Congratulations Matthew Hooton for today’s Sunday Star Times piece, and David Farrar for the quality of his blog on it, and its comment string.

They’re the first concentration of commentators I’ve noticed willing to risk the accusation of standing beside the Exclusive Brethren.

For months the PM and her lackeys have silenced criticism by branding it as support of the EB. As well as the insults and threats mentioned by Matthew Hooton, Hansard shows Minister Mallard repeatedly referring to them as “chinless scarfwearers”.  Minister Dyson threatened to end their ability to claim benefit of a longstanding employment law exemption for conscientious objectors.

Imagine if an opponent had denigrated a viewpoint of Ms Clark’s Islamist friends by calling them “towelheads”, and suggesting that they lose their right to welfare until they denounce Mahomet’s polygamy. What would be the left’s reaction to an MP insulting Tim Barnett as a ’shirtlifter’ instead of dealing with Tim’s arguments.

Any substance in the debate would have been media buried for days in outraged howls for apologies, and the insulter would have lost from the moment of opening his mouth.

Instead most media have treated the ad hominem attacks and threats to abuse administrative and lawmaking power as to be expected, just Labour giving the EB as good as they deserve. Commentators have not wheeled out even their usual justifications for condemning salty political comment on non-politicians (imbalance of power, breach of privacy). To be fair the Herald and Audrey Young have frowned (though usually with obligatory distancing from the EBs).

 The threat to confiscate the EB’s free speech rights should have had every sanctimonoius clergyperson scrambling to his or her pulpit to ask just what that leaves of the Human Rights Act promise of freedom from discrimination on the grounds of religion.

I watched a number of submissions to the Select Committee around mine (for Sensible Sentencing Trust). On the pro-bill side, the Green MP was absent and Labour and NZ First members affected a bored indifference, confining themselves to taking turns (Benson Pope then Doug Woolerton) with variants on the question “So you support the EB right to rort our system”.
It worked on some submitters. They were reduced to confused mumbling along the lines that they “supported the objectives, just not how ‘extreme’ the bill is”. To his credit, the Forest Owners Association’s Roger Dickie did not fall into that shameful category.
This is our generation’s fight to preserve freedom.
All the anti-discrimination rhetoric and legislation of the past 20 years has been hypocrisy. Terrorised by a farcical expression of EB views, the left Establishment have shed their sheeps’ clothing of pretended tolerance (expressed mainly in law ordering ordinary people to pretend tolerance).

The long term worry is not now the current generation of politicians. They’ve been exposed.  The question is  whether the media’s crusading sensitivity on free speech issues (or even to hypocrisy) can be re-created. Intolerance has masqueraded as “human rights activism” for years. That brainwashing seems to have worked on the youngsters now holding the media reins.

Few journalists who should have been sceptical have blown the whistle with more than the most feeble of breaths.

The kiwiblog commentators have grabbed that whistle.

PS A belated commendation of the Human Rights Commission stand on the Bill. I’ve long deplored their conflation of positive rights (unequal privilege for minority groups) with the civil rights that were so hard won a couple of centuries ago. I’ve yet to read their submission  but I should have contacted them before now to congratulate them on their unequivocal public position .