Whose Opinion is this is, anyway? - Alcyonenews

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Posted October 7, 2022

Whose Opinion is this is, anyway?

The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Trudeau (Pierre, le pére) copied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, reads:

“Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;

(b)freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.”

In the July 1st column I discuss “fundamental freedom (a)”, the inanity of protecting “conscience and religion”. This is wrong because Religion attacks the mind, especially the tender mind of the young, expressly to supplant dogma for conscience, which is tantamount to putting the fox into the chicken coop. Today I will discuss “fundamental freedom (b)”, focusing on the “freedom of opinion”.

It looks like the UN and the Charter scribes hallucinate about being Don Quixote, ready to protect humanity’s and Canadians’ freedom of opinion. Interestingly “thought, belief, opinion” are akin to each other and all come under the large umbrella of the greatest freedom of them all, the freedom of expression a.k.a. Freedom of Speech. Then what is the fuss about?

There is purpose, really, to freedom of Opinion. It is important to protect , and to encourage the expression of ideas, to get the people to speak out without fear of being “wrong”. I hold the belief that “Every Idea is worth the effort for its evaluation”. And when an idea is not meritorious, the “pink slip” should read: “Please, try again”. This is the good side of “opinion” - its flip side is ugly!

In the words of the OED:

“opinion > a view or judgement not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.”

This means that the UN Declaration and the Charter protect ignorance against knowledge and potential lies against the truth. For when “opinion” is based on “fact or knowledge” additional protection is superfluous.

Then, why opinion is accorded protection by the UN and the Charter?

Simple my dear Watson Sherlock would mumble. They are exploiting its multi-usage of the word to impose on us, the populace, the illogical, the Mighty Conventional Myths, mainly Religion, the most savage of them all. They protect opinions such that the clergy is appointed by God and may at any time invoke his wrath to crush the impious. And the opinions that hurricane, pestilence, tsunami and other calamities are Acts-of-God, provoked by the victims’ insufficient faith in His magnanimity. Then the clergy endorses the status quo thereby rendering the protection of “opinion” into protection of the establishment against democracy.

I will illustrate the above with an episode from my engineering career. A design contract was split between two engineering firms, one to design a large industrial plant; the other, two sizeable dams and a system for delivering the stored water to the plant. The firm I was associated with got to design the latter. When the project was nearing completion, the Engineer for the firm doing the plant expressed to the owner’s Vice President-Engineering the opinion that my design of the pipelines-and-tunnels conveyance system was dangerously deficient. The VP came to me with the bad news. I assured him that my design was good, but he remained worried, due to me being young and the problem highly complex. I offered a solution: a test of the system. The VP grabbed it and the “opinionated” Engineer was left no escape.

On the day of the test we all assembled at the plant. I refused everybody’s pleas and went to sit on the pipe at the entrance to the third tunnel where it would blow up if I had erred. This not because I was macho as much as because I was certain of my design. When the test ran, the pen of the gauge I was monitoring traced the pressure wave better than even I expected. Proud-like-a-cock I drove back to the plant. There was water everywhere and the piping within the mill had all collapsed . Expensive stainless steel pipes up to 4 feet or so in diameter, had to be removed and replaced. The opinion of the opinionated person could no longer be protected for it had ceased to be, it had fallen, blown by the Fact.

The documents of the august entities, the UN and the Canadian Charter, are like a painting as ridiculous as one depicting St. Geogre on his white horse lancing the Maiden to save the Dragon.

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BITS AND BYTES

VOTE PLATO FOR SCHOOL BOARD

“He who is elected minister of education should consider that of all the great offices of state, this is the greatest. For if the first shoot of any plant makes a good start towards attaining its natural excellence, it has the greatest effect on the plant’s maturity. This is also true of men. Man requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature. Then, of all animals, he becomes the most divine and the most civilized. But if he is insufficiently or ill-educated, he is the most savage of earthly creatures. Wherefore, the legislator ought not to allow the education of children to become a secondary or accidental matter.”

Plato, Athens, posted 1,600 years ago.

(Translated by H. L. Drake)