Deborah Weiss is an attorney and a writer who specializes in free speech issues, especially the issue of sharia. She has published articles at FrontPage Magazine, American Thinker, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Times, and NRO, among other places.
Ms. Weiss was the opening speaker on September 10 in Toronto at the conference “M-103: Islamophobia Cure or Sharia Trap?” sponsored by Canadian Citizens For Charter Rights And Freedoms.
The video below shows Ms. Weiss’ speech, followed by a Q&A. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this clip:
She’s quite some lady and quite some person.
I didn’t listen to the Q&A session, since that seemed to be rambling. But her speech was content dense, and note that she said she triple-checked every sentence of her speech, so you know it’s accurate.
I have a few comments.
She talks about the corruption of the Human Rights and anti-discrimination commissions, but she concedes the legitimacy of offices to oppose race, gender or religious-based discrimination. In point of fact, there is either freedom of association, or there is not. And here is the kicker: as long as you have a government or quasi-government office to legally enforce affirmative action, anti-discrimination, or equal opportunity, you have a permanently established, permanently-funded government pressure group devoted full time to pushing involuntary association, minority rights and harassing merit-based employment and hiring.
You also have a permanent, official group devoted to harassing landlords, property owners, real estate agents and neighborhood groups. Even if these quasi-official or official bodies did not have a political agenda, which they mostly do, just the bureaucratic impulse to expand and control would assure a steady erosion of our freedoms.
In other words, it is not the government’s business if someone acts in any way on his own preferences or criteria, as long as he is not involving government money. Of course, in a quasi-socialized country like Canada, the government is difficult to get away from.
The anti-discrimination laws, agencies and commissions will provide a wedge to overturn individual freedoms.
As complete as Weiss speech was, she missed mentioning Hillary Clinton’s 2011 speech at the UN where she encouraged countries without speech freedom laws to enact laws against defaming Islam, and outlining a non-criminal, but government-directed effort to “shame” (dox, fire, harass) critics of Islam.
Deborah was allotted only 20 minutes to speak. We had a full line-up. She could have talked about all the issues you mention but simply had to focus on free speech and Motion M-103 – and she did a most admirable job!!
“she did a most admirable job!!”
She did indeed.
RonaldB, “freedom of association” should of course be legitimate in the private sphere. In the public area it’s a different matter, and it’s a pity you lump together “affirmative action” with “anti-discrimination” and “equal oportunity”. The former is special pleading, which is patronising and likely to promote less-qualified people over better-qualified ones, which serves us all ill. The latter two should be observed in matters of employment, services etc, out of common decency and the avoidance of giving ammunition to special interest groups.
I disagree. Any muscle used by government to “protect” against “discrimination” as opposed to forcing “affirmative action” will make the distinction fade into irrelevancy. There is absolutely no way to legislate against “discrimination” without mandating affirmative action.
You can begin with the premise there is a genetic, and easily-measured, difference between the sexes and races. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a woman who is smarter, stronger, more capable than I am, or a black who isn’t smarter, more productive and more intelligent than I am. It means that on the average, that is the case.
The consequence is, that if you allocate jobs, or positions, or educational achievements, purely by genetic merit, white males will have the predominate number of positions. In other words, the average number of earned achievements by white males will be over-proportional to their share of the population.
Similarly, if you allow people to live in preference to their associations, and to spend their own money as they would prefer, many, many more people would live in homogeneous communities. In other words, some housing sub-developments may not sell to (most) blacks or Jews, because the units will sell for a higher price without them. And I would be counted as Jewish, but I support the freedom of association.
There is absolutely no way a government unit of enforcement can protect freedom of association, but adequately distinguish that from discrimination. It just won’t happen. It’s equivalent to mandating the government to distinguish productive freedom of speech from disruptive or subversive freedom of speech. The framers of the first amendment got it right, and the only way to protect against censorship is to have no censorship at all.
The consequence is, that if you allocate jobs, or positions, or educational achievements, purely by genetic merit, white males will have the predominate number of positions.
Two quibbles:
(1) If there are enough of them, Ashkenazi Jews will predominate, and
(2) If there are enough of them, the Chinese will be close behind the Jews.
The Chinese/Asians dominate in California universities, to the extent the game had to be rigged to allow the “victims” of government education and their own culture some room, at least in the remediation classes. California has the most billionaires and the highest number in poverty of any other state. 49th in infrastructure, too.
That’s quite a statement Baron. Where exactly does that leave us? Was Hitler right?
I don’t know. Did Hitler say that European Jews are, on average, more intelligent than Caucasians (Aryans)? If so, he was right.
The Chinese and the Japanese are, on average, more intelligent than Caucasians. But not more intelligent than Jews — they are slightly below them.
May I suggest that the allocation of jobs strictly according to IQ test scores, as far as it actually occurs, is a defensive measure to justify having disproportionately few blacks or browns. If employers were allowed complete freedom of association, they would not hire all Ashkenazim or all Chinese, although they might hire a few in key positions. What do you think a customer would do if he walked into a business and it was all Chinese or all Ashkenazim? Assuming it wasn’t a Chinese restaurant or a New York diamond wholesalers.
Once you get the heavy hand of government affirmative action cudgel off your back, you are free to take into account all those more-subtle traits that make a good business employee.
Concerning education, it seems to me to be deeply unfair to have public funds supporting the education of high-IQ individuals guaranteed to earn many times the average salary. Education now is a scam that truly educates very few students, but is blindingly expensive. Most jobs,particularly jobs in the government, that require an educational degree can be done every bit as well by almost any person with a moderate IQ. Plus, universities are absolute death on real creative geniuses.
The Genius Famine
In a free country, there would be many reasons to employ or not employ someone; not simply the best IQ score. Most jobs would not have a requirement for the certificate of exhaustion now granted by most universities in exchange for a huge tribute and the ability to sit still for 4 years.
According to Weiss, the long-term goals of the OIC are the ‘establishment of a caliphate and the worldwide implementation of sharia law’. I did not expect and have not found these words in the OIC charter. It’s important to have verifiable sources for wide-ranging statements such as the above quote else they will be counterproductive to say the least. What then is the basis for Weiss’s assertion?
Perhaps (maybe?!) The Koran (sick) The Reliance of the Traveller etcetera etcetera etcetera..They’re followers aren’t they?
she’s good, I like her drive for freedom of speech 🙂
…and, the blasphemy laws… what a joke! although I do find it strange that someone, anyone would support a thing like blasphemy laws… I can understand that false prophets simply have no other way to go about the truth.
Baron, you’re a brave man!
I worked in an office with a woman from China and a Jew. The Jew reported to me that the woman had said to him (in “Chinglish”) that Jews were like Chinese: the most industrious and productive workers. Dammit, at least in that office, she was right!
Ronald,
The brains of males and females are wired somewhat differently, and from an evolutionary standpoint, that makes sense. It does not mean that one is superior.
I believe all races have certain distinct advantages over others.
Hi Liatris,
The mean intelligence of males and females are equal, but the standard deviation (spread) of women is lower, meaning you have fewer women at the extreme ends of the distribution (fewer geniuses, fewer dolts).
The Genius Famine
Males and females have different personality profile, on the average. The famous (or infamous) Google memo by Jame Damore went into the subject quite adequately, but the summary is, women on the whole are not comfortable with the long hours and self-denial necessary for the top positions on large companies and are not particularly happy when they do worm their way into such positions.
https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncensored-memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f
Also, from the perspective of body strength, endurance, and susceptibility to injury, women are manifestly unsuitable for some combat positions. You’ll always be able to find a few outliers who meet the physical requirements, and who can certainly beat me up, but my position is, you lose so much by accommodating the outliers that you might as well make an absolute determination by sex. No female special operations or combat pilots.
In World War II, women served an invaluable role as transport pilots, auxiliary operations, possibly espionage, and other positions. Someday, our military capability is going to be life and death, and to my mind, we’re far better off frustrating the legitimate desires of the exceptional female who can haul a backpack with the best of them, rather than hamper the efficiency of the military with basically needless requirements.
As for the difference between races, there certainly are huge differences. My position is that people be allowed freedom of association, so working class suburban homeowners can be reasonably sure they won’t have ghetto criminals moving next to them. I do not, however, favor legal concepts like restrictive covenants for the reason that the determination of a race for purposes of a contract is not something a government can do adequately. You’ll instead have an informal network of property owners and real estate agents who will maintain the character of a neighborhood.