Speaking of the liberals and social democrats of his time, the communist dictator Vladimir Lenin was said to have coined the term “useful idiot.” The etymology of the term is, at best, apocryphal. However it is a very potent phrase for describing those myopic groups of activists, engaged in revolutions of various sorts, who would only intend to go exactly this far — but no further. This is what Lenin was said to have meant when employing the descriptive about his comrades across the pond, who sought only-this-far socialism, which he believed would pave the way for a full-blown Leninist utopia.
I could not help but think of this phrase while reading a column by Richard Dawkins, who laments New Zealand’s recent turn toward genuflecting at the altar of its indigenous Maori gods. It turns out that, at the behest of former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government, “Science classes are to be taught that Māori ‘Ways of Knowing’ (Mātauranga Māori) have equal standing with ‘western’ science.” Some of the educated elite are also saying that requiring Maori children to read is a form of colonization. Air New Zealand has even gone so far as to invoke Maori gods in its new safety video highlighting Maori culture and religion.
Further, Dawkins laments that:
New Zealand children will be taught the true wonder of DNA, while being simultaneously confused by the doctrine that all life throbs with a vital force conferred by the Earth Mother and the Sky Father. Origin myths
