Lyndon Hood - minim, Lower Hutt
Sunday, May 01, 2005
The short version goes like this: when assessing their feedback from 'community meetings', bear in mind that the publicity specifically asked for people who were bewildered by newfangled things like civil unions and were prepared to pay $10 ($15 for couples) to be lectured by the Maxim Institute.
Oh, and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation has given them a prizes.
The Templeton Freedom Awards Program celebrates the contributions of non-profit research institutes (or “think tanks”) to the public’s understanding of how to achieve a free society. The program specifically honors promising young organizations, especially in difficult parts of the world where there are few independent voices advocating economic freedom, individual liberty, and limited government under the rule of law.In further evidence of the freakshow alliance between economic liberalism and moral conservatism, Maxim got one $10,000 prize, plus an additional $5,000:
New Zealand’s Maxim Institute receives the second place Templeton Freedom Prize for Social Entrepreneurship for its advocacy campaign around a Civil Union Bill that threatened government intervention in the intimate relationships of private citizens.If the Atlas people actually believe that, then Maxim's scored its biggest PR coup yet. And of course that "advocacy campaign", well, failed.
Seeing as their arguments tend to have a flavour of bullshit (though, God help me, I agree with their stance on hate speech legislation), and it's not clear that they actually represent anyone, I still don't get why Maxim is taken seriously.
I guess you can get away with a lot if you put a bikini model on the cover.
And now, the bonus feature...
We should work diligently for peace where appropriate. But we dishonour the memory of the ANZACs if we are not continuously at war with our enemies, hardening our armed forces for a final, successful campaign to retake the Gallipoli peninsula ...
