Politics
The politics of ZAP can be seen as libertarian-minarchism. ZAP courses combined material from the John Birch Society with other free enterprise materials. In addition one of the principal texts was Frédéric Bastiat's The Law which advocates restricting government to the operation of law and order in society, and that redistribution of wealth should not be contemplated. ZAP also contended that the mixed economy of New Zealand was contrary to the interests of the people. A goal of the organization was reducing the power of trade unions and supporting the right to decide conditions of work within individual enterprises. In 1980 members of ZAP circulated an anti-union petition in Christchurch. Members were also known to approach people on the street "shouting about unions, or democracy, or bang on the roofs of Lada cars berating their owners for driving a communist car."
Read more about this topic: Zenith Applied Philosophy
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The real grounds of difference upon important political questions no longer correspond with party lines.... Politics is no longer the topic of this country. Its important questions are settled... Great minds hereafter are to be employed on other matters.... Government no longer has its ancient importance.... The people’s progress, progress of every sort, no longer depends on government. But enough of politics. Henceforth I am out more than ever.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto—God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)