scaramouche

Friday, 27 March 2009

Sense and the HRC sensibility: I have a relative I’ll call Joe. Now, Joe is a nice enough fellow—affable, outgoing—but, unfortunately, he has a significant handicap. No one has ever been able to give it a specific label—it isn’t a something “syndrome” or any kind of developmental “delay”. The best way I can think of to describe it is like this: Joe has not a whit, not a scrap, not an ounce of common sense. His complete lack of “sechel” (Yiddish for “sound judgement”) means that this otherwise intelligent chap has gone through life making one lame-ass decision after another—decisions that no one possessed of common sense would ever make, and that baffle those of us forced to bail him out whenever he makes them.

It struck me as I was reading Ezra Levant’s new book Shakedown, his damning but amusing indictment of Canada’s bizarro world “quasi-judicial system,” the HRCs, that all the “judgements” he mentions—the ruling that staff at a Vancouver McDonalds couldn’t be compelled to wash their hands (because of one female employee who complained that the soap chapped her hands; the ruling that the freakishly tall and deep-voiced transsexual must be employed as a counsellor at a rape-crisis centre, and the rest—have one thing in common (aside from having occurred in the context of Canada’s Through-the-Looking-Glass “justice” system, where everything is the polar opposite of our regular English Common Law-based justice system, I mean): they all sound like they could have been made by Joe. In fact, the next time he’s out of work, I’m going to suggest that he seriously consider a career as a human rights commissioner, because his way of thinking—i.e. his profound lack of good judgement—seems fully in synch with the “rights” types. (Just kidding, of course. The last thing Canada needs is yet another sense-challenged “rights” apparatchik. Also, since he’s not a leftist ideologue, or a woman, or a member of a visible minority, or a former president of the Canadian Arab Federation, there’s little chance he’d be considered.)

The other thing that struck me about these rulings is how inconsiderate they are of anyone else. It’s as if the person making the complaint, no matter how outlandish it is, is the only one who counts, and the impact that satisfying his gripe is likely to have on others is given far less—if any—weight. Take the case of rape crisis centre, for example. Why should the desire of a mannish-looking (and not entirely stable) transsexual to become a rape crisis counsellor trump the needs of rape victims, who, in their vulnerable and emotional condition, need to be able to talk things over with someone who doesn’t, you know, freak them out? Why should his desire (because, let’s be clear, this was a desire and not a “right”) take precedence over their needs? Isn’t that just plain rude?

In view of the fact that these HRC “Solomons” have about as much common sense as my judgement-impaired relative Joe; and since their rulings, in validating rudeness and a complete lack of consideration for others, seem to embody the worst aspects of “Me Generation” psychology (not that there are many positive ones); and given that the entire apparatus is rotten to the core and fundamentally inconsistent with a free society, there is only one thing to be done. In the words of Ezra Levant, that paragon of common sense, the St. George who is leading the charge to slay this rampaging dragon: FIRE. THEM. ALL.

On second thought, it occurs to me there is one more thing you can do: BUY. THIS. BOOK.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:44 | link | comments (2)

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Posted by: scaramouche at 13:44 | link | comments (2)