Author: Just Right | Page 111

Just Right

Just Right is a weekly shortwave radio show. Hosts, Bob Metz and Robert Vaughan analyze issues from a viewpoint of individual rights, freedom, and capitalism.

043 – London municipal politics: Making downtown pedestrian

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Feb 282008

Downtown visionaries promise to transform London’s core by banishing vehicles from Dundas Street and creating pedestrian paradises. Yet these schemes reveal not liberation but another layer of control imposed upon those who actually own and operate businesses there. Task forces and associations funded by compulsory levies dictate visions while property owners foot the bill and lose autonomy. The pattern of superseding private plans with collective mandates repeats across issues. Forced business associations extract extra taxes from owners already burdened by high rates, all while claiming to speak for the community they conscript.

The same coercion surfaces in Quebec’s language laws that criminalize unilingual signs and force bilingual packaging, perpetuating division under the guise of equity. Official bilingualism in theory grants equal status; in practice it imposes penalties on those who choose otherwise. Politicians and planners assume superior wisdom over voluntary exchange, whether reshaping streets or dictating words on private property. Even political parties blur into indistinguishable tax-and-spend options, abandoning any clear ideological anchor.

In every case, individual rights and voluntary association yield to elite direction. When the powerful elite replace personal plans with their own, freedom erodes one gradual step at a time. It all comes down to Just Right.

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042 – Politics and religion: The Lord’s Prayer

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Feb 212008

Ontario politicians declare the Lord’s Prayer incompatible with modern diversity as Premier Dalton McGuinty pushes for a new inclusive custom in the legislature. Public voices push back, noting that most Ontarians across faiths accept its basic tenets while other provinces maintain their own prayer traditions. The debate exposes an obsession with race and culture that daily screams from headlines.

Parallel controversies unfold as Human Rights Commissions process complaints against Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn by Muslim leaders. One complaint drops amid public backlash, yet the pattern reveals efforts to end debate rather than engage it, especially when contrasted with bold free speech actions like Danish cartoon reprints.

At the same time Malthusian warnings of population explosion and resource scarcity crumble under evidence. Julian Simon wins his famous wager against Paul Ehrlich as selected metal prices fall despite massive population growth. David Suzuki’s calls to jail dissenting leaders echo inquisitorial tactics, while human ingenuity through technology and markets demonstrates resource abundance.

Power plays masquerade as progress in these arenas of faith, speech, and future. Staying grounded in reason and individual liberty proves Just Right.

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041 – Love: Its history and philosophy

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Feb 142008

Valentine
Our philosophical journey through love reveals its ancient power as both cosmic unifier and destroyer of reason. From Hesiod’s primordial eros that unnerves gods and men to Plato’s heavenly and earthly forms, where the lover—not the beloved—gains virtue through pursuit of ideal beauty, love emerges as a force that shapes religions, institutions, and governments. Aristotle grounds it ethically and psychologically while linking it to the unmoved mover that later influences Christian concepts of divinity. Judaism and Christianity shift love from irrational passion to a voluntary attitude that can coexist with reason, yet the tension persists: emotion versus rational control.

These insights sharpen our view of today’s battles. Human Rights Commissions weaponize “hate” to silence debate, as seen in complaints against Maclean’s for publishing Mark Steyn, demanding forced publication rather than open rebuttal. City Hall pushes symbolic gestures like Earth Hour, low-flush toilets, and sustainable-energy surveys that treat conservation as virtue while ignoring the need for production, property rights, and expanded energy to meet rising demand. Sentencing inconsistencies expose a justice system more concerned with deterrence messages than individual fairness.

A listener’s thoughtful email on religion and virtue prompts reflection: morality springs from rational codes of behavior, not mere belief or professed faith, echoing Richard Dawkins’ point that religion deserves no special immunity from criticism. Comedy clips and external voices underscore the absurdities without becoming endorsements.

Reason prevails when passions earn their place and facts trump fear. That balance is Just Right.

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040 – Afro-centered schools: Racism returns

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Feb 072008

Racism
Canada slides ever deeper into racial tribalism. Toronto trustees revive segregated schooling under the banner of Afro-centric education while branding integration itself racist. We witness the inversion: what Martin Luther King marched against now earns applause from politicians who insist race must dictate classrooms, funding, and futures.

The same collectivist impulse drives human rights commissions. These bodies treat visible minorities as weak and inferior by design, demanding conciliation over evidence and wielding powers that eclipse ordinary courts. Their workshops list “white” and “male” as unfair advantages while vague “disadvantages” multiply, all to justify redistributing wealth and opportunity by skin colour rather than behaviour.

Freedom of speech takes fresh hits when lawyers insist private magazines must surrender space for counter-articles they dislike. The Maclean’s case exposes the fiction that anyone possesses a right to hijack another’s platform at the owner’s expense.

Philosophy cuts through the fog on abortion as well. Life begins with self-sustaining action, rights attach to action, and no one may cross the boundary of another’s body—jurisdiction settles the matter where emotion cannot.

In a world obsessed with dividing people by the irrelevant, clear thinking about individual rights and objective principles proves just right.

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039 – Why Human Rights Commissions are Just Wrong!

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Jan 312008

Henry Morgentaler
Human rights commissions masquerade as protectors of equality while eroding the very freedoms they claim to uphold. Ezra Levant stands before Alberta’s commission for publishing Danish cartoons that others refused to show, and Mark Steyn confronts parallel charges across multiple provinces for reporting demographic realities about Muslim birth rates. These proceedings expose tribunals that admit hearsay, bar cross-examination, ignore intent, and treat truth itself as irrelevant. Our direct involvement representing a London landlord against coordinated complaints confirms their kangaroo-court character, where property owners and service providers surrender genuine rights to manufactured claims that pit one person’s liberty against another’s.

Canada now marks twenty years without any abortion statute after the Morgentaler ruling. Columnists clash over absolute maternal ownership versus the humanity of the unborn, yet common ground emerges when attention turns to informed consent, the rejection of taxpayer funding, and the practical nightmare of enforcing prohibitions. The real question remains who decides and what penalties would follow any law that forces one body to serve another.
Navigating these charged issues with principle and reason always lands just right.

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038 – Crimes and Punishments: The rule of law?

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Jan 242008

Scales

Contradictions plague justice as we confront the Marc Emery extradition battle, where selling marijuana seeds to consenting adults draws potential decades in American prison while co-accused face varying fates. Hypocrisy runs deep in drug prohibition, especially when medical users gain freedoms even as enforcement crushes activists.

Sentences expose deeper flaws. A remorseful first-time offender like Rob Ramage receives years for a fatal accident, yet Karla Homolka walks free after unspeakable crimes against multiple victims. Marc Emery risks severe punishment for voluntary transactions. We insist true justice demands judging the individual’s character and context, not rigid crime equivalence or message-sending.

Public ownership proves equally illusory. Activists and politicians push municipal control of utilities or public-private partnerships, but these mask force disguised as collaboration. Private property rights ground reality; government “ownership” fiction leads to arbitrary power and lost freedoms. Even personal spaces face invasion when landlords swap light bulbs under energy edicts, eroding privacy in one’s home.

Rational principles cut through these confusions, affirming individual rights over collectivist myths. Freedom emerges as the genuine common interest. It all fits together just right.

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037 – Slanted journalism / Guest: Karen Selick on Marc Emery’s extradition / Atheism / Religion and Virtue

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Jan 172008

Media distortions demand our scrutiny, particularly when a London Free Press headline touts a teen activist’s dedication to peace while the story reveals a campaign against military recruitment lacking balance or substance. Such coverage polarizes falsely, conceals counterarguments, and leaves readers chasing details online.

Marc Emery’s defiance against prohibition laws grips our attention amid his tentative plea with American authorities. Karen Selick analyzes the pressures, jurisdictional puzzles, and his targeting for effective activism rather than mere commerce. His candor stands in stark contrast to the underground trade, raising questions of political persecution and heroic resolve in challenging state power.

Critics assail the new atheism of figures like Richard Dawkins as intellectual totalitarianism, yet overlook how books advance ideas through persuasion alone. Surveys claiming believers embrace virtues more deeply invite examination, for many qualities listed represent values or even potential vices absent true moral anchors like justice and reason. Atheism signals absence, not dogma, underscoring rationality’s role.

These explorations of media, activism, faith and morality expose vital tensions in liberty and thought that strike just right.