Being a highly opinionated individual I ended up in an interesting argument on twitter today, as I often do.

My opinion was along the lines that the New Zealand government should stop trying to right the wrongs caused in the past with the Maori tribes and move on, dismantle the Waitangi Tribunal and abolish the racist policy of Maori only seats. (1)

What made the resulting discussion notable, is that it amused me in that trying to justify the opposing opinion as being right and mine being wrong, this statement was sent to me:

"The ONLY thing that's right is an opinion based on a sound knowledge of past reality:history."

Whether it is based on historical truths or not is irrelevant unless it references the past in order to provide backing information to try and convince the other party to agree on your opinion.

My whole side of the discussion was that “yes, bad stuff happened in the past, but to move forwards as a country we should put them behind us”, explicit acknowledging that there HAVE been past wrongs and that my opinion is that we should forget them and move on as a united country.

I don’t mind people disagreeing with my opinion and giving their reasons, even if they still don’t agree after some time, but saying that it’s arrogant and wrong just rubs me the wrong way and changes it from a discussion into a childish argument.

I would also like to point out that it’s an OPINION! You can’t say it’s right or wrong, you can only agree or disagree with it.

(1) The whole issue of the Maori Seats and Waitangi Tribunal is something I’ll leave for another blog post, it’s too complex to go into details here.