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January 31, 2007
Wednesday
 
 
Samizdata quote of the day
Perry de Havilland (London)  Slogans/quotations

To forbid "discrimination" is to violate basic freedom - not just religious freedom, any freedom. It was grimly predictable that faced with a choice between freedom of association and the doctrine of "anti discrimination" Mr Cameron would choose to support state control. So much for his "big idea" of the greater delivery of "public services" by voluntary groups.

Both Mr Blair and Mr Cameron have shown themselves to be people who only support association if people associate in the way they COMMAND.

- Paul Marks

Comments

"To forbid "discrimination" is to violate basic freedom - not just religious freedom"...

...JAIL bosses are rebuilding toilets so Muslim inmates don’t have to use them while facing Mecca.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006180300,00.html

No need to worry, 'Religious Freedom' is NOT dead yet!


Posted by The Elohim at January 31, 2007 03:30 AM

Who is Paul Marks?


Posted by John Jamieson at January 31, 2007 09:41 AM

A contributing author on this blog.


Posted by Silent Lurker at January 31, 2007 10:15 AM

You'd think this was a fairly basic tenet, but noooo. I was surprised when I caught tons of heat for posting along similar lines at Richard Dawkins' ("The God Delusion") website about a guy who got canned because he wasn't the same religion as the bosses.


Posted by Andy at January 31, 2007 04:04 PM

I recently read Rob Grant's novel Incompetence. It was published in 2003, but what a coincidence I should be reading it when this row blew up.

It's set in a near-future EU (or USE), in which the following pertains:

Article 13199 of the Pan-European Constitution: "No person shall be prejudiced from employment in any capacity, at any level, by reason of age, race, creed or incompetence.
(Sic. Of course.)

Hilarious results, naturally, ensue. (It's actually a comic thriller; a parody of sorts of The Third Man, and highly recommended.) At first, I took it as a simple amusing conceit about "political correctness gone mad". But since this did all blow up, I've been thinking, and the truth is that this really is what results if you demonize discrimination.

It's what results, in fact, when people don't think clearly. Democracy results in greater freedom than dictatorship. Democracy involves voting. So if we vote for everything we'll be completely free. Unfair prejudice is bad. It results in people discriminating against people on irrelevant grounds. Stop prejudice! End discrimination! And so it goes on. Guns kill people. Guns bad! War bad! No war! Ever! Etc.

I've often thought the "left" are funny. Not funny-peculiar, but just plain laugh-out-loud hilarious (or potentially so, if the results weren't so awful). They pose as our intellectual superiors, but actually everything they do shows them to be, frankly, a bit - literally - simple.


Posted by Sam Duncan at February 1, 2007 01:00 AM

Damn. I've just noticed it's not "sic" at all. The Article has it as "incompitence".


Posted by Sam Duncan at February 1, 2007 03:38 PM
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