Posted by forestdragon on Wednesday, June 24, 2009
It is very discouraging to see the growing levels of intolerance in the world. The latest incident in our country was at the Fete National when people tried to shout down two english acts (presenting bilingual sets) at a concert in Quebec. Several sponsors of the event also withdrew their support when the acts were announced. I sense this is an example of what a separate Quebec would be like, intolerance for anything other than french language. It’s not like these groups were the major component of the entertainment package. Even now, the language police harass businesses about signs that have multiple languages if the french is not bigger by a certain factor. There’s protecting a language and then there’s intolerance towards anyone or anything that isn’t french. If a business chose to have all of it’s signage in chinese, it’s indicating that it is catering to a specific group and not the population as a whole and really what is wrong with that?
In Iran, we have a deadly form of intolerance. I heard that in one situation there were 3 million more votes than there were voters, if this was close to the truth then the results of that election can be questioned. The hard liners are using extreme methods to suppress any opposition because the will not tolerate any change of the status quo. Iran is a country that was the cradle of civilization and should be a major player in the middle east. Unfortunately, they could be a force for good of the world but they seem to be bent on being a force for radical and intolerant views and their actions are destabilizing the area.
Back in Canada, Human Rights commissions were created to protect the rights of the minorities. They have taken that to an extreme and now they are infringing on our basic freedoms such as free speech and ideas. This is political correctness taken to the extreme. It appears that some have found ways of milking this system for profit by filing and wining questionable cases. The actions put a chill on free speech because it ends up costing the speaker a lot of money defending themselves.
In the words of Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along”.
Since 9/11 people in the western world are obsessed with security and in some cases have an irrational fear of terrorist acts. In the total scheme of things, we tend to get very excited about incidents that are not always that significant. That is not to say that we don’t need to be on alert but it’s how far should we go and what should we give up to attain that security.
Most important was to protect the front line health workers and wash your hands frequently.
It’s all done in the name of security so we just let it go.
Crossing the border is also getting harder all the time and the customs authorities have extra ordinary powers that they exercise as well. There are a lot of stories about abuse here as well. It’s because of security so anything they do is ok even if there was not just cause for their actions. Give people absolute power and they will abuse it because they can.
The police are starting to show signs of being above the law since they are part of the administration of the “law”. We seem to be seeing more and more instance where police are involved with excessive force and are not being held accountable. It seems that they are able to break laws but they don’t have to face the consequences. They, in many cases, can’t even be removed from the job. Their union fights any sort of discipline even when the evidence is overwhelming that they should be dismissed and charged. They can be violent and just flash they id and badge and they are driven home by a responding officer while they accuse the victim of causing the problem in the first place. It’s the concept of power corrupting individual and institutions. They are trampling on individual rights in the name of “National Security”. Yes they have a tough job but taking away our rights in the name of security is not the answer.
It won’t be long before we will have to face the facts that we live in a police state with no real personal freedoms and we surrendered them without a wimper because we were afraid of something that really wasn’t as bad as the solution.
Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch gave a lecture on Time Management at the University of Virginia in November 2007. Randy Pausch — http://www.randypausch.com — is a virtual reality pioneer, human-computer interaction researcher, co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center — http://www.etc.cmu.edu — and creator of the Alice — http://www.alice.org — software project. The slides for this lecture and high-res downloadable versions of this and other lectures can be found at: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Ra…
