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 TomFooleryJoined: 18 Dec 2005 Total posts: 5371
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 Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 3:41 am Post subject: Harry Abrams, Classical Liberalism vs. Human Rights |
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Harry,
I continue to interested in becoming better informed as to your point of view, and continue to be glad you have made yourself available for discussion.
Perhaps the biggest question I have relates to (what I perceive) to be the rather irreconcilable actions of organizations such as BB and CJC in Canada (using Human Rights Codes) in relation to the tragic experience of Jews under German Statism.
From a classical liberal viewpoint, the great atrocities of governments against the governed occur when governments stop respecting the individual rights defined under classical liberal political theory: The Right to Life vs. The Holocaust; The Right to Property vs. The expropriation of Jewish property by the Nazi government; The Right to Liberty vs. the placement of Jews in camps; the list of abrogations of classical liberal conceptions of Individual Rights is near endless.
So, with this political theory informing my understanding of the world we live in, I would have expected in light of the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany that Jewish people would demand of our government the highest and most principled adherence to the principles of Individual Rights, because anything that would serve to erode near perfect commitment to those principles would invariably lead to the slippery slope that allowed Statists such as the Nazi's the lattitude to abrogate the Individual Rights of Jews, and the atrocities that ensued from there.
Can you see my point, from the perspective that I hold and provide, above?
Now, I am the type of person that understands that there are different political theories and personal/cultural/religious narritives that fairly inform each of us into our different opinions, courses of behaviour, for better or worse.
So, I ask: How do you reconcile the erosion of the principles of Individual Rights through the advocacy and use of Human Rights codes (which are contradictory to Individual Rights), and hope, in the long term, that governments will not again use the slippery slope to commit injustices, and perhaps atrocities against the citizenry ?
Incidently, I'm hoping to get your most honest and detailed thoughts / worldview on these matters so that I may better understand your efforts. |
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LFR
Location: Calgary, Alberta Age: 37 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 8:51 am Post subject: |
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A very good question, indeed...
_________________
Let Freedom Reign - Home of the Anti-PC League
http://no-libs.com
You are not my husband so you don''t really have the right to correct me... - Princess Hailey, Aug 10, 08
Calgary''s Protest Warriors in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCw5J3xBFmk |
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LAR
Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Total posts: 2396 Gender: Unknown
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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Certainly is an excellent question that addresses the issue on a fundamental level.
I'd also like to hear Mr. Abrams' response. |
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Harry Abrams
Joined: 22 Jul 2009 Total posts: 388 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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I don't find human rights legislation an erosion or conflict with human rights. But thanks for setting up a separate thread. That was impressive.
I see Richard Evans is back.
What happened to your website Richard? Run out of pin-up girls or something? |
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Peter O'Donnell
Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Total posts: 7995 Location: BC Age: 60 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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Besides the lofty political context (and I have been as responsible as anyone else for developing this line of thinking) there is also the much more mundane consideration of over-protectiveness.
The CHRC reflects the values of a generation raised by overly protective parents, who were afraid that their kids would go off the rails. They transmitted this fear and paranoia to their kids, who latched onto political correctness as a sort of security blanket, if they sucked on it day and night, then they would feel "safe" and "protected."
And all the bogey-men out there in the dark, in the black and white movies of their youth, showing the Nazis coming for Anne Frank, or maybe grandma, would stay "out there" where they could do no harm, and nobody would say anything nasty, and everyone would bake a cake, share, and go home with a prize from the birthday party.
In other words, the myth of the perfect childhood would extend into an unlimited adult future, where nothing bad ever happened, and all were equal, no matter who or what they were.
The CHRC is a sort of cartoon world of equality, where only white men can be bad guys, and everyone else is a victim waiting to happen.
The human rights mythology makes us feel that we can reverse the wrongs of history, and make Canada a perfect place, full of perfect people. This is a dangerous illusion. It is completely at odds with what we know from our spiritual lives, that we are all broken, incomplete, in need of reconciliation with God for OUR faults, not to be out looking for the faults of others.
No wonder some of the biggest sinners in the country are the biggest proponents of human rights, and before you start in on me, Harry, I don't mean you, because I don't know you at all, except for the interest in artwork. |
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Edward Kennedy
Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Total posts: 11866 Gender: Unknown
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Harry Abrams wrote: | I don't find human rights legislation an erosion or conflict with human rights. But thanks for setting up a separate thread. That was impressive.
I see Richard Evans is back.
What happened to your website Richard? Run out of pin-up girls or something? |
...and therein lies the focal point of your problems past, present and unfortunately, future.
_________________
Please let me know if I said something that offended you. I may want to offend you again sometime. |
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Peter O'Donnell
Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Total posts: 7995 Location: BC Age: 60 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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| In other words, I blame Barney the dinosaur for most of this. And Mr. Dress-Up. |
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Harry Abrams
Joined: 22 Jul 2009 Total posts: 388 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Peter O'Donnell wrote: | | In other words, I blame Barney the dinosaur for most of this. And Mr. Dress-Up. |
Thank you for this.
I was going to recommend a therapist.
But I can see that you're actually well adjusted and socialized. |
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Edward Kennedy
Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Total posts: 11866 Gender: Unknown
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 6:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Harry Abrams wrote: | | Peter O'Donnell wrote: | | In other words, I blame Barney the dinosaur for most of this. And Mr. Dress-Up. |
Thank you for this.
I was going to recommend a therapist.
But I can see that you're actually well adjusted and socialized. |
...but you Harry could use some history lessons.
_________________
Please let me know if I said something that offended you. I may want to offend you again sometime. |
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| Gerry T. Neal Joined: 24 Jun 2009 Total posts: 585 Location: Winnipeg, MB Age: 33 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Harry Abrams wrote: | | I don't find human rights legislation an erosion or conflict with human rights. |
What this answer ignores is the fundamental difference between the concept of "human rights" that underlies legislation like the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1977 and the concept of "natural rights" that was at the heart of Lockean classical liberalism.
TomFoolery makes reference to the 3 basic individual rights of classic liberalism: life, liberty, and property. The Lockean concept was that these were universal, vested in each individual, and "inalienable". The theory supporting this concept was the social contract theory of government, as John Locke had modified it from earlier formulations such as that of Thomas Hobbes. This theory postulates a difference between society and a "state of nature", arguing that in theory if not in actual history the former was formed out of the latter by a contract entered into by individuals for mutual benefits and protections. In the "state of nature", sovereignty, along with absolute liberty, and absolute rights were the property of the individual. In forming society, and "the state", individuals delegated away a portion of their sovereignty, liberty, and rights, but retained the basic rights of life, liberty, and property because these were inalienable from the individual and thus could not be delegated away.
Locke's concept of "social contract" theory and individual rights differed from the later revised version of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of hard leftism. In Rousseau's theory the revolutionary democratic state than embodied the "volante general" would be vested with absolute sovereignty, and dissent from its decrees would be a capital crime. Rousseau was the philospher who inspired the revolutionaries who drew up the 1789 Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen in France.
The concept of "human rights" as it exists in the 20th Century evolved out of the French Declaration, which represented a tradition of thought that had veered off fundamentally from classical liberalism of the Lockean variety in the 18th Century. N.B. the irreconcileable differences between Locke's belief that the right of property is the first right and the basis of all other rights (we have a right to that which is our own, i.e., our property, and something everyone can claim as their own property is their own person, hence the fundamental rights to life and liberty as derivative of the right to property) and the theory of rights that would early in the 20th Century produce the leftist mantra "human rights before property rights".
The Canadian Human Rights Act states that its purpose is:
to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.
What this clever wording amounts to is that the Act exist, not to create legislation protecting the rights of the individual to life, liberty and property, but to grant what the authors of this Act consider to be equality in "opportunity" and having "their needs accomodated" to privileged groups, identified as the potential victims of "discriminatory practices" based on the listed prohibited grounds.
It becomes evident as we read through the Act that "discriminatory practices" refer not to what is known as de jure discrimination, i.e., legislation or other acts of government that differentiate in their treatment of different groups to the advantage of one over the other, but discriminatory acts on the part of private citizens.
Thus Section 5 states:
It is a discriminatory practice in the provision of goods, services, facilities or accommodation customarily available to the general public
(a) to deny, or to deny access to, any such good, service, facility or accommodation to any individual, or
(b) to differentiate adversely in relation to any individual,
on a prohibited ground of discrimination.
What Section 5 omits to say is who the provider of these goods, services, facilities, or accomodation is. If it is the government providing goods, services, facilities, or accomodation, that is "customarily available to the general public", then it is legitimate for the government to say that such provisions should be available to all without discrimination. If however, the goods, services, facilities, or accomodations "customarily available to the general public" are provided by a private business owner, the government has no business telling him he cannot discriminate against whoever he wants. If the owner of a service-providing business has a policy that he will not serve members of a certain group, that is his affair. In doing so he is punishing himself by rejecting an entire group of potential customers and potentially alienating a much larger group of potential customers if his discriminatory practices outrage other people who are not members of the group discriminated against.
There are proper limits to what a property owner can do or not do with his property. A property owner cannot claim a "right" to use his property to commit acts of criminal violence against other people, for example. But the refusal of services for discriminatory reasons is not an act of criminal violence, and for the state to prohibit a property owner from such discrimination in the name of granting "equality of opportunity" to specially protected groups, places the concept of human rights grounded in the ideal of equality squarely in conflict with the concept of individual rights.
P.S. While I agree with the libertarian applications of Lockean classical liberalism, I reject the theory of classical liberalism as much as I reject modern left-liberalism. I believe in prescriptive rights (based on long-standing custom in a particular society) rather than natural rights and reject all forms of social contract theory except Edmund Burke's "great primaeval contract of eternal society" which bears no resemblence to anything postulated by Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau. |
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Maikeru
Joined: 05 Nov 2004 Total posts: 4374 Location: Vancouver, British Columbia Gender: Male
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 8:31 pm Post subject: Re: Harry Abrams, Classical Liberalism vs. Human Rights |
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| TomFoolery wrote: | From a classical liberal viewpoint, the great atrocities of governments against the governed occur when governments stop respecting the individual rights defined under classical liberal political theory: The Right to Life vs. The Holocaust; The Right to Property vs. The expropriation of Jewish property by the Nazi government; The Right to Liberty vs. the placement of Jews in camps; the list of abrogations of classical liberal conceptions of Individual Rights is near endless.
I would have expected in light of the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany that Jewish people would demand of our government the highest and most principled adherence to the principles of Individual Rights, because anything that would serve to erode near perfect commitment to those principles would invariably lead to the slippery slope that allowed Statists such as the Nazi's the lattitude to abrogate the Individual Rights of Jews, and the atrocities that ensued from there. |
Absent property rights, the Canadian Constitution lacks the bedrock of cause for Individual Rights in society, rendering all citizens temporary tenants of a societal continuum resonant to group demands only.
This is reflected in our governments at every level - independent candidates seldom have successful campaigns, and if elected, seldom have effective voice.
Exceptions are the 'Harry Rankin - keep 'em honest' candidates, and the rare cases such as Independent MP Chuck Cadman, whose endorsement was crucial to outcome of a confidence vote.
In Rankin's case, he bombed as Mayoral candidate after years atop the Councillor votes list, and in the Cadman case, efforts by the Sikh community to displace incumbant Cadman as CPC candidate for an upcoming election backfired miserably when he ran as an Independent candidate - and won.
The group-dependent multi-cultural mindset inculcated into Canadian society promotes a 'strata-council' mentality wherein changes are complaint - driven and decided by those who join with like-minded others others to satisfy their own/group demands.
_________________
“There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” — Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg
"Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like." - Chesterton - |
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| TomFoolery Joined: 18 Dec 2005 Total posts: 5371
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| Posted: 08/ 17/ 09 11:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Harry Abrams wrote: | | I don't find human rights legislation an erosion or conflict with human rights. |
To be clear, you have not dealt with my question, which is repeated below.
| Quote: | So, I ask: How do you reconcile the erosion of the principles of Individual Rights through the advocacy and use of Human Rights codes (which are contradictory to Individual Rights), and hope, in the long term, that governments will not again use the slippery slope to commit injustices, and perhaps atrocities against the citizenry ?
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On the other hand, I regretfully suggest that your answer in fact speaks for itself. It is devoid of any indication of an understanding of the intellectual heritage that embodies itself in Canadian law and culture.
Your answer makes vast headway in explaining the considerable disagreement in the Canadian community as to the appropriate role and conduct of Human Rights Commissions in Canada.
There are many citizens of Canada whose families moved here to escape political oppression and place a very high value on the legal and philosophical underpinnings of the freedom Canada offerred. The philosophy of liberalism was the upstart of the Age of the Enlightment, and as it appears as though the intellectual heritage of that great period of human progress is lost on community leaders, who are trapped in a post-modern State without an understanding of where we came from, or where it is headed.
The tenants of law born from the Age of Enlightenment are duly compromised by the existence of political persecution organizations such as HRC's. Conflicting ideologies can't stand as one law - one has to give way, and this is the contemporary political war that is being fought in Canada as illustrated by Ezra Levant vs. Jennifer Lynch.
One would hope to be informed sufficiently to make a prudent choice as to what side to support in this war.
If you are interested in better understanding the philosophical foundations of freedom in the country you call home, I would hope you would feel compelled to study the political philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. At a minimum, you'd have a better idea of where many of us are coming from in our rejection of HRC's (as they currently conduct themselves, anyway), and at best, you may find that you reevaluate your own positions.
I think we understand each other a little better as a result of this discussion. Thanks. |
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LFR
Location: Calgary, Alberta Age: 37 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 08/ 18/ 09 1:02 am Post subject: |
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| Harry Abrams wrote: | I don't find human rights legislation an erosion or conflict with human rights. But thanks for setting up a separate thread. That was impressive.
I see Richard Evans is back.
What happened to your website Richard? Run out of pin-up girls or something? |
Work and the book I've been working on have kept me busy Harry... When I find time I may or may not get my site back into shape. I'm glad to see that you're still keeping up with your fascist ways...
_________________
Let Freedom Reign - Home of the Anti-PC League
http://no-libs.com
You are not my husband so you don''t really have the right to correct me... - Princess Hailey, Aug 10, 08
Calgary''s Protest Warriors in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCw5J3xBFmk |
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| Godwin Gender: Unknown
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| Posted: 08/ 18/ 09 2:07 pm Post subject: |
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In an excellent post , Neal writes:
that Section 5 omits to say is who the provider of these goods, services, facilities, or accomodation is. If it is the government providing goods, services, facilities, or accomodation, that is "customarily available to the general public", then it is legitimate for the government to say that such provisions should be available to all without discrimination. If however, the goods, services, facilities, or accomodations "customarily available to the general public" are provided by a private business owner, the government has no business telling him he cannot discriminate against whoever he wants. If the owner of a service-providing business has a policy that he will not serve members of a certain group, that is his affair. In doing so he is punishing himself by rejecting an entire group of potential customers and potentially alienating a much larger group of potential customers if his discriminatory practices outrage other people who are not members of the group discriminated against.
A problem I see with the view that any private provider should be allowed to discriminate is when the provider of the good/service is a corporation. Incorporation protects the private assets of investors from obligations arising from their "ownership" of the corporation and provides the corporation and its owners with a separate tax code.. These benefits are implicitly paid for by all members of society including the discriminated against group. |
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| TomFoolery Joined: 18 Dec 2005 Total posts: 5371
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| Posted: 08/ 18/ 09 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Godwin wrote: |
A problem I see with the view that any private provider should be allowed to discriminate is when the provider of the good/service is a corporation. Incorporation protects the private assets of investors from obligations arising from their "ownership" of the corporation and provides the corporation and its owners with a separate tax code.. These benefits are implicitly paid for by all members of society including the discriminated against group. |
I have thought the same thing. Corporations are synthetic 'persons' under the law, and the rules surrounding their conduct are every bit a creation of legislature as their very legal existence.
However, there are situations where shareholders / owners, and operators/managers are both one and the same, and where this relationship is very close, I would hope that a slightly different legal entity would be allowed to exist, perhaps a Limited Liability Partnership, or LLP, as they have in many US States, and something like the same in Nova Scotia. Those liability protected entities given that ownership and operations are very much the same people should uphold the Individual Rights of the people involved. |
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