Author / William Gairdner

by William Gairdner

How Ideology Perverts the Teaching of Law

In 1990, the year my book The Trouble With Canada was published and, to my surprise, became a best seller, I was invited by the Queen’s University Grad Students’ Law Society to participate in a public debate with Professor Sheila MacIntyre, then a prominent radical feminist law professor.

Whether or not Professor MacIntyre is “teaching” at Queen’s is an open question; because you cannot say someone is really teaching if she advances only her own preferences and biases in the readings and lectures she provides to her students.

When I was teaching at York University in the 1970s, some of the courses I taught included segments on ideological topics such as Marxism, Existentialism, Psychology, and so on. I always tried to present all sides of each question. But some of the students would protest, and on whatever the issue of the day may have been, would ask plaintively: “But Sir … What do you think?”

I always answered: “I am not telling you until after the course has ended. It’s my job to explain all sides as best I can. It is your job to think deeply about these things and then make up your own mind as to the best answer(s) to these questions.” This response always upset them a little. But by the end of the course, they could see why it was the best for their own intellectual development.

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by William Gairdner

On The Radicalism of The Humanist Manifesto

Below, Discourse Online contributor, William Gairdner, provides a Summary of The Humanist Manifesto (Parts I 1933, and II, 1973), with some brief comments of his own in square brackets.

Everyone concerned about the perceived decline of the West, should know what this Manifesto preached – and preaches still.

Although it is a highly self-contradictory document and of low intellectual value, The Humanist Manifesto clearly sums up the entire philosophy of “secular humanism” that is today so much in the air. It has been signed by hundreds of influential intellectual and political figures such as John Dewey, Issac Asimov, Sir Herman Bondi, Sidney Hook, Sir Alfred Ayer, B.F. Skinner, and Sir Julian Huxley; by feminists such as Betty Friedan, by economists such as Gunnar Myrdal, architect of the Swedish Welfare State, and of course by the Sex-Ed Mafia, Professor Lester Kirkendall, Alan Guttmacher, and Canadian abortionist Henry Morgentaler, past President of the Humanist Association of Canada.

I used the word “preaches”, because the signatories refer to themselves as “religious humanists” –  founders of a new “vital, frank, and fearless religion capable of furnishing adequate social goals and personal satisfactions” to the world. The essence of this “religion,” which denies any supernatural reality – is the worship of man himself – the God-man.

What follows is an abbreviated list of their founding beliefs in their own words. Reflect upon them; even though very few teachers have ever heard of this manifesto, many of these values and beliefs are today being transmitted to children in most of the public schools of the land, as matters of fact, through the process of infusion. And of course, they are spread by media and entertainment folk of all sorts. They are especially powerfully communicated via the highly-charged medium of Sex-Ed, if not by intent, then by consensus.

Recall that as early as 1925 there were over 1,000 U.S. schools actively involved in “progressive education”, much of it steered by people in complete sympathy with the views listed below. The thousands of teachers in these schools, and the Teacher’s Colleges that trained them, constituted a vast unofficial network for the promotion of so-called “humanist” values, via the media, the bureaucracy, and the law – even though the vast majority of humans in the Western world have never abandoned their strongly held Judeo-Christian values – ones utterly in conflict with this so-called religious-humanism.

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by William Gairdner

The Feminist Pay-Equity Scam

Almost everyone misunderstands so-called “pay-equity.” They think it is a fair-sounding idea that basically says any two human beings, regardless of gender, should be paid the same if they do the same work. But pay-equity is not about that at all.

The principle of paying people the same wage for the same work has long since been accepted as fair by almost everyone; (although some economists still say that even this custom limits the freedom of individuals to offer their services for less, if they so desire, and is thus a form of minimum-wage legislation that discriminates against the very poor). But radical feminists are not satisfied with the rule that women and men must be paid the same wage for the same work. They want them to be paid the same for different work; if they can show that different kinds of work have the same “value.”

For example, if a government consultant can show that a female computer-operator’s job has the same “value” as a male truck-driver’s job, then the government will order that the two must be paid the same. Presto – gender equality in the market place! But there’s a twist, of course: this applies only to women. If he makes more than she does, she can complain to the government, get the “value” of her job assessed in her favour and then force her boss to pay her the same as the truck driver. But if she makes more than he does, he cannot use the same argument to force his boss to pay him the same as her! But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s backtrack for a minute.

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by William Gairdner

Can Democracy be Moral?

The following is a slightly edited version of a previously published essay by Canadian thinker and author, William Gairdner. Discourse Online is pleased to have Bill’s permission to reprint significant pieces of his work that appear on his website.

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I have been thinking a lot lately about the distinction that seems to have been lost between a democracy conceived as a corporate body of individuals devoted to the good of all, and a democracy conceived as a collection, or an aggregate of individuals concerned mostly for their own good.

The most fundmental principle of direct popular democracy is that even if the will of the people runs dead against a Member of Parliament’s personal conscience, he or she must nevertheless express that will.

Such logic compels us to ask: So why not just pick a rep out of the phone book? For that matter, why pick anyone? Why don’t the people just send a letter to a vote-counting parliamentary computer by overnight courier? The answer leads straight to a conflict between two irreconcilable views of truth under democracy:

Permanent Truth
Politicians who consider themselves leaders, rather than delegates, will take the classical conservative view, as outlined from ancients such as Plato to moderns such as T.S.Eliot. As distinct from their modern finger-in-the-wind counterparts, such conservatives believe that the greatest moral truths of life are absolute, permanent, and unchanging. There are enduring values that must be discovered through reflection and experience, and relied upon by wise leaders. Once discovered, and only then, the proper political and moral judgements can be made, unaffected by how many might vote this way, or that, on Monday or Tuesday. Moral truth, in other words, like “two plus two equals four,” cannot be altered by voting.

Popular Truth
Unlike a leader, the delegate sees him or herself as empowered to express the will of the people, which is equated with what is desirable and good. Soon, pleasing the masses at every opportunity by removing all restraints on their will becomes the highest priority; not incidentally because it results in reaping a corresponding popularity. Technical methods such as electronic town halls facilitate such direct expressions of mass desire.

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