George Jonas Doesn't Understand Human Rights

It would appear that Jonas is attempting to make the case that the right be a racist is a human right:

"A human right is to be sovereign in one's legitimate sphere. A human right is to select whom to hire, promote, service or esteem. It's to decide with whom to associate. It's to have an opinion, silly as it may be. It's a human right to be an idiot."

In other words, those in the position to do the hiring are the ones who get rights, if you want a job though... not so much. But let's not make this about class warfare just yet. Is it really a human right to be an idiot? Should I have the right to set my own house on fire? I mean, if you believe in property rights, I should be allowed to be idiotic with my property, isn't that what Jonas is saying? So yeah, I should be allowed to set on fire a house or any other structures that I own free and clear. The problem is that if I do that I endanger all other residents in my community, someone will inevitably call the fire department and firefighters will probably also be put in danger.

I'm not much for authoritarianism and I really do think that people should be allowed to do things that I might think are stupid (go ahead, buy a Nickelback CD!) The most elementary problem with Jonas' logic is that he just cannot conceive of how allowing people to use racism etc. to drive their hiring practices doesn't hurt anyone.

Of course Jonas has the standard right wing corrective for all ills - the market!

"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."

No. An example that avoids any politically-charged category might be what Malcolm Gladwell observed about CEOs in Blink: the average American CEO is significantly taller than the average American. It would seem that their stature goes into the mix of how hiring is decided upon even though I'm sure that no board of directors ever includes this as a conscious hiring category. In other words, even when we try to, we do not make merit the sole basis for employment or promotion. George Jonas lives in a fantasy world.

If we want to claim that we have society that provides equality of opportunity we should have something more than the market as evidence of this.

George Jonas is a total idiot or The Killer Nic-fit

I'm not just using this as title because I often find myself at odds with the former Mr. Barbara Amiel, no, today I'm convinced the man is actually one of the stupidest columnists writing in Canada.

Some backstory: Paul Wells was touting his former employer's new website and, in all fairness to their web design people, it does look better. Nonetheless, this lured me into reading the Opinion section where I stumbled across George Jonas' theorizing about the RCMP killing of Robert Dziekanski.

According to Jonas, the real way that the state killed Mr. Dziekanski was by forbidding him to smoke in the airport! No really he says:

"Before the armed agents of the state ran wild, though, the unlucky Pole ran a bit wild himself. Why did Mr. Dziekanski start throwing things around at the Vancouver airport, which eventually conjured up the Taser-toting agents of the omnipotent state?

The probable answer is nicotine starvation. Before Big Nanny deprived Mr. Dziekanski of his life, she deprived him of cigarettes. There's a chance the enthusiastic East European visitor to our shores, gung-ho enough to keep a Canadian flag at home, who talked about looking forward to seeing grizzly bears in British Columbia, ended up dying to smoke. Literally."

Wow. That's an excellent use of Eastern European stereotypes. The real killer here is that people can't smoke wherever they want? Now in fairness, further on in the column, Jonas does concede that the RCMP electrocuting Dziekanski may also have had something to do with his untimely end, and that that too, was unwise. But a nic-fit as a cause of death in this case, I mean come on! Do we even know that Dziekanski was a smoker, and if so, even a heavy one?

Is it okay to stereotype Poles again? George Jonas, you are an idiot at best, a racist demagogue at worst.