re: They've Ruined the Haka...

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New Zealand seems like the new California. Beautiful land but parasites living there now ruining everything.

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Likely the opposite. New Zealand has been anti a lot of things for 50+ years. The public really hated when Mobil tapped their natural gas deposits way back then. The must uncool thing to be in New Zealand was an engineer.

If you think that alcohol can completely ruin a people, lot no further than the Maori. They are drunk injuns on steroids.

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frick those losers speaking Cajun French, playing zydeco or having Mamou Mardi Gras, amiright?

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Let me know when this happens on the Senate floor

First time I ever saw this Haku thing was at a rugby tournament in Park City, UT, in 1979. They were full grown men, and I have to admit a little intimidating.

Then a few years ago, while visiting my oldest son and his wife, that live on the North Island, I met this guy, who had just decided to go full tribal, with the face tats and all. This was after he had decided he wasn't gay "anymore".

Nice fella.

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How is it any different than the ritual of going to church?

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If you mean a Christian church, then in order to answer that I think you have to address the fact that societies that have embraced Christianity have led mankind from the dark ages to the space age, and accomplished so much, while the Maori probably didn't even have the wheel when the British found them. I guess there are a few ways one might explain this discrepancy:

1) All of that newer technology is stupid and we should all just lay around on the beach or engage in foraging or slash-and-burn agriculture or whatever.

2) White people are just much smarter than other people and it doesn't matter what religion they embrace, they will excel.

3) White people are meaner than other people and the Maori would have figured it all out if we'd just left them alone.

4) Christians and Jews just got really lucky, over and over again over the course of centuries, and the god of Moses had nothing to do with it. Muslims got lucky and found a bunch of oil and that didn't have anything to do with that god either.

5) People who follow the real God (even in a distorted way) will always do better than people who worship spirits, "sacred land," totems, half-man / half-elephant creatures, peacocks that totally aren't Satan, etc.

I'm curious: what's your explanation? I'm going with 5, I bet your grandparents would have, too. Same all the way up your family tree. Maybe you know better though.