Commentary The world has always had its political ironies, I suppose, but they seem more frequent than ever nowadays. New Zealand’s secular liberal saint, Jacinda Ardern, seems to be losing a little of her previously strong odor of sanctity. The case of Charlotte Bellis, a fellow female Kiwi, has not helped. Bellis is a pregnant journalist who has long reported from the Middle East and who was stranded in Afghanistan. She was not allowed to return to her home country, as she desperately wanted to do, because of its draconian COVID restrictions, according to which citizens returning from abroad must first spend time in quarantine hotels. The number of places in these hotels is grossly inferior to the number of would-be returning citizens, so the places are allotted on a lottery basis. Bellis did not win the lottery, despite attempts to do so. In typical bureaucratic fashion, the rules were …