This week's exhibit in the Not Getting It category is George Jonas.
Mr. Jonas is working himself into a lather over Human Rights Commissions, and like certain other journalists I have trashed before, such as Ezra Levant and Nigel Hannaford, however he achieves a new level of asinine stupidity with the following assertion:
Human rights laws and tribunals are based on the notion that being hired, promoted, serviced and esteemed is a human right. It isn’t. Being hired, promoted, serviced and esteemed is a human ambition. It’s a justifiable ambition, but still just an ambition.
Wrong. Just plain wrong. Statements like this come out of the world of shallow thinking and jingoism.
To illustrate: A Canadian Jew who won’t hire a Canadian German or Muslim is a fool. There’s only one fool worse: a “human rights” commissar who would force him.
Where individuals exercise lawful choices, human rights are protected. People’s motives are their own business. Most people aren’t morons. When left to their own devices in a free society, most will select whom to hire, promote, service, or esteem on the basis of enlightened self-interest, not prejudice.
There's a problem here, and Mr. Jonas is trying very hard not to mention it - it's called discrimination. Human Rights laws are built quite specifically to work against the kind of conscious, systemic discrimination that he's referencing indirectly.
I don't care if someone won't hire a given person. However, I do care if the reason that they won't is because of some pithy reason such as their ancestry or as Chris Kempling did, discriminate by denying service to someone BASED his moral objections to their sexual identity.
I do not necessarily think that all human rights complaints are necessarily valid, but I do believe that there is a concept of due process that is applicable. The Human Rights Commissions provide an entry point into that due process in much the same way that law enforcement agencies such as the police provide when a criminal matter needs to be addressed.
As for the National Post itself, they should be ashamed (along with the rest of the CanWest chain) for repeatedly publishing such amazingly stupid columns that keep repeating the same idiotic talking points. It merely serves to demonstrate that they are becoming a mouthpiece for wingnut propaganda machines, rather than acting as legitimate journalists should.
