Moslems Can Discriminate in Ontario; The Dispossessed Majority Cannot

Written by Paul Fromm

Saturday, 22 October 2011 04:12

*Moslems Can Discriminate in Ontario; The Dispossessed Majority Cannot* The following expose by lawyer/journalist Ezra Levant demonstrates why human rights commissions across the Dominion of Canada should be abolished. Most are a menace to free speech. However, beyond that, they are captives of people who hate the European founding/settler Majority and shamelessly favour and promote minorities of every sort. In housing rental, the owner should be free to rent to people who suit him; in a word, he should be able to "discriminate." The weirdos at the Ontario Human Rights Commission have no problem with Moslems discriminating, but the Majority may not. Ontario could start its fight against the deficit by firing the entire OHRC and repealing the Act. *Paul Fromm* *Director* *CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION* *No Common Sense -- There's a word for what the OHRC allows: Bigotry* by Ezra Levant, *The Calgary Sun* October 11, 2011 The Ontario Human Rights Commission says it’s illegal to advertise an apartment for “students” or “seniors” only — that’s age discrimination. But when the OHRC was asked about dozens of “Muslims-only” apartment-for-rent ads in the Toronto area, they said it’s out of their hands. Earlier this summer, the OHRC was clearly short of real work to do, so it started creeping through apartment rental ads online — cyberstalking is what some people might call it. It was appalled by severely normal things landlords were saying. They came up with an official list of illegal words to use in apartment ads. “Perfect apartment for a student” is illegal. Seriously — that’s one of the examples from the OHRC website. It said that’s age discrimination. Calling your apartment an “adult building?” Illegal. “Perfect for female student”. Illegal. This summer, the OHRC threatened landlords and even the websites that advertised these “discriminatory” words. But reporter Sarah Boesveld was poking around the website Kijiji.ca and found 32 apartments that say “only Muslims need apply.” She called up the human rights commission … which said it’s out of its hands. Now, a part of private property is the right to choose who gets to come on it — no matter what your reason is. Think of the middle-aged male who wants to move into a sorority house. But that right goes further — including the right to exclude people for any reason at all. If you don’t like their personality, their annoying laugh, the colour of their eyes. And even the colour of their skin. That’s the point about private property: You have the right to be wrong — you even have the right to be racist. We don’t like the idea of people being racist. “Muslims only” is another way of saying “no Jews allowed” or “no Christians allowed.” But it’s their property, not ours. If people don’t like it, they can have a little picket outside the property, on the street. A restaurant that discriminated that way might soon lose the business of fair-minded customers. But there is a market for some kinds of discrimination. Take women-only fitness clubs. Surely they have the right to discriminate against men. Surely the Black Students Society can only allow blacks in. Surely a movie theatre can charge kids less than adults.Discrimination is something we do every day — it’s really another word for choosing. Sometimes people make choices for odious reasons. That’s the price of freedom — and it’s a far lower price to pay than the costs of having a government so invasive that it can barge its way into every wrinkle of our lives, including our own homes. I’m not for prosecuting these 32 Muslims-only landlords. If they want someone who follows their religion — for example, who won’t bring pork or alcohol into the house, and who will respect their religious traditions — that’s fine. But the Ontario Human Rights Commission doesn’t believe in property rights or freedom of association. They believe in counterfeit rights — like the right not to be offended. Except, of course, if the person doing the offending is Muslim, and the people being offended are Jews and Christians and Sikhs and Hindus and atheists. There’s a word for people like those at the OHRC who have different standards for different religions: Bigots. Source: http://www.calgarysun.com/2011/10/07/no-common-sense

 

EDUCATION OR INDOCTRINATION?

Written by Paul Fromm

Thursday, 20 October 2011 04:06

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This email newsletter was sent to you in graphical HTML format. If you're seeing this version, your email program prefers plain text emails. You can read the original version online: http://ymlp289.net/zUHHay -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article below appeared in the September 2011 issue of the SAFS Newsletter, published by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (www.safs.ca ( http://www.safs.ca/ )). The author, Professor Kenneth Hilborn, is also the author of IN THE CAUSE OF THE WEST and several other booklets in the C-FAR Canadian Issues Series. EDUCATION OR INDOCTRINATION? Kenneth H.W. Hilborn The new Dean of Education at the University of Western Ontario believes that "teacher education programs have the potential to nurture and develop a commitment to social justice in their students and ensure these students acquire the knowledge and skills they need to promote equality." So we were informed by Western News, the university administration's official newspaper, in its issue of March 3, 2011. Western News quotes the Dean as saying: "Educational scholarship and research strongly situated within an ethic of social justice can exert important societal influences and point us in the direction of those strategies and actions that will result in equality for all children. Universities, and in particular teacher education programs, are critical to the success of this transformation." Conspicuously absent from this politically correct rhetoric is any indication of respect either for intellectual diversity or for the academic freedom of instructors and students in an education faculty. Also troubling is the fact that nobody can be sure precisely what the rhetoric means. Is "social justice" a code term for some sort of socialism, or at least for an expansion of the existing welfare state? Is it a code term for racial preferences -- perhaps even quotas, or "targets" that can be met only through something amounting to quotas? As for "equality for all children," does that mean promotion from grade to grade regardless of academic performance? How can "equality" be reconciled with maintenance of academic standards, except on the unrealistic assumption that all individuals are equally intelligent and equally motivated? Should all members of a class receive the same mark, determined by the average of individuals' marks? That would be absurd, but if "equality" for all is the goal, the advantages naturally enjoyed by the most intelligent and most highly motivated must somehow be taken from them and redistributed to others -- a project impossible to attempt without subordinating individuals to the group. One point does seem obvious -- the fact the new Dean is not interested primarily in making sure that future teachers have the "knowledge and skills they need" to teach mathematics, science, French or whatever, or even to explain clearly the principles of English grammar and sentence structure. She appears more interested in disseminating among teachers the dogma of egalitarianism, and in preparing them to indoctrinate their pupils with the values of "equality" and "social justice" (though evidently not individual liberty). Such a priority potentially opens the door to ideological screening of those who apply for admission to an education school, and possibly even to pressure for ideological conformity as a condition of graduation. Schemes to impose a political "litmus test" on future teachers have already been attempted in the United States, but fortunately they have encountered effective resistance. In its publication "FIRE Media Impact, 2009," the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (www.thefire.org ( http://www.thefire.org/ )) reproduced four articles about a proposal at the University of Minnesota that read like a bizarre attempt by campus leftists to satirize themselves. It would have required all faculty members who were training teachers to "comprehend and commit to the centrality of race, class, culture, and gender issues in teaching and learning, and consequently frame their teaching and course foci accordingly." (So much for academic freedom, as well as what many might regard as the irrelevance of race, class, culture and gender to mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.) As for those being trained to teach, they were to be screened before admission to weed out applicants with unacceptable beliefs, though remedial indoctrination was to be permitted in borderline cases. It was expected that successful candidates for the teaching profession would be "able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression." Teachers were also to work for "social justice," display an understanding of American history that embraced the "myth of meritocracy," and recognize classrooms as "critical sites for social and cultural transformation." FIRE intervened to warn the university -- a public institution -- that requiring students to pass any ideological test would be unconstitutional, meaning that students who got into trouble for clinging to "incorrect" views could find protection in federal court. FIRE also publicized the situation. Eventually the university's general counsel promised FIRE that the institution would never "mandate any particular beliefs, or screen out people with 'wrong beliefs' . . ." All public universities in the United States have to reckon with the risk of being sued if they violate a student's right to free expression under the Constitution's First Amendment -- an amendment that originally restricted only the federal power, but which later constitutional change led the Supreme Court to apply to states and their agencies (including universities) as well. Though many public universities still have repressive "speech codes," they can be enforced only against students ignorant of their rights or unwilling to take legal action. To impose ideological screening and indoctrination on any would-be teacher would be to invite a lawsuit. Whether or not for that reason -- to quote the Chronicle of Higher Education (December 2, 2009) -- "the governing board of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education voted in 2007 to stop suggesting that teacher-preparation programs take their students' views on 'social justice' into account." Lacking the high level of legal protection enjoyed by Americans under judicial interpretations of the First Amendment, Canadians have to rely more on the other major technique that FIRE has found useful in U.S. cases -- publicity aimed at shaming or embarrassing university administrators into some degree of at least outward respect for individuals' rights to political and intellectual liberty. We must hope that if would-be teachers -- at Western or elsewhere -- find themselves subjected to ideological discrimination or coercive indoctrination, they will have the strength of character to resist by all the lawful means at their disposal, and that they will receive effective support from SAFS, civil-liberties organizations, the media and public opinion. (Kenneth H.W. Hilborn, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Western Ontario, is a former member of the University Senate and of the SAFS Board of Directors.) _____________________________ Unsubscribe / Change Profile: http://ymlp289.net/u.php?id=gmjhqsqgsgbbqgums Powered by YourMailingListProvider

 

EDUCATION OR INDOCTRINATION?

Written by Paul Fromm

Thursday, 20 October 2011 03:41

*The article below appeared in the September 2011 issue of the SAFS Newsletter, published by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (* *www.safs.ca* <http://www.safs.ca/>*). The author, Professor Kenneth Hilborn, is also the author of IN THE CAUSE OF THE WEST and several other booklets in the C-FAR Canadian Issues Series.* EDUCATION OR INDOCTRINATION? * Kenneth H.W. Hilborn* The new Dean of Education at the University of Western Ontario believes that "teacher education programs have the potential to nurture and develop a commitment to social justice in their students and ensure these students acquire the knowledge and skills they need to promote equality." So we were informed by *Western News*, the university administration's official newspaper, in its issue of March 3, 2011. *Western News* quotes the Dean as saying: "Educational scholarship and research strongly situated within an ethic of social justice can exert important societal influences and point us in the direction of those strategies and actions that will result in equality for all children. Universities, and in particular teacher education programs, are critical to the success of this transformation." Conspicuously absent from this politically correct rhetoric is any indication of respect either for intellectual diversity or for the academic freedom of instructors and students in an education faculty. Also troubling is the fact that nobody can be sure precisely what the rhetoric means. Is "social justice" a code term for some sort of socialism, or at least for an expansion of the existing welfare state? Is it a code term for racial preferences -- perhaps even quotas, or "targets" that can be met only through something amounting to quotas? As for "equality for all children," does that mean promotion from grade to grade regardless of academic performance? How can "equality" be reconciled with maintenance of academic standards, except on the unrealistic assumption that all individuals are equally intelligent and equally motivated? Should all members of a class receive the same mark, determined by the average of individuals' marks? That would be absurd, but if "equality" for all is the goal, the advantages naturally enjoyed by the most intelligent and most highly motivated must somehow be taken from them and redistributed to others -- a project impossible to attempt without subordinating individuals to the group. One point does seem obvious -- the fact the new Dean is not interested primarily in making sure that future teachers have the "knowledge and skills they need" to teach mathematics, science, French or whatever, or even to explain clearly the principles of English grammar and sentence structure. She appears more interested in disseminating among teachers the dogma of egalitarianism, and in preparing them to indoctrinate their pupils with the values of "equality" and "social justice" (though evidently not individual liberty). Such a priority potentially opens the door to ideological screening of those who apply for admission to an education school, and possibly even to pressure for ideological conformity as a condition of graduation. Schemes to impose a political "litmus test" on future teachers have already been attempted in the United States, but fortunately they have encountered effective resistance. In its publication "FIRE Media Impact, 2009," the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (www.thefire.org) reproduced four articles about a proposal at the University of Minnesota that read like a bizarre attempt by campus leftists to satirize themselves. It would have required all faculty members who were training teachers to "comprehend and commit to the centrality of race, class, culture, and gender issues in teaching and learning, and consequently frame their teaching and course foci accordingly." (So much for academic freedom, as well as what many might regard as the irrelevance of race, class, culture and gender to mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.) As for those being trained to teach, they were to be screened before admission to weed out applicants with unacceptable beliefs, though remedial indoctrination was to be permitted in borderline cases. It was expected that successful candidates for the teaching profession would be "able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression." Teachers were also to work for "social justice," display an understanding of American history that embraced the "myth of meritocracy," and recognize classrooms as "critical sites for social and cultural transformation." FIRE intervened to warn the university -- a public institution -- that requiring students to pass any ideological test would be unconstitutional, meaning that students who got into trouble for clinging to "incorrect" views could find protection in federal court. FIRE also publicized the situation. Eventually the university's general counsel promised FIRE that the institution would never "mandate any particular beliefs, or screen out people with 'wrong beliefs' . . ." All public universities in the United States have to reckon with the risk of being sued if they violate a student's right to free expression under the Constitution's First Amendment -- an amendment that originally restricted only the federal power, but which later constitutional change led the Supreme Court to apply to states and their agencies (including universities) as well. Though many public universities still have repressive "speech codes," they can be enforced only against students ignorant of their rights or unwilling to take legal action. To impose ideological screening and indoctrination on any would-be teacher would be to invite a lawsuit. Whether or not for that reason -- to quote the *Chronicle of Higher Education*(December 2, 2009) -- "the governing board of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education voted in 2007 to stop suggesting that teacher-preparation programs take their students' views on 'social justice' into account." Lacking the high level of legal protection enjoyed by Americans under judicial interpretations of the First Amendment, Canadians have to rely more on the other major technique that FIRE has found useful in U.S. cases -- publicity aimed at shaming or embarrassing university administrators into some degree of at least outward respect for individuals' rights to political and intellectual liberty. We must hope that if would-be teachers -- at Western or elsewhere -- find themselves subjected to ideological discrimination or coercive indoctrination, they will have the strength of character to resist by all the lawful means at their disposal, and that they will receive effective support from SAFS, civil-liberties organizations, the media and public opinion. *(Kenneth H.W. Hilborn, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Western Ontario, is a former member of the University Senate and of the SAFS Board of Directors.)*