S. 13 that CHRC!

Yesterday the Montreal Gazette ran a great piece on free speech pogroms masquerading as legitimate government tribunals. I don’t deny that they were created by proper legislative authorities and passed through proper channels but I will say that general Canadian ignorance and laziness has allowed them to transmogrify in the horrendous apparatus they now are. The article in the Gazette was outstanding, and sadly it echoes much of what I had intended to say, so to avoid plagiarism, I will refer you all to it and echo only this one key point its author so carefully addressed. Canadians are a tolerant bunch. We are, for the most part, proud of our multiethnic nation and proud to live in a tolerant society. As such, when something is called the “Canadian Human Rights Commission” – it sounds good, we like it, and we are suspicious of persons who would be dragged before it. I mean wouldn’t you have to do something obviously intolerant to be brought before one? You would think (read the article then come back to mine).

So now you know that the tribunal is the offspring of s.13 of the CHRA and, if you possess a neo cortex, you should be concerned that the phrase “likely to expose a person to contempt or hatred” is very broad (note my own contempt, in particular for the lawyers who drafted this). You should also note that this legislation was much of the backdoor inspiration behind Alberta’s controversial Bill 44 which, in part, allows children to be pulled out of class should discussions upset educationally stultified parents whose bronze-age faiths are offended by discussion topics like our well known kinship with Chimps and the age of rocks (note contempt). I am still waiting for creationist donkeys to rise up in force and picket in front of Alberta schools and legislature under some innane banner such as “Rock of Ages NOT age of rocks”.

I am a white male so I cannot say that I have lived under a lifetime of serious taunts or threats. I am a ginger, however, so there is the requisite “kick a ginger day”, and the whole “gingers don’t have souls” thing. Then again I don’t believe anyone has a soul so this doesn’t really bother me like it does many gingers out east. I suppose worse is that despite the historical fact that all red-heads with British Isles ancestry carry an allele bearing the mark of a Norse ravished past and all the insidious humor that that can bring, I find myself making up pretty good ginger jokes that are often repeated by my non-ginger friends. In truth I guess the odd minority group that I find myself a part of I doesn’t have much at stake. The place in the world where I get serious racial taunts though is in China. There I have been pet like a dog, called a ghost, and have had female coworkers accused of being prostitutes just because they are walking down a street with me. When this happens (and when it does I definitely am the minority) it is my personal pleasure to taunt back. I love telling racist Cantonese men who can’t stand seeing me walk down the street with a local girl that their rudeness comes from their grandmother’s fondness for Japanese soldiers! The truth is that all cultures basically have derogatory terms to attack and humiliate outside groups as well as terms or insults that they will take personally.

This is but one reason that we should be allowed to express contempt and hatred – self defensive retort! In Canada if you hit me, I can hit back, if you give a good reason for another to suspect that you may severely injure that person they can kill you – we all have these rights. Now it seems if you find yourself taunted by some lippy Billy-Bob you can send the government after them –lame! Our government now wants to protect our feelings? Well to this I say that: if people are so pathetic they can get lost and use their constitutional right to leave the country so my tax dollars are not wasted on emotional sissies (note contempt). I am not denying the difficulties that many minority groups face in Canada but respect is only garnered by standing on your own two feet, besides, it’s better to have the haters and bigots out in the open where you can see them rather than hidden in underground subcultures.

Hatred and contempt is also problematic when it comes to educating people. Contempt is a key part of a real education. For example: scientifically speaking these two facts are equally testable, verified, and unshakable: Russia is presently the largest country in the world; and chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor. Both are unmistakable facts. What then do you do with those who say otherwise? Well the truth is that they are either willfully ignorant (they just haven’t bothered to learn or read anything on the subject) or they are intentionally ignorant. What other options are there? If someone came into a classroom and said: Hey I think that Brunei is the largest country in the world and, on a geography final, faced question 27 “what is the largest country in the world_______?” and wrote Brunei, the answer would be wrong. What I am getting at is that there are a lot of people in the world who are nothing short of demonstrably stupid. I want the right to tell them and other people that they are intellectually lacking. If they think I am in error (and in Alberta there is an army of people who would think I am) I want people to tell me so thus allowing me to tell them and others precisely why they are wrong (and so on, ad infinitum).

I am not advocating defamation or libel or slander, just good old fashioned underlining precisely why someone is resting on fundamentally erroneous data or logic. Sadly this process cannot always be separated from contempt. Sometimes it can – if your theory is more parsimonious and supported by better statistics, then yours is better – you win! But sometimes contempt simply must form a part of the argument – the world is certainly not 6000 years old and anyone who thinks otherwise is just dumb! There is no excuse for thinking such nonsense. It gets tedious to explain to every flat-earth society member Euclidian geometry and how mere observation of shadows in different cities negates their particular cognitive dissonance. There comes a point where you have to say to people: “look you are a moron!” As I see it, our society has two options: either we lose the right to say that fundamentalists (of any stripe), creationists, the Falun Gong, scientologists, Mormons, and other groups founded by delusional nut-jobs are stupid, or we are just going to have to settle with an academic strata which is content to not discuss things like critical theology, the age of the universe, proof negating UFO abductions, the fact that scientologists intimidate their followers, and “be open” to the very crude suggestion that a con-artist discovered gold Egyptian relics in the eastern states which led to the eventual revelation Native Americans are really the descendents of Israel. Is this really what we want? Must we protect every cringing doctrine, article of faith, and every single person that may be offended by their easy refutation, or don’t we have the right to call people out on being the frauds, illiterates, exploiters, and con-jobs that they really are?

I have contempt for all the above named groups: fundamentalists, creationists, and scientologists. I hate their leaders, their literature, and the way they abuse their followers. I especially hate the way they campaign against real seekers of truth – scientists and scholars – and I hate the way they hide behind a piece of legislation that is no more credible or intellectually defensible than the Book of Mormon. I would never advocate violence, or discrimination or intimidation, but one must still discredit those opposed to scientific inquiry and wish to use human rights legislation to pull the wool over the eyes of our children! I suppose that I should also say, that despite hating very specific individuals in these groups, that I would not hate a person soley because they were a member of any of the above named intellectual monstrosities. Still, discrediting these groups should be done publically through the dissection of their literature, public speech, and actions of their members, allowing discourse and culture to ultimately decide what from them will be persevered and what will go extinct. Culturally this process has gone on for thousands of years. There is a reason that we no longer engage in polygamy, child-sex, and human sacrifice (no it is not the Bible – the Bible encourages all of these) – all were at one time endemic to human society. S.13 of the CHRA is a direct blockade of scientific progress, knowledge, and criticism. Trust me, you do not want your children to be taught by teachers who think that the Koran is a historically accurate document or who think that Jesus appeared to Native Americans who are really just Jews whose skin was reddened by a curse from God. As a society our intellectuals and scholars are already far beyond the rhetoric of blind faith and apocalyptic longings. It is too bad our legal system and government is not. Cultural evolution can either progress us or destroy us but it always wins and is fueled by contempt for the less sophisticated opinions of the weak-minded. I suppose one could say, in closing, that I have statistically offended most Canadians with this article. Well that was also the point. My contempt is on the table and I am free to share it as I please,  just as you are free to respond to it with your own support of it or your own contempt (just please no fatwahs – they’re really annoying and besides I am 100% for freedom of religion). Whatever good or bad comes out of our dialogue is certain to live on and whatever stupidity will likely be cast aside. What I am certain of is that S.13 of the CHRA will have, and should have, nothing to do with this process.

Cheers.

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Tags: Canadian Human Rights Commission, Canadian Human Rights Tribunals, discrimination, Education, Offended

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Education, Our Country. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.