040 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 040
Air Date: February 7, 2008
Host: Bob Metz

Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this program are those of the participants, and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Clip (Star Trek: The Original Series – Let That Be Your Last Battlefield S3E15):
Bele:
It is obvious, to the most simple minded, that Lokai is of an inferior breed.

Spock:
The obvious visual evidence, Commissioner, is that he is of the same breed as yourself.

Bele:
Are you blind, Commander Spock? Look at me. Look at me.

Kirk:

You’re black on one side and white on the other.

Bele:

I am black on the right side.

Kirk:
I fail to see the significant difference.

Bele:
Lokai is white on the right, so all of his people are white on the right side.

Bob Metz:
Good morning London. It is Thursday, February 7th, 2008. I’m Bob Metz, and this is Just Right. On CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now until noon. No, no, not right wing. Just Right.

Welcome back to the show today. What a mess we’ve got out there on the streets, eh Ira? It’s just a mess. It looks like winter though, I gotta tell ya. Yesterday, a couple days ago, it looked like summer almost, and now it’s back to winter.

Today on the show, I wanna pick up and conclude and maybe finish up some of the comments I began last week on a couple of subjects, namely, human rights commissions, some freedom of speech issues, and a few final words on the abortion issue, which I did not get to last week. But the first subject for today is also in keeping with the basic, greater theme of today’s show, and that is Afro-centered schools, and what has been going on in the Toronto School Board, and the ramifications this has for the rest of us. 519-661-3600 is the number you can call if you wanna join the conversation this morning. Or email us, justrightchrw@gmail.com. And you can join the conversation.

We’re on live right now, and of course for those who listen on the web, it’s chrwradio.com, where the show is streamed live and kept in archive for a week following.

Now last week I began a theme on human rights commissions, talked about some freedom of speech issues, and the Ezra Levant issue, the McLean’s issue with the people being brought before the Human Rights Commission. And sure enough, here we are again with another racially kind of oriented issue, and that is Afro-centered schools.

Now, I’ve been involved in politics for quite a while now in this country, and what I’ve seen over the past 20 years is, sad to say, Canada is becoming a nation obsessed with race, with culture, with language, creed, ancestry, color, ethnicity, ability versus disability, religion. And it’s become a country rapidly heading into the abyss of tribalism and cultural conflict.

We’re just setting ourselves up for it, folks. Because when you make laws distinguishing one group from another on grounds other than their behavior, then these consequences are going to be inevitable because such laws are just inherently unjust. Now, from my point of view, words like race, culture, language, creed, ancestry, color, ethnicity, religion, et cetera, all of those, they shouldn’t even appear in any laws of a free country, province or city, let alone having multiple layers of statutes, regulations, and laws based on those very words.

And there’s no two ways about it. Such laws are, by every way you look at them, definition up and down, whether you call it reverse discrimination or not, it’s racism. It’s racism. It’s classifying people according to race, and I want to illustrate just what is meant by this. Now, racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism, wrote Ayn Rand way back in the 1960s.

And she said, it’s the notion of ascribing moral, social, or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage, which means in practice that a man is not to be judged by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for, brutes. It invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes mankind from all other living species, his rational faculty.

And racism negates two aspects of mankind’s life, reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination, wrote Ayn Rand back in 1963. And she went on to note that historically racism has always risen or fallen with the rise of collectivism. Collectivism, of course, being seen in many forms, socialism, fascism, all kinds of isms. The racism of Nazi Germany, where men had to fill out questionnaires about their ancestry for generations back in order to prove their Aryan descent, as its counterpart in Soviet Russia, where men had to fill out similar questionnaires to show that their ancestors had owned no property and thus to prove their proletarian descent.

So, you look at history, and we’re now in the 21st century where we should have learned, you would think, the lessons of history, at least of the 20th century, some of us are still alive. And yet, here in Canada, on Canada’s 2006 long form census, which I received, if you ever take a look at those, questions 13 through 16 concern themselves exclusively with language. Question 17 asks, what were the ethnic or cultural origins of the person’s ancestors? My goodness, I don’t know if I could answer that one. Question 18 was strictly about Aboriginal status. Question 19 asked, is this person white, Chinese, South Asian, black, Filipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian, Arab, West Asian, Korean, Japanese, etc.

On and on it goes. And of course, the reason that they say that they want this information is to manage social programs and make sure that the proper groups are being ameliorated after they collect the statistics. So, we’re a pretty racially obsessed society. I think we always have been, and I think a lot of the propaganda we get from government is its own guilt being thrown back at us.

I mean, here we live in a society under a government, in a politically correct environment that just screams out as daily that skin color doesn’t matter, racism is evil, that freedom of speech should be limited wherever such opinions are expressed. So, it only follows, right, that now we have race-based segregated schools. Brought to you by the Toronto School Board Trustees. Says Toronto Board Member Irene Atkinson, who voted in favor of the school, quote, I know the optics of this are the opposite of everything Martin Luther King marched for, but I’m not sure people really understand what we’re proposing. Some of the opposition may be knee-jerk racist reaction, end quote. Ouch. Just bang my knee as I jerked it while reading those comments.

I guess she’s talking about me. So, it’s now racist to advocate integration. Isn’t that funny? Remember the old days when it was considered racist to advocate segregation? So, you’re going to be a racist either way, whether you’re in favor of others.

So, just don’t talk up, talk about it, right? You better keep up with the latest fads and the racial mindsets of your politician because you too could find yourself on the wrong side of the law. There was a great editorial cartoon that appeared in the February 1st National Post with the words Black History Month, which by the way, February is Black History Month, written on the chalkboard. This is an editorial cartoon. A black teacher speaking to her class of all black children says, quote, boys and girls, there was a time when blacks and whites could not go to the same school. End quote.

So, boy, does that just say it all. If ever there was an inconvenient truth to be faced in our political environment today, it is that race does matter. Our politicians are forcing us to consider race and other irrelevant considerations in our mutual dealings with each other.

None of the criteria on which they collect statistics have anything to do with the character, status, or needs of any particular individual, regardless of genetic lineage. So, committee seeking, just to see examples of this, I saw in the Free Press January 18th, the headline, committee seeking more nominees for race relations award, written by Jennifer O’Brien. Apparently with five annual race relations recognition awards up for grabs and only one day to go, the London Diversity and Race Relations Advisory Committee, which I consider basically another offensive group that shouldn’t be there, had received only two nominations, leaving, quote, members frustrated and scrambling to think of ways to attract more nominations for the community awards by the next day. So, ironically, I can’t imagine someone like myself ever qualifying for such an award, and nor could I even morally really accept one, because for me, race is not a criteria to celebrate and reward people on. Gee, isn’t it nice that these two people from different races or religions for that matter aren’t killing and insulting each other? I mean, this is a reason to reward people. It’s hardly even a starting point for basic civilization, let alone an accomplishment worthy of some unusual merit and recognition.

But I guess if your head’s in the gutter all the time, the odd person who lifts his head above all that crap is considered by some to be worth noting. I don’t know. And so it is, we now have this prospect of Afro-centric schools being proposed. I’ll tell you, the headlines in the papers were just screaming, January 31st. In Toronto, separate but equal. Black schools plan called immature. Trustees okay, black focused schools in the free press. Questions abound for Afro-centric school, National Post. And most interestingly, school trustee explains why she voted no, which appeared in the National Post January 31st by Stephanie Payne, who apparently has been singled out because she’s the only black trustee on the board, Ward 4 Toronto, and who explained, and I quote her. I mean, I think it’s a change drastically.

Now there’s an admission. And teachers should reflect the student body and the community. However, I do not believe that an all black school will serve our communities well. It is divisive. And the black community is not a homogenous group in this province or in this country. Martin Luther King wanted all children to succeed based on their character, not by the color of their skin. And boy, one voice of reason in the midst of all of that. This so much speaks to the truth that much of this is driven by, if you want to get racist about it, by a white agenda. These guilt driven liberals who, the Maude of the world. You ever watch Maude that’s been off from All in the Family way back then? She was the archetype, liberal, white liberal. And she always had a black maid who put her in her place every now and then.

And it was kind of fun to watch. But very surprisingly, especially to some, an apparent support of the Afrocentric school concept was Colby Cosh in a national post, February 1st, who writes, quote, skeptics should ask themselves two questions before denouncing the plan. What if it works? And if it doesn’t, how much more harm can be done than the existing schools that are already doing, end quote. So, it was an interesting question to ask, but I don’t know why he asked it at the end of his essay considering he answered his own question earlier on.

So to answer his own question, I bring you Colby Cosh in the same article. Earlier on succinctly explains, quote, yes, it is troubling to see the obeisance being paid under the Toronto District School Board’s plan to the idea of an Afrocentric curriculum. The whiff of snake oil surrounding such efforts is traditionally strong. The historical nonsense and the pseudoscience often peddled in the name of what used to be called Afrocentrism. The board does not use the spelling with an O. No doubt suggesting it has been decreed offensive by someone or another.

These are the words I now. And have been debunked many times over. Characteristic sins include overstating the influence of pharaonic Egypt on early Western civilization, denying African responsibility for managing the supply side of the slave trade, and falling for weird racial theories that are mirror images of old white supremacist ideas. It is essential that black students not be taught lies or half truths in the form of poorly supported Afrocentrist pamphleteering, not just because it’s wrong in itself, but because the students will sense that they’re being lied to, end quote. And as to Mr. Cosh’s very pragmatic question, what if it works?

I think we already have the answer to that. I think, yes, you’ll find reports where segregation teaching has improved the grades of some of the students. You can’t deny that. But the reason hasn’t got anything to do with the skin color or the culture, but with the simple fact that such schools generally receive extra funding, extra resources, specialized staff, all that extra support that those students in need require. And by the way, this is not even about they talk about the blacks having this need because their scores are lower than the average. This is not true. It only refers to a very small geographic area of black males. The females score just as equal as everyone else. So it’s not even a racial issue, but they’ve turned it into one, because of course, it’s what’s visible to most people.

And unfortunately, I think maybe it’s because of our eyes that we gather so much information in regard to so important things that aren’t, because as they say, beauty is only skin deep. But you don’t need to segregate by race to provide the same service within a given school environment. Now the day before yesterday on Tuesday, I appeared on the live TV talk show called Viewpoints on the Line, and it airs daily on the CTS network, Crossroads Television System, every day at 2 o’clock. And one of the major issues we discussed was the one I’m just discussing now, the whole Afro-centered school concept. And I got to tell you, the phones just lit up to the point where many callers just couldn’t get on the air. Of course, in the Toronto market, you’ve got a lot of black people calling, and I think they probably all were. But by the time I was discussing this on the show, the Toronto trustees were already starting to reconsider their decision, particularly in light of the refusal by the McGinty government to fund such a school. So it was already a change of focus.

So now to address Mr. Cosh’s second concern, how much more harm can be done than what the existing schools are doing? I’m going to refer to the show I just talked to, but not the one that I was on, actually. I’m going to refer to a clip from the same show, CTS is on the line. And the following clip that you’re going to hear was aired live two weeks ago today on the CTS television network.

By the way, that’s number 16 on Rogers and number 36 if you get it right off the air. But this was just a few days before the Toronto School Board trustees voted to create an Afro-centered school. And appearing on the program that day on viewpoints on the line were Dr. Anthony Hutchison, who was the executive director of the Brampton Resource Center, the show’s host Christine Williams, and Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever.

Now I will leave it to you, the listener, to infer for yourselves what should be evident by the context and content of the following comments.

The first voice you’ll hear is that of Dr. Anthony Hutchison regarding his opinions on Afro-centered schools. And the second clip is a conversation between on the lines host Christine Williams and Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever, which gets right into some of those questions and issues you just aren’t seeing discussed in the mainstream news media regarding this issue. So let’s listen in and we’ll be back right after this.

Clip (Viewpoints on the Line):
Anthony Hutchison:
This is not a curriculum issue, right? We’re saying, well, if we just have a more, we’re going to solve a social problem by having a curriculum based issue, having maybe some teachers who have more black teachers. Well, I can assure you that the people who made the difference in my life were predominantly white.

The people who impacted me, who assisted me, the professors who were my mentors, who helped me, the people who gave me a step up in business. The one man, Fred Lepkin, in Burnaby South High School, in grade 11-12, who made that impact in my life and helped take a kid who was going 180 degrees in the wrong direction and changed my life was an obese, sorry Fred, white Jewish man.

So, and how did he teach me to read and become passionate about learning through Bob Dylan lyrics, through Bob Marley lyrics, through all kinds of the lyrics from the police and that’s how, through music lyrics, I really began to build my vocabulary and learn to read and become excited about learning.

Christine Williams:
You’re fortunate to have somebody that took you under their wing and a lot of these kids, they don’t think anybody cares about them. I mean, that’s a huge issue.

When you get into other people’s culture, when you get into history, let’s face it, facts are endless.

How do you go about picking and choosing what you put in a curriculum so that different groups, perhaps those who most need it, can be pleased, can feel as if, well, wait a minute here, my legitimate history is being recognized?

Paul McKeever:
Well, I think that’s a mistake. My legitimate history is the first mistake in the whole thing. It’s all of our history.

Christine Williams:
Well, everybody’s history is legitimate. The reason I said so is because you got to pick and choose. So how do you go about picking and choosing?

Paul McKeever:
I think what you do is you say, look, this isn’t the history of the blacks or the whites or the Greeks or the Romans. This is the history of humanity. And what we’re here in this classroom to do is to say, what out of all of human history is the valuable, the stuff we want to keep?

Christine Williams:
And that’s what makes it legitimate.

Paul McKeever:
That’s right. I mean, in art, for example, there’s a joke by one of my favorite authors. She says, once you’ve seen one group of people clapping hands and jumping up and down, you’ve seen them all. And I looked on the Internet and I saw literally dozens of paintings of people in a circle dancing and jumping up and down. And I thought, she’s absolutely right. There’s absolutely nothing innovative or value-adding to this. It’s just another folk drawing. And what she’s saying is, look at art, try to identify what’s valuable in art. And everyone, regardless of color, should be able to do that regardless of the source of the art.

In other words, whether you’re black, white or whatever, you should be able to look at any piece of art and say, now, that’s good art or that’s bad art regardless of whether it’s…

Christine Williams:
You know what? You’re not going to get an argument from me, Paul, on that particular model. I think it’s fantastic. You’ve got a problem in Toronto and that’s recognized, which is why this was proposed in the first place. You’ve got a serious problem with violence, with kids dropping out. We know that a little while ago with the zero-tolerance policy on violence, the NDP came out and said it was a gang recruitment act. It seems to constantly point and identify one particular group, the gangs, and we know what we’re talking about here, hence the Afro-centric schools. We’re not going to be politically correct. That’s the issue here, which is why we’re looking at this as a possibility.

My question to you is, with the problem we have at hand, we want to see what’s best for these kids. A kid doesn’t choose to be born and say, look, I choose not to have my dad or to have a ghost dad in the picture or a deadbeat dad. It’s something that’s happening. We’ve got a problem on our hands in the Toronto School Board. How do you handle it?

Paul McKeever:
Well, I don’t claim to be a teacher, but one thing.

Christine Williams:
No, but just common sense here, from a politics point of view.

Paul McKeever:
Sure. Well, one thing you don’t do is assume that you think differently if you have a different color of skin. We’re all human beings. We all process information.

Christine Williams:
But with unique needs. With unique needs according to group.

Paul McKeever:
Well, depending on what your group. I mean, if you’re talking to someone who’s mentally challenged, that’s a different matter. But if you’re just saying, well, my skin’s darker than your skin, I don’t think that skin color is a need. I think that morality might be a need.

Maybe somebody’s completely messed up. That means every child, regardless of skin color, should be taught how to live a fruitful, happy, peaceful life. And that’s information that’s not just relevant to people who are having a hard time, but to people who are having a good. So if we’re teaching these things properly, then every school will be an appropriate school for every child.

If on the other hand we’re saying, well, you know, this is just a different way of behaving, there are better ways of behaving and worse ways. And until we’re willing to say that, we’re going to be setting up little, Balkanized tribes of schools where the blue-eyed white kids are going to say, well, we have our history and we can only learn in a blue-eyed white school. And how come they’re getting more funding in the black school than in the white school? And we can all start fighting about funding and who’s got more. And then it can be a nice racial war and we can all turn ourselves into the Balkans.

So it’s a horrible approach to divide people according to race. Race is the most irrelevant thing in human history. Consider what’s valuable for all humanity. That is, the rational mind. Teach kids to respect rationality and morality, no matter what the color of their skin.

Christine Williams:
I hear you.

Bob Metz:
Unfortunately, not everyone hears him. By the way, if you found that interesting, you can actually watch the entire show on YouTube. Just check out Freedom Party’s YouTube channel there. I think it’s slash F.P. Ontario if you want to check out that whole show, the video of it. And it’s interesting about history.

By the way, welcome back. You’re listening to Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we’ll still be with you till noon. 519-661-3600 if you want to call in.

You know, the whole issue of history, black history, white history, history has no color. Let’s get really serious about this. A lot of people think, Martin Luther King was history. It wasn’t black history. He was as much white history as supposedly black history, given that it was all about the legal relationship between the two races, so to speak. So was it really black history or was it history?

I think it was history that affected all of us. Would you want to call O.J. Simpson and his antics as part of black history? It’s not that at all. And it’s not a significant event in terms of being valuable in terms of what we might want to teach in the classrooms. Some people are saying that anything comprises history, and I’ve heard that comment, banter too but with respect to black history month, even what happened yesterday.

Well, no, that’s not true. Even your computer keeps a history of your activity. Are you going to call that valid history?

You’ve got to have some kind of guidelines. But interestingly, you want to hear about a valid point of history that affects both whites and blacks and is very Canadian, and something Paul McKeever actually talked about at one of our fundraiser dinners back in 2005, when he was talking about the fact that there aren’t very many symbols associated with freedom that aren’t also associated with purely American icons like the Statue of Liberty or the American flag. And with that, he went on to describe this symbol of freedom with a very uniquely Canadian connection. And referring to the slaves in the state of Mississippi who during the early 1800s, they were intentionally denied knowledge about geography or direction unless they escaped and headed north. And I remember Paul told the tale about the song with the words, quote, follow the drinking gourd, the old man’s going to take you to freedom, and quote. Apparently, the song was used as a means of helping slaves escape through the underground railroad to Canada by teaching them which way was north. The drinking gourd was the Big Dipper constellation in the sky, and two of the stars in the Big Dipper point directly to the North Star Polaris, which had become the symbol of freedom for many people.

And interestingly, it’s one of the many subtle symbols that was also adopted by Freedom Party, which is why part of the party’s logo has the Big Dipper constellation in the North Star Polaris. But with respect to history, I just had to check and see what Ayn Rand had to say on it. She always has something to say on it.

And she said something very interesting. She said, there’s only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life, the power of man’s rational faculty, the power of ideas. If you want to know a person’s convictions, or if you know a person’s convictions, sorry, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course.

And that’s why those who identify the philosophy correctly, really, they look like magicians because they seem to be able to predict the future when really all they’re doing is watching the ball drop, as they say. Now, last week I was talking about human rights commissions and just wanted to get this last little bit in on that whole subject of human rights commissions. I didn’t like the whole idea of anybody taking any sort of half measures with the human rights commissions. I think they should be abolished and must be abolished. That such institutions exist in the midst of a free society, I think, is alarming. But understandable, disguised as it is by its benign and righteous sounding name after all, who could be opposed to human rights, right? Well, the human rights commissions for starter, and that’s who’s opposed to human rights. I honestly think, and I have said this in the past, that they’re the closest thing we have to our own official Gestapo. I mean, they can’t shoot people on site, I’m not saying that.

But they already have virtually most of all the other powers that were exercised by the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. Believe it or not, I actually got a headline on this in the Ottawa Times about 10 years ago. A big headline on the front of the newspaper, Human Rights Commission, likened to Gestapo. And it was all about my comments and our case before the court at that time, which I discussed last week on the show, which happened here in London.

But basically, HRCs are trying to get the people to vote. Circumvent the court system entirely. Human Rights Commission boards of inquiries give all the rights to the complainant and none to the respondent. You’re allowed to accept evidence that would never see the light of day in a bona fide courtroom. The adjudicators have absolute, quote, discretion and all matters brought before the board, and the boards have the power to order literally anything, and I mean that, folks, quote, anything. That’s the word that’s in the legislation to force respondents to comply with the Human Rights Act. And you hear guilty until proven innocent. That’s essentially how the human rights boards of inquiry already operate. But of course they’re not going to say that.

They’re not going to say, well, we operate on the principle of guilty until proven innocent because that would be political suicide. So the term they used at the time I was working in front of the board and representing someone was equitable principles requiring parties to conciliate.

So in other words, that’s the basis of the board. There’s really no question about guilt or innocence. The person who’s the respondent must conciliate with the complainant. That’s the process. That’s what it’s all about.

In fact, this concept bypasses the whole necessity of determining guilt or innocence, which probably makes it even worse than being considered guilty until proven innocent because there’s no option to be proven yourself innocent. They just aren’t interested. Trust me, I’ve been through this. I saw it actually happen.

In a normal court of law, a person’s charged with a crime and then it’s determined whether he or she is guilty or innocent of the charges. It’s only after the determination of guilt that a sentence or fine is imposed on the guilty party. But under an HRC board of inquiry, it’s kind of reversed. If the respondent, who would in a court be called the defendant, does not agree to quote conciliate, and of course no innocent person would willingly agree to do that, then he’s automatically brought before the board of inquiry. Now, if there’s one glaring lesson that I’ve learned by all of this, and I know this is distasteful to admit, it is that above all white people have to exercise great caution when associating with individuals of a different skin color or of a different, any sort of different grounds.

And I’m going to get into that in a second. This is totally distasteful to have to admit, but it’s just the way things are. Human Rights Commissions are blatantly racist. They actually regard all members of visible minorities as being weak, vulnerable, and intrinsically inferior to whites. And that is why their legislation is based on that racist belief, which I will demonstrate for you in a moment. And what they do is, of course, the Human Rights Commission is exploiting the racial differences of Canadians and using those differences to justify a whole host of government policies that are redistributive in nature. In other words, what they want to do, just like when they collect your census information, they want to redistribute the wealth and make sure that it’s redistributed by race and culture and creed, which has very little to do with justice or equality.

We’re not even on that scale. And I can’t tell you how many times I had to be reminded that boards of inquiry deals with matters of the quote, public interest end quote, which means government policy and not of justice. And they’re totally, if anything got public, they call that notorious, something’s notorious. That means it got printed in the newspaper and it deserves their attention.

So basically, that is what they’re all about now. I had sent to me, and I want to thank my friend from inside of City Hall here. Our City Hall workers, they go through all these human rights, respect at work, they call it, workshops, where you’re supposed to know what all the grounds of discrimination and things like that are. And I have to tell you, folks, I got a two-page one here sent to me and it’s just disgraceful. Listen to this. This is what they’re telling people in this province and training people with.

Intersecting disadvantages at work. Now, they had 14 grounds for discrimination under the Ontario Human Rights Commission who puts this out. And now they’ve just added another four grounds. So we’re up to 18 now.

And here are the original 14. Now they have added to those. Now, these are all considered disadvantages. They call these categories and groups of disadvantages. And they say that the more of these you have, they intersect and then you have more disadvantages. Now, on another page, they have the opposite of that. They have what they call building blocks of advantage.

Not disadvantage, but of advantage. And to look at this page, it looks like something one of my kindergarten kids would have brought home. It’s got a bunch of little bricks all drawn all over the page. Just like little brown bricks that you’d build a little home with.

And with the little three holes in it and they’re all spread across the page. And beside each one is something that says that it’s a building block of advantage. So these are the things that would give you an advantage over others. And in fact, they have three at the bottom that are blank and they say, you’ll note there are some blanks for you to fill in because we haven’t thought of all the things of advantages that we can find. Now, here are some of the advantages.

These are the things that make it unfair for you to have over the other guy. Not living on a fixed income. Born in Canada is an advantage. English speaker, if you speak English, you got an advantage. Good income, that’s an advantage. Long service with company.

No conflict with the law. Here’s one I never heard before, temporarily abled. You’re temporarily abled now. They consider everyone permanently disabled, but you’re temporarily abled.

Access to information, access to formal education. White. Now that’s interesting. Male. Oh, that’s interesting.

Not responsible for carrying children. See, that’s an advantage. Knowledge or skill. Knowledge or skill is an advantage if someone knows something the other guy doesn’t.

Well, that’s unfair, isn’t it? Desirable age. Heterosexual.

Access to being heard and understood. Married. Stable income. Strong or good support system.

Christian or Gentile. Formal power and position at work. Now, these are all the ones that they’ve listed now that they call building blocks of advantage. I think this is just shameful. Anyone who spouts this crap should be ashamed of themselves and get their head out of the toilet for heaven’s sakes.

What are they thinking about here? Now, I did something interesting last night and something struck me for the first time. I put these two lists side by side. I put the lists of grounds of discrimination and disadvantage on the one side and the grounds of advantages, the building blocks of advantage here on the other side.

Can you see all these bureaucrats sitting around thinking this stuff up? But I don’t notice something very interesting. Under disadvantage they have race. Race is a disadvantage, but my first question is which one? Under advantages they don’t say race, they say white. That’s the exclusive race on the advantage. So that means race means everything else but white. Isn’t that interesting? And then under disadvantages they say sex or gender and I’m thinking, well, how many are there?

How many do you get to pick from? And then you look over under advantages and it says male. It doesn’t say sex or gender or pick one. It says male.

Sexual orientation, the same thing. How many are there? I guess you could say there are three. But nevertheless, on the other side of course, it doesn’t say orientation.

It says heterosexual. That’s an advantage. And so you can see that they’re being very explicit about what’s an advantage and very vague, trying to be very vague about what is a disadvantage. And one of the things that I found here too that under financial status, one of the ones that they have added as a disadvantage, remember this is in the workplace, is living on social assistance. I don’t know how many people live on social assistance who are employed at the same time, especially if you’re actually saying you’re living on social assistance, one would assume that would be your only source of income. But boy, if anybody’s got a building block of advantage, it’s being paid to spout this crap.

This is just shameful. And with these kinds of criteria, you walk into a Human Rights Commission and you wouldn’t be able to communicate with them. They just don’t speak in English and they’re just looking for reasons to get people arguing with each other because it gives them all employment and jobs and gives them a reason to be. You want to fight racism, you live in a free society, you live under the rule whether you like it or not, sticks and stones. I know a lot of people say that’s not fair, but that’s meant to imply that freedom of speech. You have a right to disagree and you have a right to even say some nasty things about each other.

You don’t have a right to libel or slander or threaten with violence or perform any violence. But beyond that, if you don’t permit the rest of it, you’re going to end up with the latter. And I think that is certainly something that is threatened. Now I’m going to continue with this, give you another example of what this means about putting limits on people’s freedom of speech right after this.

Comedy Clip:
I like hanging around people my own age. I’m not going to tell you how old I am. Let’s just say it’s somewhere between 30 and a Walmart greeter. Welcome to Walmart. I don’t want to use too many stereotypes. Not all old people do this, but some of them do. You know, some stereotypes are true. That’s why we use them in comedy.

I mean, not all Italians say, yo Vinny, put the body in the trunk, but some of them do. Not all Jews say how much, but some of them do. Not all gay men say hello, but hello. Not all, not all lesbians say, hey, that’s not funny, but some of them, no, actually all of them do that. I’m afraid.

Comedy Clip:
I love African music. That’s my favorite. It just has that tribal rhythm to it. It’s so different from any other kind of music that gets produced. It’s just that, well.

Ulazee.

Ulazee manadyeba, wundaselela, wundarasemanadayinasa manayiranda.

Ulazee yamba.

Ulazee manadyeba, wundarasemanadyeba, wundaraseymanadyeba.

Ulazee yamba.

Hey, what rhythm. And then I found out what these lyrics were. Oh, kill the white man, kill the white man. You guys are great. Thank you so much.

Bob Metz:
Oh yeah, it’s so funny. I saw Eddie Murphy and us get like very similar to that song on Saturday Night Live once and it was just hilarious. Sometimes even if you’re the victim of the humor, it’s not all in bad humor.

Sometimes it’s there to make that comment about the silly things that we do between each other. Carry on again with the whole freedom of speech issue. I think a lot of people really have a mistaken idea of what freedom of speech is. It’s often said by would-be censor advocates or those who want to put limits on freedom of speech that you shouldn’t be allowed to scream fire in a crowded movie theater.

Well, I think that’s totally wrong thinking. Not only should you scream fire if you see one coming, but it would almost be a moral obligation to do so if you’re able to warn others of impending danger.

So obviously the real issue is not about yelling fire, but about spreading false information that could lead to possible injuries and even death.

So freedom of speech does have consequences, but not limits. One is responsible for the actual direct consequences of one’s words and actions, but this in no way precludes a person’s fundamental right to say whatever he or she wants. The guy who screams fire in a crowded theater when there wasn’t a fire would probably be charged with mischief at least, and perhaps more serious charges should injury or death arise, but he wouldn’t and shouldn’t be charged with anything to do with any sort of silly limits on freedom of speech. By the way, I actually had that experience once.

We were sitting in a crowded theater here in London and the fire alarm went off, not someone screaming. And guess what happened? Nothing. Nobody moved. Everybody sat there munching their popcorn. The bloody alarm kept going ding ding ding for about seven or eight minutes until somebody shut it off and then we just carried on watching the movie. So I don’t know if reality even fits into that picture.

I don’t want to get my money’s worth, Bob. Yeah, that’s right. Nobody’s getting up and it was cold outside. And of course the exit doors are right there in the front, so everybody figured if I got a run, I can get out.

So they’re not moving. I would warm myself. Come on.

Exactly. Okay, now on December 4th of just 2007 just passed, London litigation lawyer Faisal Joseph announced at a news conference that he is representing four law students who launched the Human Rights Complaint Against Maclean’s magazine for publishing Mark Steyn’s essay, The Future Belongs to Islam, which appeared in October 2006 in Maclean’s. And that’s 2006 if I read that correctly because that would mean this occurred 14 months later. In his own words, appearing in an editorial published in the London Free Press on December 17th, Faisal Joseph writes, and I quote, Steyn’s comments, Page’s worth, raise a dilemma. What should one do when a leading news magazine publishes an article replete with misleading and false information? The Muslim Canadian Congress offered one solution. The answer is, or the answer to his challenge is to write a counterpiece and demand that Maclean’s publish it.

However, when the law students delegation met with senior editorial staff at Maclean’s to propose a countering article authored by a mutually agreed upon source, they were informed that Maclean’s would quote, rather go bankrupt and quote, then allows such a response. My clients have never sought an apology from Steyn. They have not named him as a respondent in their human rights complaints.

This is something I found interesting. Neither did they file criminal hate speech complaints against them. Him or Maclean’s. What they did seek, however, was an opportunity for the Muslim community to participate in the quote, free marketplace and quote of ideas. A marketplace that my clients have found to be thoroughly regulated and far from free.

Well, that’s certainly true. My clients believe the Canadian Muslim community has the constitutional right to respond when Steyn or any other author of the same ilk claims Muslims share the same basic goals as terrorists. We will let the BC human rights tribunal settle this one in June. He concludes at the end. Now, I just read you the highlights of it.

The main points that I want to address. And, well, all I can say is, well, bully for you. I hope you lose because, but that’s it’s anybody’s guess as to the outcome, since there’s really no objective principles or justice on which you can base any outcome in front of a human rights commission. Now, think about what’s going on here. Traditionally in the newspaper business in North America, when, for example, the Chicago Tribune would run a continuous editorial series, diametrically opposed to another series, say, that was appearing in the Chicago Sun, it would be unthinkable to assume that because one paper disagreed with the other paper, that each was obliged in some way to print the other papers opposing point of view. That would be kind of silly, wouldn’t it?

Why would you buy the other paper then? And that’s a lot of what it’s about. But this is not what freedom of the press or the free marketplace of ideas to which Faisal Joseph referred to means. He seems to believe that he or anyone else for that matter has some kind of inalienable right to have his or her opinions expressed in someone else’s medium at that someone else’s expense.

And sorry, folks, that’s a false belief. You have to remember, too, that censorship as a rule is a term pertaining only to governmental action. No private action is considered censorship. You can’t a private individual or organization could suppress a publication or can’t suppress a publication. Only a government can do so. And also that you have to understand the freedom of speech includes the right not to agree, not to listen, and not especially to finance one’s own antagonists.

And it’s as if from the grave, and here’s a comment from Ayn Rand, as if she’d already heard Faisal Joseph’s argument many times before, and she responds thusly. Quote, it is censorship, claim the collectivist, if a newspaper refuses to employ or publish writers whose ideas are diametrically opposed to its policy. It means that a publisher has to publish books he considers worthless, false, or evil. It means that the owner of a newspaper must turn his editorial pages over to any young hooligan who clamors for the enslavement of the press, end quote. And as to Faisal Joseph’s question, what should one do when a leading newspaper magazine publishes an article replete with quote, misleading and false information? I would say the answer is to use the freedom of speech you have to respond to, to identify, and to correct that so-called misleading and false information. And by publishing your quote counter, countering article authored by a mutually agreed-upon source, end quote. Except you wouldn’t even have to have any mutually agreed-upon acceptable author.

Just use the one you like and have it printed wherever and however free opportunities present themselves. Such as the very editorial written by Faisal Joseph right there in London Free Press. Now, the moment I saw him use the phrase misleading and false information, the next question that crossed my mind was, and which I expected would be in the next paragraph, answered, was like such as, like what false information? Can we have one example? Maybe even two little tiny examples?

But nothing. Here’s your freedom of speech opportunity to set the record straight. And one fact would speak louder than a thousand lies that would try to refute it. So what is the problem here? And that McLean’s would actually say, quote, it would rather go bankrupt than allow such a response. Sends out a few red flags if you ask me.

That’s kind of scary. And additionally, this whole sad case illustrates just as with the Afrocentric schools, why quote, history end quote seems to be so important to those with political agendas. Because they want history to be written by the courts and by the legislatures.

They want some sort of ministry of truth, the pravda of their beliefs, which should be forced upon the public, unable to rationally assess the facts for themselves, by gosh. And of course, we’re unable to express our own opinions on any subject free from any interference by government. There’s no issues of libel or slander here, otherwise we’d be in the courts. And you have to understand that all attacks on freedom of speech are acts of terrorism, whether they’re done by legal means or not. And the goal of all terrorism is to make people fearful of expressing the truth of advocating rationality and of advocating an open and peaceful society in which all people have a fundamental right to do it. And I disagree, but in which no one has a right to initiate force against the other.

And that’s unfortunately what’s happening when you go to the Human Rights Commission. That’s my story. I’m sticking to it. Enough of this disgusting child is squabbling. Mommy, mommy, Johnny just called me a bad name. Johnny, you go up to your room now. Only is with adults yet. My goodness, I just can’t take it anymore. Ira, can we take a break and I’ll finish up with something else.

Comedy Clip:
I decided to come to Montreal in a car from New York. I’m not positive. I’m not positive about this, but I believe I was racially profiled. I was in upstate New York and I was pulled over 12 times. A lot of uptight cops out there. A guy pulls me over and says, you know why I pulled you over? Like, I don’t know because I was speeding. He goes, no, because you’re black.

Don’t you read the paper? Then he gave me a ticket for not wearing a seat belt. It’s true I wasn’t wearing a seat belt, but screw that. I don’t know anybody wears a seat belt in the back of a cab.

That’s a joke, people. That’s just a joke, alright? I live in New York. I can’t catch a cab.

Comedy Clip:
I like being the dad. I like being the dad. I can’t be the mom. A lot of guys now want to be the mom. They’re very girly generation of men. I don’t know what happened to men. They even say things like we’re pregnant. They’re like, oh, we’re five and a half months? We are nothing. I made a deposit back in September. Pretty much been drinking ever since.

Bob Metz:
Welcome back to Just Right. I’m Bob Metz and this is CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you just for a few minutes now till noon. 519-661-3600, the number to call.

Last week, I gave a quick overview, I guess you’d call it, on the subject of abortion, because last week, of course, was the 20th year anniversary since Morgantaler. I commented that, early in my political career, I was once involved with right to life and that I really didn’t understand what either the word right or life meant, particularly as they apply to the context of the abortion issue. So I thought I’d clear some of those definitions up regarding just the right to life and some of the legal definitions and words we’ve heard bantered around that I think are confusing some people.

Interestingly, if you look at the word life, the legal definition, and I went to a legal dictionary to look this up, it says the period of an individual’s existence between birth and death. There’s no reference to it before birth.

And of course, life itself depends again if you go to a biological definition or a philosophical definition, you get slightly different definitions of it. But generally, one of the best that I found was that life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action, which was basically Ayn Rand’s definition, which explained it.
And a lot of people will say that life is sacred, that it’s sacrosanct and you can’t almost touch it. And there’s a truth to that, but not in the literal sense that people mean.

The real sacredness of life, I think, stems from the recognition that life is the source of all value and that life is an end in and of itself. If people never died, if we were literally immortal, we wouldn’t have values. We wouldn’t have to choose between right and wrong, what made us sick and what made us healthy if nothing could hurt us.

That’s the whole purpose of having morality. And people talk about the value of life, and I think we’ve seen it many times that many people have demonstrated that there are things of a greater value than life. What do we always say every remembrance day that some people gave their lives for the freedom that we all enjoy? And of course, we also talk about rights when we talk about the right to life, but rights are really to action, which I expressed last week. And it’s important to note that whatever we may say about the unborn, they are not capable of exercising or comprehending or even holding any rights. And I’m going to say something very daring here now, not even after they are born.

Do children, quote, have rights? What they have is status. And the status changes after birth.

That is true. And that’s the first time I believe that the law has any jurisdiction over that child, and that’s really what I think it’s all about, whether you like it or not. I have some negative feelings about abortion. I would like to see no abortions done. I just don’t think prohibition is the way to go about it.

And it comes down to really a matter of jurisdiction, because you just can’t cross that line into another person’s body. They are the primary person. Without the mother, the child would not exist.

And I brought up a lot of the legal issues and cases that might be a consequence of that. Once you accept that the child has more rights than the mother, you can control the mother. Isabel Paterson once suggested that one of the reasons we require private property rights in a free society is, I might have mentioned this last week, because two objects in nature cannot occupy the same physical space at the same time. But of course, in the case of a pregnant woman, you could almost say that they do have two objects occupying the same space at the same time. But really, a pregnant woman is still one object in nature. And to suggest otherwise that the unborn have rights would have to take away the rights of the host body.

And that’s just no way of getting around it. The person whose body it is has all the rights in the matter, whether you and I may or may not agree with the choice that that person makes. And as far as jurisdiction goes, you remember in the old Cold War, you could have a prisoner or someone escaping from an iron curtain country, and they could shoot him dead on the one side of the border, but the minute he crossed that border his life was safe because he came into the protection of that other jurisdiction. And that is unfortunately the way it is with abortion. There’s so much more to say about it and to talk about it, but that’s all there really is that you can say on this issue.

So enough of that for today. We hope you’ll join us again next week when we’re going to change our focus a little bit onto some other happier subjects. So next week, we hope you’ll join us again in our journey in the right direction. So till then, be right, think right, do right, act right, and stay right. Take care.

Comedy Clip:
Not if you put a gun to my head. Not if you put a gun to my head. That’s another good one right there. Yeah. I barely passed geometry in school, man. I couldn’t do a geometry problem. No, if you put a gun to my head. Folks, I gotta be honest with you. Somebody puts a gun to my head. I’m gonna figure out the damn math problem.