reason with them. In part that’s because we’ve lost our understanding of what truth is, or how to grow together towards it. We've ruled out the possibility that we might be able to make progress on big philosophical and political questions about values and world views. And we've especially ruled out the possibility of doing this through political debate, let alone public conversation.

So what happens? Rather than trying to engage and persuade, we instead try to stoke fear, and we appeal to fleeting emotions about what feels good now (based on limited understanding). Politics becomes a constant temptation to merely dog-whistle the most votes, driven by fear and dominated by rhetoric. The Right sees the Left as destructive idiots (Communists); the Left sees the Right as cold heartless machines (Nazis). And when you see things that way, it seems pointless to engage and try to change people’s opinions. We end up caring only about winning rather than losing. We are afraid to concede anything, to accept the other side might have a point, or to do anything that might make the other side ‘look good’.

What’s missing is a depth of thought that is based on listening to and understanding those who disagree with us. On both sides, people aren’t listening. On the Right, people aren’t showing they empathise with the genuine human burdens that are motivating the Left. Blinded by their ‘correct analysis’, they don't try to show that their solutions are more loving and effective at alleviating suffering. The Left is unwilling to consider the consequences of their actions or the nuance of positions on the Right, blinded by their own emotion. Above all, what we need is a focus on listening and not being afraid of where it might lead. We need good faith attempts to genuinely understand people we disagree with and to advocate their own positions and perspectives back to them in a more satisfying way than our opposition can. We need to search for common ground and to advocate and publicly celebrate the best of what we find from our political opponents. As all the greatest couples counsellors and therapists know, this is the only path to reconciliation for two parties. It's time we began to implement it in the public political sphere.