Naomi Lakritz, a columnist for the Calgary Herald, epitomizes the totalitarian “progressive” group-think of your intellectual & moral betters (self-declared) amongst the Far-Left in Canada. Case in point is her latest screed vilifying Conscience Rights. Here’s a snippet:
For how can it be anything but wrong to discriminate against other people, to treat them as though they were much less than equal to others, and claim that your conscience somehow declares it right?
It can’t — and yet, the phrase “conscience rights” is being used to describe, for example, the refusal of a marriage commissioner to treat gays and lesbians the same as anyone else, and marry same-sex couples. It is also being applied to the case of a pharmacist who may not want to dispense the morning-after pill.
Lakritz would be a good apparatchik in the Obama regime, who recently declared there to be no problem forcing Catholic churches to betray their own core tenets regarding birth control.
For Lakritz and her ilk, there appears to be no limit to the amount of control the state can impose upon a religion or religious person. Such was the case in the Soviet Union and still is the case in Communist China.
A most interesting question to be posed of both Lakritz and Alison Redford would be this: “Do you support the Wildrose’s contention that Conscience Rights be paramount in Alberta or would you, for example, use the power of the state to force the Muslim owner of a private hall to hold a lesbian couple’s wedding reception, even though he initially refused their business? As another example, suppose that owner was Jewish. Would you force her to rent the hall out to a Neo-Nazi Party convention?”
Don’t suppose she has a problem with the guys doing their job at the local gas chambers or gulags.
The column title, “Conscience rights is another way of allowing discrimination” gets it bass-ackwards. Freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and freedom of association are fundamental rights. They even properly show up in section 2 of the Charter of Rights. The real issue is that the “anti-discrimination” laws are a way of attacking and overturning these fundamental rights. The depredations of our kangaroo courts, the phony “human rights” commissions, have provided clear evidence for years.
Discrimination is a normal activity for human beings, but it may be engaged in for good reasons or bad. Doing it based on race, or most of the other standard list of “verboten” characteristics, is not rational. In fact, it’s quite boorish. But the bottom line is that it should be no concern of the state. It’s not nice at all to be on the receiving end, but there are plenty of ways to get around it, including making a racist see the error of his ways, which not a few eventually do.
Like the environment, discrimination is a broad and complex issue that has not been thought out well. This, unfortunately, has given the leftists a reason to latch on to it, and use it as a blunt tool to hammer society into submission to its mostly evil point of view.
“Political correctness” came about when early 20th-century Marxists wondered why their beloved “working class” was not rising up to overthrow capitalism. The reason, of course, was that capitalism was raising their standard of living beyond their wildest dreams. Undeterred (unfortunately), the Marxists came up with another tack: Use minorities, immigrants, and the “underclass” in general as a substitute working class. This is the real reason for the left’s flogging of “anti-racism” over the past several decades, far more than any real concern with minorities – it’s a paternalistic attempt to masquerade as their saviours and protectors, while wrapping a leash around their necks (same as everyone else). As in many crusades the leftists choose, it contains a grain of truth, namely that racism is not nice at all, and people who engage in it are boorish; this tends to blunt criticism. The leftists have a knack for calling anyone who disagrees with them on any issue “racist”, and this is where it really becomes a tool to force opponents to submit. At worst, false accusations of racism can induce a serious amount of unearned guilt, which is can be psychologically devastating to the unwary victim.
There is no way a doctor who does not believe in abortion should ever have to perform the procedure, or even aid anyone in obtaining one. The issue of Catholics in the United States with regards to insurance covering birth control, which the Church does not believe in, is similar. No one should have to use his resources to support a viewpoint or an activity that violates his conscience, any more than he should have to feign agreement with it.
However, the case of marriage commissioners is somewhat different. It relates only to government-sponsored civil marriage, and not to a church marriage. Therefore the marriage commissioners hired by the state to perform the cerremonies should do all of them. A “grace period” during which a commissioner may decline to perform one while becoming accustomed to rituals for gays is probably reasonable, but it would have expired by this late date.
A church, on the other hand, is a private organization, and thus any attempt to force gay marriage onto one that does not believe in it, or indeed to force the Catholic church to ordain female priests, is a frontal and disgraceful assault on freedom of religion that should be constitutionally barred. The kangaroo court human rights commissions have not stepped into this territory yet; I’m waiting for the day when they attempt it. (Note that the flip side of this aspect of private religious rights is that a breakaway group can form their own religion with the express intention of including gay marriage in their sacraments, and no one will have any right to prevent this)
Another issue that has a lot of confusion around it is the scope of the Charter of Rights versus the “human rights commissions” themselves. One sometimes sees nonsense like “the Charter applies to government, while human rights applies to individuals”. This is an extraordinarily dangerous notion, one that leaves individuals at the mercy of the riff-raff that infest the commissions rather than in a position to expect justice in a court of law.
Section 11 of the Charter of Rights details the rights possessed by persons “charged with an offense”. However, the unfortunate victims of injustice who are dragged before the kangaroo court “human rights” commissions are not considered charged with an offense. Therefore the legal safeguards of section 11 do not apply to them. This is undoubtedly the deliberate work of Pierre Trudeau, to the detriment of Canadians and their rights.
By this time, it should be clear to anyone with an ounce of justice that the human rights commissions have got to go. Since government should not hire in a discriminatory manner, any cases involving this should be placed with the public service staffing commissions. The laws themselves should not be discriminatory, and public officials should not discriminate in the performance of their duties; these issues, should they arise, belong in a court of law. (Note that there are plenty of laws that necessarily treat persons of different ages differently, for example)
WalterF >
Exactly, nothing like a society conditioned to obeying orders without question before we round em up on the trains.
The socialist like that.
Every newspaper has a “March Hare” type character on staff to make the rag appear tolerant of incoherent nattering – The Sun Has the Jackel, The Post has Frum, – Lakritz is the Herald’s resident schizoid.
Re-Conscience Centers (Alberta Chapter)
“Because my conscience tells me your conscience should be like mine”
They’d better be preparing the hell out of Smith as I type this, because this is ALL Redford is going to talk about in the debates.
~jeff
They have been, I know.
The linchpin will be the moderator, as anyone who has been following political debates in recent years knows.
Just got in from putting up 4 by 4 Wildrose signs here in Edmonton have been doing that since last Saturday. Everyone else has been doing?
~Ford Prefect
I’ve been a DK team leader in Airdrie putting in 3x7hour weekdays and 11 hour Saturdays since the writ was dropped identifying the vote, putting up signs on private properties+place holders for the 4x4s that folks like you put on private properties after folks like me get Wildrose supporters on corner and cul de sac properties to allow them.
My ankles and knees are about pounded to pieces from running around on concrete sidewalks.
We’ve got a vitual lock on the Wildrose vote in this town, the PCs are smoked seven ways from Sunday.
Posted by: nv53 at 12:59 AM
Very thouroughly laid out point by point.
And illuminating indeed.
Thank You.
Ford Prefect, Oz, Gord Tulk, and other WR supporters in Alberta … just two words from a fellow Canadian in another province:
THANK YOU!!!
Bernie Farber, of the Canadian Jewish Congress,“A Nazi can never be a victim but only a victimizer.”
Posted by: nv53 at 12:59 AM
Excellent post.
I will be cheering for Danielle and WR and Albertans.
Yes, well I have tried so called ‘conscience rights’ here in BC, on the issues mentioned in the article, and they don’t mean squat…
Meanwhile, one career later we have a nation that legally requires ‘cookie cutter conformity’ to the prevailing ‘progressive/regressive’ ideological tenets.
“Celebrate diversity” these clowns say and then run around the neighbourhood ideologically clubbing people into submission…well isn’t that the whole point about being an individual is that you don’t have to fit into cookie cutter ideological pigeon holes?
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/11/mark-steyn-pink-is-now-the-colour-of-conformity/
‘From such an environment come a cowed, pliant herd and a cadre of professional grievance-mongers, but not a lot of functioning, freeborn citizens.’
These people are not interested in ‘free thinking people’; rather they are quite frightened by them.
In short, they are ideological cowards feigning ‘diversity’; but will make sure you will pay somehow with the totalitarian goal of social conformity.
With all due respect, as a free born individual I don’t owe fealty to the prevailing ideological mantras any more than someone who supports these shibboleths.
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
The above rights are tempered by the following:
Life, liberty and security of person
7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
Search or seizure
8. Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.
Detention or imprisonment
9. Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.
In short if your religion tells you to throw virgins into the volcano (that is if you can find one), that right would be circumsribed by item 7 in the Charter.
As for buying the prevailing ‘abort anything that squirms in the womb until the moment of birth’ shibboleth one need only consult the Morgentaler ruling where chief Justice Bertha Wilson noted that the ‘state may have some interest in regulating the procedure’. So much for ‘taking away women’s rights’; it was never there in the first place…
http://canlii.org/eliisa/highlight.do?text=morgentaler&language=en&searchTitle=Search+all+CanLII+Databases&path=/en/ca/scc/doc/1988/1988canlii90/1988canlii90.html
“The deprivation of the s. 7 right in this case offends freedom of conscience
guaranteed in s. 2(a) of the Charter. The decision whether or not to terminate a
pregnancy is essentially a moral decision and in a free and democratic society the
conscience of the individual must be paramount to that of the state. Indeed, s. 2(a)
makes it clear that this freedom belongs to each of us individually. “Freedom of
conscience and religion” should be broadly construed to extend to conscientiously-held
beliefs, whether grounded in religion or in a secular morality and the terms
“conscience” and “religion” should not be treated as tautologous if capable of
independent, although related, meaning.”
Thus the corollary to Bertha Wilson’s statement is that those who don’t support ‘abortion on demand’ are correct in grounding their beliefs in religious or secular morality and thus the state has no business in requiring their conformity for jobs, promotion or verbal fealty to the prevailing ‘progressive/regressive’ ideology.
In short, in Canada you may throw your own unborn children into the volcano, but don’t expect all of us to stand back and applaud that this is all well and good. It is patent rubbish and Bertha Wilson was kind enough to admit it…
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
ca.news.yahoo.com/redford-smith-dress-rehearsal-riding-debates-clashing-thursday-225313522.html
The interesting definitions are – what does ‘equality’ mean? And, what does ‘discrimination’ mean? And what is the function of ‘evaluation’?
The original post by Lakritz suggests that any evaluation that recognizes differences is morally wrong; that to recognize differences is an act of discrimination; and that indeed, the only mode of life is one without differences, ie, that ‘being equal’ means ‘being the same’. Of course this is fundamentally invalid. She is ignoring two realities.
Life exists within differences where each entity is distinct from another. But, importantly, life exists within deep normative patterns of existence that are specific to a species or type. This is as true for all the varities of plants and animals that adapt uniquely, as a type, to their local environment…as it is for human beings.
Just imagine everything without these normative patterns. Pure randomness. Chaos. Everything ‘equal’ or similar to each other with no norms of interaction, continuity.
We humans also develop normative patterns of life; it’s called culture and is expressed within language (which is a normative sound system), within beliefs and behaviour.
And these must be evaluated for their ability to enable both metabolism and reproduction. Metabolism means – how do we interact with and collaborate with each other. Reproduction means how do we as a people and society continue into the future.
So we MUST discriminate and evaluate behaviour and beliefs to ensure both that we interact and live in a strong manner and that we continue our population into the future. We must not consider all beliefs and behaviour as identical, and thus, without value.
Watch out Red Ali is going to kill all the beggars’ kids!!!! Its about the only way she can wipe out child poverty. She’s sure she can finger wag us all into accepting 4th trimester abortions against our conscience.
PCs not gone soon enough.
Klein’s article boils down to advocacy for state bullying. Liberals have no problem with state coercion because of an underlying assumption that the state will coerce people into behaviors they, the liberals happen to support. As someone else pointed out, when it comes to behaviors liberals oppose, such as military service, they’re the first to scream “Freedom of conscience!”. The reason liberals insist on state coercion lies in their inability to cope with the fact that some people may simply choose to have nothing to do with them.
At the very least, marriage commissioners who were hired before same sex marriage became legal should either be allowed to refuse same sex marriages because of conscience, or they should be bought out … VERY generously. After all, it is not they who changed the rules. If people want to perform marriages in the “private sector”, there is always the ministry. Athiests, agnostics, etc who want to perform marriages but don’t want to do so for the government because of conscience should get to form some sort of private sector non-religious traditional marriage service.
Doctors are another matter. They are private business people. The government is simply the fee payer, and the setter of the standards. Any doctor should be allowed to refuse ANY procedure, except of course in life threatening situations. Your doctor doesn’t want to do your abortion? Please …. there are lots of abortion mills out there. Open the yellow pages. Live with your conscience. And let your doctor live with theirs. Likewise to pharmasists. Private buisness people. It should be their choice as to which products they carry, and which they do not.
What if….what if the child is an atheist and has to participate in quasi-religious rituals while being forced to wear a pink t-shirt?
ET said: “So we MUST discriminate and evaluate behaviour and beliefs to ensure both that we interact and live in a strong manner and that we continue our population into the future.”
ET, you’re such a radical! ~:)
xiat, for an atheist, does it matter in the end?
It’s sickening watching so called professional urnalists join forces with tyrants and progressive regressives, how far will they go to ensure they can force us to accomadate their twisted beliefs?
Just found out that the last Leger poll in the Edmonton Journal was an online poll with less than 1000 people participating.
Most likely the race is not neck and neck with the Roses at 35% and the PCs at 34%.
It’s most likely still where Abacus Data had them…
41% and 31% or so.
Just to be clear:
Conscience for the left means protecting the guilty, i.e. no death penalty.
Conscience for the right means protecting the innocent, i.e. no killing babies.
Freedom for the left means state coercion to control the individual.
Freedom for the right means individuals control themselves.
A timely and topical article from Daniel Greenfield:
“Better or Worse”
An incisive overview of left vs right, progressives vs conservatives.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.ca/2012/04/better-or-worse.html
Muslim owner of a private hall to hold a lesbian couple’s wedding reception ….
…………… with unlimited booze!
“Muslim owner of a private hall to hold a lesbian couple’s wedding reception ….
…………… with unlimited booze!”
… next door to an Ontario safe injection site and needle exchange!
…down the street from the local strip club!!