Rosalie Abella's Fears are Not My Fears

As a member of a human family that saw the Holocaust, I feel I have gained the right to expect everyone else to share my fear of intolerance. - Rosalie Abella, repeated in various speeches.

I have been struggling with this statement of Justice Abella's for two days now. I truly do not want to read too much into it, but I keep coming back to the conclusion that this statement is a window into the heart and soul of Rosalie Abella.

Abella asserts that because of her accident of birth, she has gained the right to expect everyone else to share her fear of intolerance.

This is truly a remarkable assertion. We know nothing of the nature, character, or depth of her fear nor do we know what the consequences are for Abella when this fear grips her. We know even less of how she defines intolerance. Yet we are asked to bend our knee to her self proclaimed right to insist that we share her fear.

Now if she were Rosie Abella private citizen, I could say: "Rosie you need to expound further on this fear of yours because frankly I take seriously all human rights and I need to understand more about how you conclude that the circumstances of your birth have vested in you a right to expect me to share your fear of intolerance. How exactly have you gained this right other than through the consequence of birth?

And Rosie, I need to know why you felt you needed to qualify family as a human family. Are you aware of any other kind of family?

As for intolerance Rosie, I am intolerant of people who crash the queue at a bus stop, and I go out of my way to upbraid them for their rudeness. Does my intolerance frighten you? I am also intolerant of people who smoke in no smoking sections, people who say they scored 5 when I know they scored 6 on a par five. Does this frighten you?

I am intolerant of swindlers, liars, cheats, penny stock boiler room operators, pedophiles. As a Christian I think they are all sinners and I am intolerant of sin. I myself am a sinner, and I am intolerant of my own sinfulness. This leads me to seek forgiveness and to repent. In my private and corporate worship I acknowledge my sins and manifold wickedness and I seek to repent of my evil ways. Yet I continue to sin, and the cycle continues - this comes with being human. Does my intolerance of sin strike fear in your heart?

Also could you help me understand what role intolerance played in the Holocaust? I have always believed the Holocaust was the consequence of the unmitigated evil of anti-Semitism; an evil the German nation allowed itself to be enslaved to, an evil that is at the heart of our humanity, in the thrall of which we are all at risk of falling. Our human history is fraught with examples of the evil we inflict upon each other as individuals, tribes and nations. Intolerance seems to me to be another of those words whose true meaning has been hijacked by those who want to elevate disagreement to a higher moral plane.

And by the way Rosie, I was born into a family of dirt poor immigrant prairie farmers, whose grandparents escaped subsistence living and possible starvation to come to Canada. Does this give me the right to expect everyone to share my fear of hunger? I have friends who were born into Mennonite families who escaped the horrors of Stalinist Russia where starvation and a knock on the door by a communist soldier could spell death; do they have the right to expect everyone to share their fear of socialism?

Now if Rosie and I failed to come to agreement on those rights we each have claimed through the accident of our birth, or on the meaining of intolerance or fear for that matter, I expect we could as persons of good faith and intention, simply agree to disagree and our relationship whatever it was prior to the discussion, would continue unaffected.

Alas, Rosie is about to become one of 9 jurists whose role it is to interpret rights within the context of the Charter of Rights. Whatever Rosie might be able to persuade the majority of her fellow judges to accept as being in the nature of a right in law, will be a right no matter how much you or I disagree with it. That is until we succeed in electing a government that believes in governing and is not fearful of implementing the notwithstanding clause to remedy perverse judcial reasoning.

I believe she is saying that because she is Jewish and the child of Holocaust survivors, the enormity of the evil perpetrated against her family gives her special status both to discern the root of that evil which she calls intolerance and of which she is thus legitimately fearful, and the right to expect everyone to share her fear.

This strikes me as both muddled and dangerous thinking. First it appears to ignore the reality of evil in the hearts of men, and to attribute the Holocaust to intolerance, a terrible slander of a morally neutral word.

Second, it suggests that a member of a family that personally experienced the Holocaust is qualified not only to know the root cause of that genocidal evil, but also entitled to have everyone share in that belief. This ignores the reality of the fallen nature of all mankind, Holocaust survivors and their progeny included. Surely there are members of families who personally experienced the Holocaust whose opinion any person with an ounce of wisdom would dismiss out of hand. An accident of birth bestows no such exalted status as Abella claims for herself.

My fear is that Rosalie Abella brings to the Supreme Court a quick but uncalibrated mind. It is a mind that suffers from a degree of distemper as a consequence of a false understanding of the entitlement devolving from her birth to parents who survived the unspeakable horrors of Treblinka.

In short I fear Rosie Abella in her judicial reasoning will display little tolerance for the intolerance that must underpin any belief that "Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law." Since those are the words of the preamble to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there are serious implications for all Canadians if my fear is well founded.