Even More Brief Thoughts on Assorted Matters

- We live in an age of idolatry, in which false gods have been substituted for the true God, and counterfeit goods for true goods. Our age has substituted human rights for natural law, equality for justice, and democracy for constitutional government, and we are the worse for each of these substitutions.

- True constitutional government requires the reign of a royal monarch.

- Friends don’t let friends eat vegetarian.

- As crude in their manner of expression, one-tracked in their thinking, and blasphemously anti-Christian in their idolatrous worship of their own race as white racial nationalists often can be, they are absolutely correct when they say that anti-racist is merely a code word for being anti-white. Anti-racism is the worst form of racism that can exist – racism against one’s own race.

- Only a complete horse’s ass would be a republican, democrat, liberal, progressive, socialist, pacifist, vegetarian, feminist, atheist, tree-hugging eco-nut, anti-racist, admirer of Justin Trudeau, pro-choice activist, government social worker or any sort of social justice warrior.

- Political correctness has so rotted the minds of our politicians that Parliament is seriously considering condemning as an irrational fear and prejudice the concerns of those who consider it imprudent to admit large numbers of immigrants or asylum-seekers who adhere to the religion that converted the Arabic peoples at sword point during the life of its founder, conquered the rest of the Middle East within twenty-five years of his death, was invading Christian Europe from both sides by the end of its first century, and has behaved in the exact same way towards Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and anyone else who had the misfortune to live in proximity to it ever since.

- There is nothing morally wrong with smoking tobacco. It takes a special kind of stupid to think otherwise.

- Isn’t it interesting how those who decry the mixing of religion and politics whenever a conservative evangelical, fundamentalist or traditionalist Catholic or Orthodox leader calls for pornography to be restricted, abortion to be banned, and public morality to be restored to what it was sixty years ago or otherwise expresses a right-of-centre view of public policy seem to have no objections to those wolves in shepherds’ clothing who devote all of their pulpit time to preaching the gospel of environmentalism, denouncing the evils of various sorts of prejudice and discrimination, and calling for more immigration and diversity.

- Liberals, socialists, and neoconservatives are all in favour of high levels of immigration and a lackadaisical approach to border security and the enforcement of immigration law. This is because each sees the immigrants as the means to some selfish end of their own. The Grits see a voting base that will keep them in power perpetually, the NDP sees a pathway to power in potential voters they can lure away from the Grits by offering more government benefits, and the neoconservatives see a supply of cheap labour. All three condemn as “racist” those who want lower levels of immigration, stricter enforcement of border security and immigration laws, and an immigration policy that is based upon our own country’s needs and interests and does not seek to radically transform our country. Yet it is only these “racists” who see immigrants as rational human beings who would not chose to come to our country if they did not see it as being attractive as it is, and that it is therefore as much in the interest of the immigrants we let in as it is of us who are already here that immigration not be the instrument of fast and radical transformation.

- All of the “values” that the Liberal Party identifies as Canadian come with a “Made in the USA” stamp. They are merely the values of the Hollywood left.

The Difference Between Being a Do-Gooder and Doing Good

One of the best known of Jesus’ parables is recounted by St. Luke in the tenth chapter of his Gospel, verses twenty-five through thirty-seven. The passage begins with a lawyer asking Jesus the question “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Even though St. Luke tells us that the lawyer was not asking this in good faith but in an attempt, rather, to trip Jesus up, the Lord does not respond as you or I would probably be tempted to do to one of the barristers, solicitors, and attorneys in general of our own day by saying “Fat chance that someone in your line of work will ever make it”. No, Jesus passed on this opportunity to tell an excellent lawyer joke (1) and instead turned the question around and asked the lawyer what the Torah had to say about it. The lawyer answers this by quoting the two verses that Jesus Himself would quote when asked which is the greatest commandment, and Jesus commended this answer, but the lawyer then came back with a second question “Who is my neighbour?” It is then that Jesus relates the parable in which a man is robbed, stripped, and left to die on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, and is left there by a priest and a Levite who happen to pass by but is rescued by a passing Samaritan who treats his wounds and takes him to an inn to take care of him. This parable has come to be known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

I would like to tell a different parable that begins in the same way Jesus’ did, but takes a rather different turn towards the end, hoping, that in doing so, I am not committing a terrible act of blasphemy. Here it goes.

A man is on his way from Jericho to Jerusalem when he is beset by thieves, robbers, and cutthroats, relieved of his possessions, and left bloody, wounded, and mangled on the side of the road. Shortly thereafter a priest comes along, followed a little later by a Levite, and both avert their eyes and walk on the other side of the road, rather than trying to help the poor soul. Then the Samaritan comes along. He is outraged at the plight of his fellow man and the callousness shown by the priest and Levite. In Jerusalem, Jericho, and all the surrounding communities he circulates a petition demanding that highways be made safer for travelers and that legislation be passed forcing people to stop and help the victims of highway robberies or face a heavy fine or possibly a lashing and prison time. He calls for the establishment of a public fund to take care of those victimized by highway crime and for taxes to be imposed on the priests and Levites to pay for this fund. He makes a nuisance of himself lobbying for these reforms before the Sanhedrin and in the courts of Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate and King Herod. Eventually, word of his crusade reaches Rome, and a committee of Senators invites him to come and present his case for highway security and social programs for robbery victims before Caesar himself. Meanwhile, the man who was robbed remains on the side of the road and dies.

This, of course, is the Parable of the Do-Gooder Samaritan.

It is one of the curiosities of the English language that the expression “do-gooder” does not refer to people who actually “do good”. Indeed, the expression is one of ironic contempt that suggests that there is a disconnect between the good the person to which it is applied thinks he is doing and the actual outcome of his actions. Sometimes it is just a matter of ineffectiveness in which the do-gooder has good intentions and a noble goal but fails to actually accomplish anything. Often, however, the do-gooder might accomplish harm either instead of the good he intends or which is greater than and outweighs the smaller good he actually achieves. A do-gooder typically displays naivety of one kind or another, ranging from a simple lack of the experience and know-how necessary to accomplish his lofty goals to a kind of tunnel vision in which he is so focused upon achieving one particular ideal that he is blinded to the negative consequences of his attempts to achieve it.

We usually associate the idea of a do-gooder with that of a social and moral crusader. A crusader of this type is someone who attempts to bring about a particular end either by persuading the government to pass legislation or by organizing private citizens to take action. The interesting thing about this methodology is that it distributes the cost of accomplishing a desired goal among many people, either the organized private citizens or the taxpayers as a whole, and can sometimes lead to the blame being distributed if something goes wrong as well. Meanwhile, the crusader or do-gooder gets the full credit if something good is actually accomplished. This may or may not justify an attitude of cynicism towards the motives of the reformer but it is worth taking note of and contrasting with the example of the Good Samaritan of Jesus’ parable, who when leaving the robbed man with the innkeeper told the latter to add the cost of any additional assistance that might be required to his bill.

Another contrast between do-gooders and people like the Good Samaritan who actually do good is that the latter are concerned with personally doing the right thing whereas the former are obsessed with improving everybody else. This leaves other people with the impression that the do-gooder is a self-satisfied, self-righteous, better-than-thou type of person, an impression that is in no way lessened when he enlists the help of the government in accomplishing his goals. All sorts of ridiculous legislation that is far more of an obnoxious nuisance to most people than it is a benefit can be attributed to this cause in the last century alone. Some of this legislation, like Prohibition, the biggest single effect of which was to make the mob rich and powerful, was long ago discredited and rescinded. Other such legislation, no-less discredited, for some reason remains on the books. Canadian and American federal drug laws are a prime example. Other laws that were initiated by do-gooders and which harass people more than they help them are laws which prohibit people from driving when their blood alcohol level is above an arbitrary percentage point regardless of whether they are capable of driving safely in that condition or not, laws which jack up the price of tobacco, prohibit smoking sections in restaurants and drive smokers out into the cold whenever they want a puff or two, laws that prevent an employer from offering a man a high enough wage to support his wife and children lest a single woman be discriminated against, and laws that ensure that that an employer, if he wishes to remain free of harassing lawsuits, will hire a certain percentage of ethnic and racial minorities regardless of their qualifications. Any legislation associated with the concept of human rights can be regarded as falling within the category we are discussing.

Ultimately though, the worst thing about being a do-gooder is that it is a cop out of the ethical or moral life. It is far easier, to sign up for some “save the world” cause or the other – take your pick, they are a dime a dozen – and try to fix other people, than it is to try and do the right thing yourself, to cultivate the virtues and good character, and to seek after the good, the true, and the beautiful. The latter is the hard work of a lifetime and the rewards, while enduring, take longer to appear whereas the former is easy and the rewards are instantly gratifying.

(1) Have you heard the one about the dispute between God and the devil over the fence between Heaven and Hell? The fence was run down and it was the devil's turn to have it fixed. He, being the blighter he is, did nothing about it. God pointed out his negligence and he replied "So sue me". When God said that He might do just that the devil came back with "Oh yeah. Where are you going to find a lawyer?".

GTN Tory Classics No. 1: The Human Rights Scam

For the next two or three weeks I will be posting essays that I wrote in 2009 before starting Throne, Altar, Liberty. I distributed these essays to my friends through Facebook and e-mail. The dates on the essays are the dates these essays were originally posted to Facebook and/or e-mailed. I am posting them at this time because I am going to need at least two weeks to complete the essay I am working on.

The first essay in this series will be "The Human Rights Scam". I thought this essay would be particularly fitting at this time because of the hoopla in the news about the 30th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms this past Tuesday. The progressive media is always telling us about the debt of gratitude we owe to Pierre Trudeau and the Liberal Party for this Charter which, according to progressive commentators, finally secured for us the rights and liberties Americans had enjoyed for two centuries under their Bill of Rights. This is all a lie. Our most basic rights and freedoms are derived from Common Law and were our possession, as subjects of the Crown, before the Charter. It is because the Americans had cut themselves off from the Crown and the prescriptive tradition that was the source of those rights, that they felt they needed to secure them for themselves with the Bill of Rights. Our Charter does not make those rights and freedoms any more secure than they were before 1982. In fact, it does the exact opposite. The limitations clause in section one and the notwithstanding clause in section thirty-three give Parliament and the provincial legislatures the authority to disregard our most basic prescriptive rights and freedoms. The so-called "human rights" legislation, at the federal and provincial levels, does in fact violate our basic freedoms. That is what this essay is about.

Note: Some of the themes in this essay I reworked into my May, 2010 essay "Human Rights Fraud", one of the first essays I posted here.


The Human Rights Scam


By Gerry T. Neal
May 12, 2009

You hear a lot about “human rights” these days. Countless organizations exist to promote “human rights” around the world or to complain about how this or that country abuses or neglects “human rights”. Every time a socialist wants to take your property and give it to someone else he will recite the mantra “human rights come before property rights”. But what are “human rights”?

To answer that question we must first answer the question: What are rights? Rights are closely related to liberties but they are not identical concepts. Our liberties are everything we are free to do, but our rights are everything we are entitled to. Rights can be categorized according to what it is we are entitled to, who is entitled to it, and where that entitlement comes from. The latter concern, the source of rights, has been a matter of discussion for centuries, and is directly related to the question of human rights.

Theories of rights basically find the source of entitlement in three places: government, tradition, and nature. Not surprisingly those favoring big government prefer to see the state as the source of our rights. When we are entitled to things because the government has written it into the law saying that we are entitled to them these are called our legal or civil rights. These are essential for protecting our rights but there is one basic flaw to legal rights – what government gives today, government can take away tomorrow.

For this reason we need our prescriptive rights. Prescriptive rights are rights which are ours by reason of our membership in a society in which those rights have been possessed from time immemorial. They are inherited rights, rights which our fathers fought for and died, and secured for us over the centuries. They come to us, in the customs, traditions, and ways of our people. Since this is the same way in which our government comes by its legitimate authority, government cannot take away our prescriptive rights, without attacking its own foundations.

Naturally, prescriptive rights will vary from society to society, depending on the traditions and customs of the society in particular. In Canada, a country under the sovereignty of the British crown and the Common Law, we (like the British and the Americans) are heirs to a particular set of prescriptive rights that were known in days of yore as “The Rights of Englishmen”. No greater set of rights has ever been or ever could be devised by the minds of men for the protection of our personal security and liberty than these rights that evolved with the Common Law over centuries of British history.

In the 18th Century, Sir William Blackstone, a jurist and professor of law, wrote a famous and influential treatise entitled Commentaries on the Laws of England that explained the English Common Law to the average reader. This work was divided into four volumes, the first two dealing with rights (personal and property rights), the last two dealing with wrongs (torts and crimes). The rights Blackstone discusses, are the Rights of Englishmen. These he divides into relative rights, such as those attached which come to particular persons by means of status (king, husband, parent, etc.), and absolute rights which are vested in individuals and are those “which every man is entitled to enjoy whether out of society or in it”. The latter, are the subject of the very first chapter of the first volume, and Blackstone, after a brief history of the Rights says they can be boiled down into 3 – the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to private property. These are the same three rights which John Locke had argued were “natural rights” (which we will discuss shortly) and there is a great deal of overlap between the Blackstone’s concept of individual rights and Locke’s, but Blackstone is very careful to ground, even these rights, in the prescriptive tradition of English Common Law. He goes on to argue for 5 auxiliary rights “which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights”. These are:

1. The constitution, powers, and privileges of parliament.
2. The limitation of the king’s prerogative.
3. Applying to the courts of justice for redress of injuries.
4. Petitioning the king or either house of parliament for redress of grievances should the courts fail.
5. Having arms for their defense.

Note carefully the last one. Although Blackstone’s right to bear arms is hardly as unqualified as the American 2nd amendment, the right to bear arms is an English tradition, not an American invention.

Other Rights of Englishmen that are our birthright from the historical tradition from the Charter of Liberties and the Magna Carta to the (English) Bill of Rights and Act of Settlement include the right of habeas corpus, the right to a trial by jury, the right to confront ones accusers, protections against retroactive law and self-incrimination, and the presumption of innocence (Blackstone, famously wrote in chapter 27 of the 4th volume of his Commentaries “the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer”).

These, our inherited rights are threatened, by a document ironically entitled “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms”. This document was tacked on to the Canadian Constitution in 1982 by Pierre Eliot Trudeau when he repatriated the British North America Act. Section 33 (1) of the Charter allows Parliament or legislatures to pass Acts which will operate “notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of this Charter”. What are those provisions? Section 2 identifies the “fundamental freedoms” of 1) conscience/religion, 2) thought/belief/opinion/expression, 3) peaceful assembly, and 4) association. Section 7 is the right to life, liberty, and security of person. Sections 8-15 include our right to security against unreasonable search and seizure, our right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned , our basic legal rights upon arrest and upon being charged with a crime, our right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment, and our right against self-incrimination. All of these rights, we had under Common Law, as subjects of Her Majesty, by reason of tradition, prescription, and inheritance prior to Trudeau’s Charter. By allowing government to pass Acts which contradict these rights, Trudeau’s Charter is essentially designed not to guarantee them, but to take them away from us.

Mr. Trudeau was a big believer in “human rights” though. In 1977 he had Parliament pass a document entitled the Canadian Human Rights Act. The Canadian Human Rights Act made it illegal to discriminate. To discriminate means to “make a distinction” in the sense of preferring one over another. The CHRA makes it illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of any of a number of identified reasons – race, sex, religion, etc. This discrimination is illegal under the CHRA in such things as hiring, promoting, and firing employees, serving customers, renting or selling property, and that sort of things. But to make discrimination illegal, means that you are limiting the rights and freedoms of individual persons in Canada. Specifically you are limiting the right of employers to hire, promote and fire whoever they want, the right of businessmen to do business with whoever they want, the right of property owners to rent or sell to whoever they want. In limiting any of these rights you are limiting the basic freedom of association. The Act further, in its Section 13, limits an even more basic freedom – that of thought and speech.

To make matters even worse, the government bodies established by the Act to investigate, prosecute and try cases of discrimination, are not subject to many of the ordinary limitations on police, prosecutors and judges. The burden of evidence in discrimination cases is essentially shifted onto the accused and the trials themselves are a means of punishment.

What kind of “rights” can these “human rights” possibly be that in their name, the most basic rights and freedoms of the English tradition are to be sacrificed?

The idea of “human rights” evolved historically out of John Locke’s doctrine of natural rights. Locke (1632-1704) was the founder of the Empiricist branch of the Enlightenment Project that rivaled the earlier Rationalist branch founded by Rene Descartes. In his Two Treatises of Government Locke identified three basic rights which he said belonged to every individual. These were life, liberty, and property, the same three that Blackstone would later write about. But whereas Blackstone, a Tory, would ground these rights in the context of an established tradition, Locke argued for them on the basis of abstract theory. In a primordial state of nature prior to society, Locke argued, men were free and possessed certain rights under natural law. The basic right was that of property. Men had a right to what was theirs. Since every man owned at least himself, he had the right to his life and to do with it what he wanted (liberty). But these rights in the state of nature were difficult to defend and so men formed a contract to establish society, whereby government and law would enforce and defend their rights.

Locke’s theory had many things to commend it, foremost among them his recognition of the primacy of property rights, indeed his identification of rights with property. The Communist Trudeau did not even consider property rights worthy of being mentioned at all in his Charter. The problem, however, is that divorcing rights from the context of a particular tradition and attaching them to all people universally by means of nature, blurs the distinction between what I am entitled to and what I desire (they are not the same thing). This causes the list of natural “rights” to ever expand and inspires anti-social and often destructive behavior. In 1789, for example, the French National Assembly approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This document adopted Locke’s theory but identified considerably more rights than he did. This was understandable considering that its purpose was to stir up the French Revolution. British statesman Edmund Burke, seeing the madness that ensued from this document, wrote his Reflections on the Revolution in France in which he affirmed prescription as the basis of all legitimate rights.

Today, the principal document of the “human rights” doctrine is the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the General Assembly in 1948. This document is 30 articles long, and while much of it simply rewords the traditional English rights into universal rights it does not properly distinguish between a person’s wants and needs on the one hand and his rights on the other. Having your wants and needs met is a condition right, not a basic right. The only basic rights, the only rights which could conceivably exist in a state of nature apart from society and law are negative rights. Negative rights are entitlements to things you already have. They place no burden on anybody else – other than that they leave you alone to enjoy your rights. Positive rights – which entitle you to something you don’t have, and which place a burden on others to provide those things – may belong to someone by right of membership in a society which grants those rights to its members. They cannot be universal rights belonging to all humans.

Clearly the doctrine of “human rights” is a socialist doctrine. It is also an egalitarian doctrine – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights preaches equality and non-discrimination long before it gets around to enumerating the basic rights of life and liberty. But it is also a foundational doctrine for World Government.

The doctrine of “human rights” is a version of Locke’s doctrine of the universal, natural, rights of the individual, emphasizing the universal, where Locke emphasized the individual. Even if we properly limit our concept of natural rights to negative rights to one’s own life, liberty, and property, these rights don’t mean a whole lot unless they are recognized and respected by others. That is where the importance of society with its inherited rights and legal protections comes in.

By placing the importance on universality rather than on the individual the doctrine of “human rights” becomes an argument against particular societies and their particular traditions and in favor of a universal society that will universally protect “human rights”. It is no coincidence that the idea of “human rights” is so closely connected to the United Nations.

The doctrine of “human rights” inspired the tyranny and bloodshed of the French Revolution. Here in Canada it has been the basis for our being denied basic rights which are ours by inheritance from the English tradition. One shudders to think what this doctrine might inspire if a World Government arises to take over its enforcement.

This and That No. 13 - Freedom and Human Rights

In his column for the Mail On Sunday for May 28, Peter Hitchens opened by saying "Human rights are a threat to free speech." This is absolutely correct, as we know all too well here in Canada where the ideology of human rights, enshrined in law in the Canadian Human Rights Act, has been used to stifle and chill freedom of speech.

It is bad enough that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act allowed for political dissidents to be silenced because the expression of their views was interpreted as being "hate speech" and therefore a violation of other people's "human rights". Our defamation laws, which are in serious need of revision so as to prevent their abuse, are also being used to discourage criticism of Section 13 and those who have used Section 13 to silence people whose views they don't like.

Mark and Connie Fournier, the founders and administrators of the conservative message board Free Dominion, have been fighting litigation for a number of years now, primarily from Richard Warman. Richard Warman's website describes him as a "Canadian human rights lawyer". A former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission he has in recent years come under heavy, and in my opinion deserved, criticism for filing Section 13 complaints as a form of political activism.

During the case of Warman V. Lemire evidence was introduced by the defence that the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Warman engaged in ethically dubious online behavior, that I, and I think most people, would consider to be a form of entrapment. One particular accusation, that the defence made against the CHRC and Warman, would suggest an even worse form of prosecutorial misconduct than entrapment - it would suggest the planting of evidence. This accusation was reported by Jonathan Kay in the National Post. The National Post article was then quoted and reproduced throughout the internet, including at Free Dominion. Warman denied the accusation, then proceeded to sue the National Post, Free Dominion, and a host of other people including conservative writers Ezra Levant and Kathy Shaidle for defamation.

This however, is only part of the legal difficulties Warman has given the Fourniers.

Warman had already filed another lawsuit against the Fourniers and Free Dominion, which named eight "John Does" as co-defendants. These are eight people who post under screen names, i.e., internet aliases that are not their real names, at Free Dominion. This quickly became a lawsuit over the issue of internet anonymity. Warman demanded that the Fourniers turn over the IP and e-mail addresses of the "John Does" to him. The Fourniers refused to do so, and have been fighting ever since. Initially, the case was decided in Warman's favour and the Fourniers were ordered to turn over the IP and e-mail addresses of the "John Does" to Warman. They appealed this decision, and in May of last year won their appeal. The Appellate Court in overturning Warman's original victory, established standards that complainants would have to meet if they want a judge to order the personal information of anonymous internet posters turned over to them.

Warman then filed another motion against the Fourniers in an attempt to secure a ruling in his favour under the new rules. This Tuesday, on May 31st, he received that ruling. The most recent judge's decision is disgusting and disturbing. Apparently calling people bad names now constitutes actionable defamation - even if the judge doesn't understand what the bad name means. As Connie Fournier writes:

If the new Divisional Court test can be thwarted by a judge essentially saying, "I'm not sure what this means but it SOUNDS bad, so the privacy must be stripped from these individuals", then the whole test becomes meaningless. (http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1621218#1621218)

We are constantly told that we need "human rights laws" to protect the "weak and vulnerable". Unfortunately, however, laws that are designed to protect "the weak and vulnerable" are easily abused. It is not right that someone should be liable to huge fines and life-time gag orders for mere words posted on the internet. It is not right that laws against defamation, which exist to protect people from those who would ruin their reputations and livelihoods by deliberately spreading falsehoods about them, can be used to silence criticism of those who use "hate speech" laws to silence dissent.

Please pray for Mark and Connie Fournier as their legal battle against their persecutors continues. If you are able, also please consider making a donation to Free Dominion to help pay their enormous legal costs.

Also pray for all others who face lawsuits from Richard Warman, that they might prevail.

Also pray for Richard Warman. Jesus told us to "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you" and Himself set the example by praying, for those who nailed Him to the Cross (which includes all of us for it is our sins that He died) "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". Pray that God will humble Richard Warman's heart, that he might be converted like Saul of Tarsus, and bring forth fruit meet for repentence, like Zaccheus making reparations to those he has wronged.

Finally, pray for Canada, that we will get the reforms to our laws and courts which are so badly needed.

Human Rights Fraud

What does the phrase “human rights abuse” suggest to you?

If you are like most people, when you hear about “human rights abuses”, you probably think about forced labor or extermination camps, about military dictators summarily executing their critics, about torture and ethnic cleansing, and other things similar to these.

What do all of these have in common?

First, they are all activities of governments rather than by ordinary people.

Secondly, they all involve actual physical suffering of some sort imposed on a large scale.

Finally, they have nothing to do with the laws and institutions established by progressives in Western countries like Canada, ostensibly to protect “human rights”.

Take the Canadian Human Rights Act, for example, which Parliament voted into law in 1977. This piece of legislation was clearly written, not to protect people from government abuses like ones mentioned above, to authorize government intrusion into the every day interactions of ordinary people.

In fact, this is blatantly stated at the very beginning of the CHRA itself. The “Purpose of Act” (Section 2) states:

The purpose of this Act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.

Observe the following:

First, while governments are the perpetrators of the abuses we most commonly associate with “human rights” in ordinary conversation, the Canadian Human Rights Act’s declared purpose is “to extend the laws in Canada”, not to limit the power, scale, and scope of government.

Second, while we ordinarily think of “human rights abuses” in terms of extreme physical suffering, death, and unjust confinement, the CHRA is about economics.

Third, the CHRA points to an underlying principle as its justification. Upon closer examination that “principle” is just a standard progressive/leftist ideal. A principle, remember, is something you learn over time, at home growing up, in church, and from the folklore, traditions, and customs that represent the accumulated wisdom of your society, which forms your character, and guides you in your everyday decisions. An ideal is something that you dream up in your youth, as an abstract exercise in imagining a perfect world, and seek to impose on others.

“Equal opportunity” is an ideal not a principle. In its best form it is a negative ideal, declaring that individuals should rise and fall on their own merits or lack thereof, and that the government should not do anything, one way or another, to give any particular person an advantage over others. In its worst form it calls upon the government to create “equal opportunity”.

One person has an advantage over another because his father is a doctor and can afford to send him to the best schools whereas the second person’s father is the janitor’s assistant at the local grocery store and cannot afford the same privileges to his son. This is intolerably “unfair” to progressives and leftists who declare that the government needs to get involved and tax the doctor to pay for the education of the janitor’s assistant’s son so that they both have “equal opportunity”.

The “equal opportunity” of the Canadian Human Rights Act is also a form of the kind of “equal opportunity” that calls upon the government to take action rather than simply asking it to mind its own business. In this case, the CHRA authorizes the government to take action to protect “individuals” from “discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.”

What are these discriminatory practices? Do they involve torturing, confining, or killing people because of their race, their national or ethnic origin, colour, religion or any of the other criteria listed?

No. Acts of that nature were already illegal in Canada prior to the passing of the CHRA. Well, at least they were until the Chretien government followed the American government’s bad example in voting itself the right to do these things to anyone suspected of “terrorism” after 9/11. That is a topic for another time however.

The acts which are considered “discriminatory practices” by the CHRA include the denial of “access to, any such good, service, facility or accommodation” which is “customarily available to the general public” (Section 5) or the denial of occupancy of “commercial premises or residential accommodation” (Secion 6), and the refusal of employment or termination of employment (Section 7) to anyone based on the prohibited grounds.

At first glance these rules might make sense to some. Consider, however, the implications. If you own a business or an apartment block and depend upon that for your and your family’s livelihood, these rules say that you do not have the final decision in who you do business with, who you hire to work for you, or who you rent your apartments too.

Lets say you own a restaurant. The services it provides are “customarily available to the general public” and so fall under Section 5. Someone comes into your restaurant who is drunk and abusive and starts harassing other customers. That person is of another ethnicity to yourself. What do you do?

The right thing to do, of course, is to boot the guy out on his arse. Your family depends on you to support them, the restaurant is your livelihood, and you cannot afford to give the impression to potential regular customers that they will be harassed if they come to your establishment and that you will do nothing about it.

However, because of his ethnicity, Section 5 of the Canadian Human Rights Act forces you to reconsider. If you kick this man out it will not be because of his ethnicity but because he is a drunken, boorish, lout. You know that but that is not what matters. What matters is that the law says you cannot deny services to this man because of his ethnicity, and if he complains to the Human Rights Commission that you kicked him out of your restaurant because you were prejudiced against him, it is his word against your word.

Who will the adjudicators of the CHRA be most likely to believe, him or you?

It would be nice to say that the traditional, prescriptive, English right to the presumption of innocence applies here, but in fact it doesn’t. The CHRA, like all forms of anti-discrimination legislation, is stacked against the defendant. It will cost the man nothing to file a complaint against you – you will have to hire a lawyer to advise you of your rights and defend you. And the adjudicators of laws like this operate on a presumption of guilt – to doubt the word of a “victim” of “discrimination” is to victimize him again in the thinking of progressives.

Laws of this nature are not necessary. Civilization survived for millennia without them. Moreover, as we have just demonstrated, these laws can be a positive evil. Lord Falkland once declared “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change”, to which excellent conservative axiom I would add the corollary “When it is not necessary for there to be a law, it is necessary for there not to be a law”.

It is the government’s job to provide us with the protection of the rule of law against murder, theft, assault, rape, and other criminal activities in which someone causes real physical harm to our persons or property. It is not the government’s place to interject itself into our everyday interactions with others and decide who has been treating who unfairly, and when it attempts to do so it makes things worse because it is not competent to do so.

What the Trudeau government and the progressive Left have done with the Canadian Human Rights Act is a form of sleight-of-hand. It was the Left that introduced the concept of “human rights” into our political discussion, selling the concept as a protection against the worst abuses of government. As a result we have come to associate the opposite of “human rights” with the horrors of tyranny.

Then it introduced legislation in the name of “human rights” that does nothing to protect people from such tyranny, but rather empowers the government to intrude into their everyday lives, and boss them around about who they do business with, who they rent their property to, and who they hire, fire, and promote in their businesses.

If it were done on a stage for our entertainment it would be trick worthy of standing ovation.

Since it was done with the laws of our land and affects our everyday lives, it is instead a fraud worthy of nothing but condemnation.