Brian Rudman: Surely Brash is just poking cruel fun at Commissar Mapp

The head of National's new thought police squad, Commissar Wayne Mapp, was on the radio yesterday declaring one of his first ambitions will be to expunge reference to Maori spiritual values from legislation.

Shame he couldn't have been less race-specific in his crusade and promise to fight against all intrusions of the spiritual world into the secular business of government.

If he'd pledged to be even-handed and come down hard on the Christian prayer that begins the parliamentary day, or the one that his local North Shore mayor intones before each council meeting, I might have said a quiet hurrah.

But instead, he sees it as a matter of the majority are right, the minority can lump it. When asked about the Christian prayer, he laughed it off, pointing out that Andrew Williams, the North Shore councillor who battled unsuccessfully for an end to "official" praying, had not been re-elected. So much for the principled approach to defending the "basic freedoms of society".

But you've got to give Dr Mapp full marks for putting on a brave face. Who would have thought party leader Don Brash had it in him to so humiliate a fellow PhD and one-time professor of commercial law, specialising in international trade law, taxation law and constitutional issues, by appointing him to the nonsense role of Political Correctness Eradicator.

Will he ever be able to return to Auckland University without sniggers following him down the corridors.

I'm in the middle of Jung Chang's new biography of Mao Tse-Tung and the abasement of Dr Mapp is eerily like the cruel fun Chairman Mao used to have with his courtiers when they did such things as "speaking weird words". I do wonder, though, if Dr Mapp has read what Chairman Mao got up to when he tired of merely toying with his victims.

Farcical as the appointment is, the scary alternative prospect is that the alternative government party has genuinely embraced Dr Mapp's anti-minority crusade. He summed up his philosophy in the inaugural Ralph Hanan Lecture back in June. What this liberal justice minister of the Holyoake era would have made of the speech in his honour I don't know. But with the Ombudsman set up in his time, with a raft of race relations and human rights legislation to his credit, you have to wonder.

The Mapp proposition is that "democracy is not just about choice, it is also about majorities. The ideas and values of the majority are able to prevail over other choices." He argues "the politically correct ignore the democratic ideal both in terms of choice and majoritarism. It is their goal to capture the institutions of state and mould them to reflect their views."

Political correctness, he says, "is a set of attitudes and beliefs that are divorced from mainstream values" and "a person, an institution or a government is politically correct when they cease to represent the interests of the majority and become focussed on the cares and concerns of minority sector groups".

He adds that "anything that substantially deviates from the idea of equality is viewed as suspect".

All of which is very revealing. Who would have thought a 21st century mainstream politician would find the very idea of equality suspect. Then there's all that nonsense about the political correct minority capturing the institutions of state and imposing non-mainstream values.

What, you wonder, does Dr Mapp think happened a few weeks back when New Zealanders returned a Helen Clark government to office for a third term? If Helen Clark and her PC troops are so out of touch with mainstream values, how is it that it is Dr Mapp and his "mainstream" lot who have ended up sulkily sucking gum drops on the Opposition benches for another three years?

Dr Mapp echoed his leader's Orewa speech when he said the issue was "what sort of nation do we want to build?" His model is one where the views and values of the majority prevail and minorities of all sorts, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, you name it, are expected to grin and bear it. At last month's election, the majority of us rejected that outdated, monocultural model.

For a man who once served as a territorial officer in military intelligence, you have to wonder when this message will get through.