"So Timmy...do you like to watch movies about...
gladiators?"
Posted on 12/08/2005 4:50:36 AM PST by FerdieMurphy
While flying on Qantas Airlines, New Zealander Mark Worsley was asked to change his seat. You see, the airline viewed him as a threat to the child seated next to him. What was Mr. Worsley’s crime? Was he on a sex-offenders database? Far from it.
The shipping manager and father of two-year-old twins was the victim of a blanket policy, adopted by Qantas and Air New Zealand, whereby they prohibit all men from sitting next to children traveling alone. Said a shocked Worsley,
“At the time I was so gobsmacked that I moved. I was so embarrassed and just stewed on it for the entire flight.”
Now, it raised my ire too, but before I proceed I want to issue a couple of disclaimers. Firstly, as I have expounded upon at length in the past, respecting freedom of association is an imperative. Thus, I defend businesses’ right to embrace whatever policy they wish, regardless of how conspicuously stupid it may be. We then can decide whether or not we should patronize businesses that practice stupidity.
Next, when such liberal nonsense assaults one’s senses, there’s a tendency to react emotionally and dismiss such policies with a facile, knee-jerk response involving notions about how all discrimination and drawing of distinctions between groups are wrong. This is a mistake, however, because such pronouncements create an environment that doesn’t allow for policies and practices – such as comprehensive profiling (including racial factors) – that reflect the effects and implications of legitimate differences between groups. When a group is over-represented in a category of crime, for instance, it is folly to disallow law enforcement and others from considering that reality when prosecuting their duties.
And, ironically, for the first time I’m aware of this fact was not lost on a liberal. New South Wales “Commissioner for Children and Young People” (leading candidate for the “Unnecessary Office of the Year” award) Gillian Calvert said,
“It's a really difficult situation for men because it's only a few men who do this sort of stuff, but when they do it they diminish all men.”
She was joined in her acceptance of the policy by New Zealand Children's Commissioner (I was wrong, the aforementioned office could be number two) Cindy Kiro, who commended the airlines for putting thought into the policy and endeavoring to protect children.
Now, what these statists imply is true enough, most sex-offenders are men. But it’s also true that virtually all the terrorists who bedevil Western civilization are Moslem and that minorities commit an inordinate percentage of crime. Yet, I can’t imagine these liberal bureaucrats rubber-stamping policies designed to minimize crime that visited discrimination upon them. Why, we’re told that we can’t even subject Moslems to greater scrutiny at airports.
So, while this is not a policy I would institute under any circumstances, it isn’t its wrongheadedness itself that angers me. No, in fact, as I was pondering my feelings (as opposed to my thoughts) on the issue, I realized something. If this policy were embraced within the context of a society unencumbered by the insane and inane sickness of political-correctness, a civilization wherein group differences were recognized, acknowledged and factored into policy across-the-board, my attitude would be markedly different. Sure, I would still think it stupid, but I’d be able to laugh it off as just so much foolishness. I can’t do that now, though, because evident in this situation is hypocrisy, the acceptance of an unjust double-standard and discrimination of a most invidious sort.
The discrimination that irks me, however, is not what most would think. For the injustice lies not in the fact that they’re applying a standard that prescribes discrimination, but in the fact that they refuse to apply that discriminatory standard to all groups. In other words, it is not being said that all groups’ level and type of criminality and characteristic foibles, perversions, aberrant choices, strengths and weaknesses may rightly influence the treatment they receive. No, there’s an asterisk here. We’ve been told that it’s best to not even fancy that there could be group differences. And you definitely must not give voice to such ideas. Most importantly, do not under any circumstances make laws, regulations or policy based on such Neanderthal notions*.
*Some exceptions may apply.
So, profiling Moslems at airports? Never. Profiling minorities when prudent? Are you racist? Refusing to hire cross-dressers? Are you intolerant? Excluding women from police forces? Are you sexist? Equality, equality, equality, equality, equality, have you got that? Repeat after me: E-QUAL-I-TY. Simon says do this, and if you don’t, you’re a bad person.
Profiling men, painting them with the same dark brush, and discriminating against them whenever doing so is convenient for our fair-haired-boy groups? Haven’t you been paying attention*?
In a nutshell, if society had proclaimed the principle that undergirds this discrimination to be just, we would simply be left to argue about whether or not this is a correct application of the principle. But that is not the case. What is being said is that the principle is wrong, but we’re going to apply it to men anyway.
But far more serious than such double-standards is one of their implications. Enlightened minds long ago came to the realization that all people, being as they are “people,” must be afforded certain inalienable human rights. For instance, our Bill of Rights states that everyone is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And while there may be some disagreement as to what the full set of human rights comprises, it follows that whatever a civilization’s conception of it is, it will afford those “human rights” to all groups whose members are regarded to meet the definition of the word “human.” This is why there is such a passionate debate concerning the point at which unborn babies become human. After all, if they are human, then they must be afforded the human right to life. If the human right to life can be rightly be denied them, then it follows that they are not human. Abortion becomes unpalatable and unjustifiable once the conclusion is drawn that what would be killed is a human being. Furthermore, if those advocating abortion are correct, then the babies’ sub-human status justifies their pro-abortion position. If, however, they are wrong, then their position dehumanizes unborn babies.
And this is precisely why I assert that the policy at hand dehumanizes men. Liberals cannot justify this policy on the basis that men exhibit an inordinate degree of criminality in this area, for they have made it eminently clear that such a factor does not justify discrimination that affects a group as a whole. Moreover, as illustrated earlier, liberals have been so adamant in their furtherance of this anti-discrimination principle that it is obvious that they regard freedom from such discrimination to be an element in their set of human rights. If that isn’t so, then on what logical basis do they so vociferously maintain that so-called racial-profiling is wrong? Thus, to subject men to this sort of supposedly damnable discrimination is to deny them something that is perceived by the powers-that-be as a human right. And to deny a group a human right is to dehumanize its members.
This conclusion may seem like an overstatement, but logic renders it inescapable. We know that everyone has a right to not be raped or murdered (Note: murder is defined as the “unjust killing of a human being”). But what if, despite our embrace of that principle, we were to say that such could be visited on one particular group? The answer is that if the principle stating that everyone has a human right to not be raped or murdered is sincerely held, there is one and only one possibility: that group has been assigned sub-human status.
So it is with men here. If the principle stating that it’s a human right that a group not be discriminated against based on the criminality of a minority of its members is sincerely held, there is only one possibility: men have been assigned sub-human status.
Now, I don’t believe for a moment that such a principle is a human right, but I don’t make the rules. Of course, the reason why liberal “principles” (Can those governed by emotion have principles?) are so frequently violated is that they so infrequently work. But if liberals believe their “human right” is valid, they should stand on principle and apply it equitably. If it’s invalid, common-sense should prevail and it should be cast to the winds.
But I won’t hold my breath waiting for liberals to develop principle or common-sense. This man doesn’t want to be reduced to dead human status.
_______
Note: I lodged complaints with Air New Zealand and Qantas. Qantas’ response included, among other things, “We make no apology for working within the guidelines of this policy.”
In a nutshell.
Note: I lodged complaints with Air New Zealand and Qantas. Qantas’ response included, among other things, “We make no apology for working within the guidelines of this policy.”
>>
We make no apologies for refusing landing rights to Kiwi-Nazis who discriminate unlawfully in violation of American law.
Absolutely in a nutshell.
Yeah, and what do you do when that 'business' you'd rather not patronize turns out be government? In many quasi-socoalist utopias, the state effectively controls and regulates most business sectors.
I sure this is a real issue for some Don Quixote, but who the h$ll wants to sit next to kids on a flight anyway. I would rather visit the dentist than sit next to brats on a flight.
Excellent peice of writing.
I would like to know of the author, is he by chance cauacasion and would the same action have been taken if he were say "not white?" If so, would this have been discrimination (against a minority)?
Dead on.
Actually, the same principle is applied to certain other groups even if a majority of its members are criminal. As in: "Not all ______ are criminals, so it's wrong to treat the group as if they are."
A good example being rap "artists." I suspect a majority of them are indeed criminals.
I would much rather sit next to my wife in the seat next to an exit where there is some leg room. Either that or the bulkhead. Leg room means more to me than the person sitting next to me.As for men being considered unsafe sitting next to kids its fine with me if they sit the kid next to a woman, unless they are my own I would just as soon they were down the aisle anyway.
The dilemma that led directly to our civil war. "All men are created equal" and slavery cannot exist indefinitely together in the same system.
Either you must exclude some men from the definition of "men," or you must abandon either the principle of human equality or the institution of slavery.
Good. Well, then put all the women in seats next to crying, screaming babies too.
Good article.
But that also goes for extremely fat people who overflow their seats into mine, pencil-neck geeks who insist on telling me all about their jobs, blatant homosexuals who just creep me out, really ugly people, Muslims of any type or appearance, people who ate garlic wings before they boarded the plane, evangelistic people who want to explain to me why only people who go to their church are Christians, politically-deluded college kids, glassy-eyed middle-aged "progressives" with gray pony tails, or Geeks in Suits with a Gordon Gecko complex who can't put away their laptops, order a drink and just chill out to they get back on the ground.
Victoria's Secret models are OK. There are others, too, I suppose. Damn, I wish I made the rules!
Liberalism is a mental disease.
Kids might be unsafe sitting next to me. If they are uncontrollably fidgety (the way I used to be), I might toss 'em off the plane without a parachute.
And in addition, aren't the airlines the ones who set up the seating in the first place?
If they're so sensitive, you'd think they would flag the child's name on their computer to get the seating arrangement they want and not totally embarrass a person aboard the flight.
But then that would be unnecessary, since the embarrassed party would be a MAN.
Why not move the kid rather than the man?
ROTFLMAO
Underlying this "policy" is an offensive prejudice against men. The assumption being that any man is a potential child molester.
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