"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." Martin Luther King, Jr.
I got came back to New Zealand just over three weeks ago to get total knee replacements of both knees. As I go down the long path of recovery, for the first time in many years, I have time to listen to the radio, read newspapers and magazines from cover to cover, and choose from 100 satellite TV channels. There is a lot of negative stuff going on out there. Look at the rioting in Greece, terrorism in Mumbai, the ongoing slaughter in Afghanistan and Iraq, the cholera in Zimbabwe, violence in Dafur, and in my own backyard, the brutal killing of Abdulrahman Ikhtiara, a taxi driver who came to New Zealand as a refugee from Afghanistan. The 39 year old father of five.
More than ever in my lifetime, we need global leadership to pull us out of a moral and economic mire.
This morning Martin Luther King Jnr words posted above, kept swirling in my mind and these words remain, to implore our emerging leaders to act in accord with Luther's words of wisdom ' "there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right."
Barack Obama is slowly bringing together a group of leaders around him and heads are turning from every corner of the globe towards him. I try to look beyond "the whine and thump of NZ parish pump politics" but fail to see leadership here. A Government's first priority is the safety of its people and the feeble way our Government responded, or didn't respond, to hundreds of New Zealanders trapped in Thailand a few weeks back, doesn't auger well.
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