[Ezra] Levant describes the human rights system as “a beautiful idea – that failed.” He credits it with the “noble goal of eliminating real discrimination . . .”.
Wrong.
Human rights codes have fabricated a phony “right” to be free from discrimination and used it to override a panoply of genuine human rights, including: freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of contract and control over one’s private property. There can be no such thing as the right to violate someone else’s rights. It’s a contradiction in terms. The only solution to this seeming paradox is the complete repeal of the human rights codes, not mere changes to the enforcement mechanisms.
Forcing people into servitude
Incidentally, we must not confuse the obligations of the state with those of private individuals or businesses. We can rightly insist – as we do under subsection 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – that the state not discriminate arbitrarily in its laws or its actions. The state holds a legal monopoly on the use of force. Its sole role and justification is to protect the rights of its citizens. Therefore, it owes the same duty, without discrimination, to all of them. There is no-one else a citizen can turn to if the state denies him its services for arbitrary reasons.
Individuals and businesses hold no such monopoly power over one another, and therefore owe no such duties to one another. If one person declines to deal with you, you have no right to coerce him against his will.
Such a right would be tantamount to forcing him into involuntary servitude – yes, slavery. There’s nothing beautiful or noble about that.I think everyone who's been chewed up and spit out by the ignoble system--and many others who have merely watched the mastication process--would most heartily concur. And yet, it is clear there is no national will to get rid of this horrid joke of an apparatus, the embodiment of good intentions run amok and gone wrong.
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| Moses has words with a proto-"human rights" Commissar |
The great Barry Goldwater was prophetic during his 1964 unsuccessful Presidential run: He vigorously insisted that the gamut of newly-minted "civil rights" would lead precisely to where they have led, to the displacement of real civil rights and the intrusion of government into every facet of a person's life in the ever more punctilious pursuit of non-discrimination. Of course, he was defeated in a landslide by the collectivist Lyndon Johnson; as early as 1964, the American people had become convinced that government was there to act as a super-nanny, to make sure that everyone had an equal helping of cake and played nicely with everyone else. Everything since has been but a refinement of that principle.
ReplyDeleteThe great Thomas Sowell has something to say about that, Carlos: http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=MGZmMTIwYzY2OWQxNjhhNGY1NGQ5NzRjZDFkYTc4YmM=
ReplyDeleteTHis is one thing Harper had better change or where all in for an Unpleasent time.
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