Unhappy Coincidences

In the nineteen-fifties, my summer job was with the federal Department of Transport, Air Regulations. All of the inspectors in the office had been pilots during the Second World War.

One of them told me he never returned from a mission with a load of bombs, the danger of explosion on landing too great. The usual recourse was to drop them in the English Channel. This inspector said he preferred to drop them anywhere on German soil.

Sitting in a coffee shop recently, I got into conversation with an elderly woman. She told be she had spent the war in her home town in northern Germany, a place of no strategic value. The locals got so used to the allied aircraft, they could tell from the sound of the engines if it still carried a load of bombs.

One night, they heard a aircraft returning from an abortive raid on Berlin. The sound of the engines told them it still carried bombs. The bombs were dropped on a nearby town, killing, she said, several thousand people who became part of the 400,000 civilians killed by Allied bombing during that war.

Another such coincidence occurred at a house party in Toronto in 1984. One guest told us that it was on this very night forty years earlier that Canadian bombers destroyed her city. A few minutes later, in another room, I saw a friend I knew flew a bomber during the war. He said he was sad because it was on this very night forty years earlier that his best friend was killed in a bombing mission over Germany.

They Had Real Heroes Then

On listening to an piano concerto by Franz Liszt, I was reminded that he and his friend Frederic Chopin were once the idols of Paris. In the early 19th century, they were lionized in salons as well as concert halls, most likely in cafés. Women adored and pursued them. Their talent and creativity placed them among the great and worthy of the era.

Today, the objects of pursuit are over-paid athletes, limited-talent film stars, and no-talent rock musicians, the majority of whom soon fade from public consciousness. Mere entertainers have replaced creative painters, composers and performers in popular esteem.

A composer makes more money writing a jingle for a commercial than for a symphony, an artist for a corporate logo, or an actor for a product endorsement. Too often must creativity demean itself in order to survive.

The general populace is always in search of heroes. Is today's crowd searching in all the wrong places? Have we failed to produce men and women worthy of great praise? Or has our education system failed to develop in us appreciation for things that matter?

Questionable Polling

A copy of this post sent to The Globe and Mail editor and to Nanos Research. No reply.

The latest example of questionable polling comes from The Globe and Mail and Nanos Research (June 21, 2010). Note each word in this finely-crafted question: Should people who receive Canadian aid internationally enjoy greater, the same, or less access to safe abortions than people in Canada?

Beware of questions beginning with the entrapment word should, especially if followed by options implying free choice. Such is not the case here.

The Globe seems unaware that abortion is illegal in many countries receiving Canadian aid. To impose outside values on poor countries is yet another example of rich nation imperialism.

Sidebar: The Globe, as with most of the common media, has yet to acknowledge the correlation between today's elementary school closings and the number of abortions a decade ago.

The question goes on to ask if recipient people should enjoy access to abortion. The subliminal message is that women enjoy destroying the life inside them.

Excluded from the question are those who favour some restrictions to abortion access, such as most Canadians. At the outset, the pollster determined if the interviewee agreed with abortion. If not, there's the end of the call, and the beginning of the bias. The Globe and Nik Nanos then extrapolate these questionable data from 1,008 calls into a national consensus.

In fact, the purpose of the poll is to intimidate the federal government into aligning its foreign aid policy with that of the pro-abortion newspaper.

Note: A December 30, 2011, report in the Toronto Star begins: "Canada's polling industry could be in for a shakeup in 2012, after some major knocks to its reputation in 2011." Ipsos senior vice-president John Wright admitted, "We are distorting our democracy, confusing voters and destroying what should be a source of truth in election campaigns -- unbiased, truly scientific public opinion poll." And the media are part of the problem, the report continues.

Christianity Replaced Paganism

Letter to the Toronto Star published December 31, 2011

In her letter, Religions evolve over centuries (Dec 28), Anita Dermer writes that Christianity adopted various mythologies of other cultures. However, Christianity didn't adopt pagan mythologies, it replaced them.

In the absence of examples, I presume she is referring to Christmas. The common error in this regard is with the timing of Christmas festivities.

During the persecutions in Rome, Christians celebrated their feast days at the same time as the pagans simply to avoid detection. Thus Christmas coincided with the Roman Saturnalia. Christians were hiding in full view. The persecutions stopped, the timing stayed,

The pagan god Woden was replaced by Father Christmas. These are not doctrinal but cultural changes, based on the fact that, if you end a pagan tradition, replace with something of greater value. That's what happened.

Tricks of Shopping Malls

Notice the absence of clocks in your favourite shopping mall. Shoppers who do not know the time linger longer, and spend more.

What little seating there is, is designedly  uncomfortable. That's because seated customers are not spending customers.

Exit signs are the minimum required by fire regulations. Customers headed for the exit are not spending customers.

Santa Claus has been exiled from Toronto's Eaton Centre. Formerly, the lines of parents and children weaved up and down the length of the mall. And we know that parents in line are not buying customers. Since his presence hindered money making, exit Santa, enter an illuminated reindeer.

Also at the Eaton Centre, half of the information posts face the wrong direction, and give misleading information. This, I believe, was accidental. Nevertheless, a misdirected customer passes more retail outlets, and likely to spend more.

Research has shown that uncomfortable customers buy more impulsively. That's why many malls are over-heated and endlessly play the same caroly music.

A U.S. Shoot 'em Up

It usually takes three of a kind to establish a pattern. Here are two of a kind from the United States, apparently on the same day. Yet they establish a pattern.

A U.S. soldier was shot at his homecoming party in San Bernardino, California. He had just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan where he survived a suicide bombing. Police said that the victim's brother and a partygoer got into an argument over football teams. When the soldier intervened, the partygoer pulled a gun and opened fire. The veteran is permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

Another report tells of seven people all of the same family found shot to death in a Dallas apartment. Six of the dead were opening Christmas presents when the shooting began. Police believe the shooter to be among the dead. They also found two handguns. Police said, "We think he was just inside there celebrating Christmas with the rest of them and decided for whatever reason that's how he's going to end things."

The pattern is the total absence in such reports of the need for gun control. Such is the hold of the National Rifle Association -- the lobbying arm of gun and munitions manufacturers. Such is the mind-boggling interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment.

IKEA

To be sung to the tune, more or less, of Maria from The West Side Story

The most beautiful sound I ever heard,

All the beautiful sounds of the world
in a single word, IKEA.

I just found a store named IKEA
And suddenly my world
Will never be the same to me, IKEA

I just found a store named IKEA
And suddenly I found
How wonderful shopping can be, IKEA.

Go down aisle twelve, there's music playing;

Check out Bin Four, you’ll be saving. IKEA

I'll never stop saying IKEA
IKEA, IKEA...IKEA

Sing it loud and there's elevator music playing.
Sing it soft and it's almost like praying. IKEA

I'll never stop singing IKEA
The most beautiful sound I ever heard.

IKEA

A Crash Course in Class-Action Nonsense

A class-action lawsuit has been authorized by a Quebec court against Air Canada, a company in business transporting people and goods. The airline charges for each seat passengers occupy.

In this action, obese people claim it discriminatory to be charged for the two seats one of them needs to occupy. About 15 people have already joined the suit that seeks $1,000 for pain, suffering or inconvenience, plus an additional $500 for punitive and exemplary damages. The instigating lawyer invites people with a medical condition to join the suit which also claimed as discriminatory the airline charging for two seats when the ill person requires a companion on the trip.

Back in 1957,  Midgets of America demanded: half fare, two in a seat for half-fare, free rides in "big people's" laps if they are willing, or free rides in over-head racks in exchange for entertaining other passengers. It is not reported how this issue was resolved.

Air Canada, like any other carrier, offers the public aircraft with seats of fixed dimensions to anyone who can fit into them. The company may lose money on give-away seats. Samoa Air has a part-solution. The fare is determined by the combined weight of passenger and baggage. The missing part is the need for two seats for one passenger.

May an obese person sue a taxi company because he cannot fit through the car door? May someone with a medical condition sue a rail or coach line because they cannot accommodate necessary medical devices? In Michigan, a blind Muslim woman uses a seeing-eye pony, because some Muslims believe that dogs "violate ritual purity." May this person sue local bus operators if her animal cannot fit on their vehicle?

"It's a violation of fundamental rights to discriminate against people with [medical] deficiencies," the lawyers state. The question remains: When did it become a fundamental right to fly Air Canada or any other airline, railroad, bus, limousine or rickshaw?

Human Rights Decisions and Other Mischief

The Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered Coffee Time owner, Sien Yian Tay, to pay Zuper Direk $15,000. The crime? The operator called Direk a "gypsy" as the latter badmouthed the coffee to other customers. The Commission decision itself smacks of racial discrimination. How would a member of Roma, i.e.Gypsy, regard the calling another person a member of his race an insult?

Other recent decision of equal wrongheadedness.

A Federal Court judge, Madame Justice Marie-Josée Bédard, ordered Air Canada to pay Michel and Lynda Thibodeau $12,000. Air Canada failed to provide the aggrieved couple with services in French. The learned judge decided that the violation of the plaintiffs' rights "caused them a moral prejudice, pain and suffering, and loss of enjoyment of the vacation".

A New Brunswick appellate court dismissed two drunk driving charges against an Acadian francophone. The arresting officer spoke to the accused in English, despite hearing his strong French accent, and later gave him a roadside breathalyzer test which he failed. Thirty minutes later the accused was asked his preferred language. The appellate court ruled that the thirty-minute delay constituted a violation of the drunk driver's rights. Even courts can make strange judgements.

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal ordered the Brampton Youth Hockey Association to pay sisters Robyn and Shaunna Demars $18,000. Tribunalist Judith Hinchman found that the association prevented the girls from using the boys' dressing room, and failed to find a suitable room elsewhere.

The Quebec Human Rights Commission ordered a condominium board to pay Marise Myrand $10,000. The board discriminated against Myrand in not taking the parking spot of a woman in her 60s who suffers from a dislocated shoulder, and give it to her. Commission lawyer Pierre-Yves Bourdeau said, "It's reasonable accommodation" to displace an elderly handicapped woman for an obese one. The condo lawyer observed that the Commission has established a hierarchy of handicaps.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered Mississauga businesswoman Maxcine Telfer to pay $36,000 to Seema Saadi, an employee of six weeks. Saadi said she felt pressured to wear skirts rather than her hijab, and Telfer complained about the smell of food she warmed in the microwave. Saadi was fired. Her complaint was discrimination "on grounds of race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, ethnic origin, disability and sex". Her lawyers. operating at tax-payer expense, obtained a writ of seizure of Telfer's home to collect the money.

The Ontario Superior Court quashed the conviction and ordered a new hearing before a different tribunal officer. The Court said, it was "simply not possible to logically follow the pathway taken by the adjudicator." It found nine points in which the adjudicator failed to provide a fair hearing, or made legal errors. For example, the adjudicator did not give Telfer the opportunity to call a key witness who would have testified about Saadi's choice of clothing, and her "unauthorized intrusions into other people's desks, and missing files." (The silencing of material witnesses is a technique borrowed from the courts in Burma.)

It's depressing to thank of the result had the businesswoman not the resources this appeal this wrong-headed decision.

And this, according to Barbara Hall, in her fading time as Ontario Chief Human Rights Commissioner, is only "the tip of the iceberg". The good ship Common Sense has already struck the Barbara Hall iceberg.

How much injustice remains uncorrected when the accused cannot afford to appeal the adjudicator's judgement? On the other hand, the complainant's legal fees, even on appeal, are paid by the taxpayer.

Fines levied should go into general revenue, not to the "aggrieved". This would result in a much lower number of complaints. The net result would be that these commissions would no longer be viewed by the public as an easy source of tax-free money.

Conrad Black has observed, "I doubt if the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] accomplished much substantially beyond unleashing Canada's under-qualified judges to meddle open-endedly in social animation."

Christianity and Diversity

Letter published in the National Post, December 3, 2011

As usual, Rex Murphy presents readers with insightful comment (What the tolerant must tolerate, Nov. 26). Murphy points out that "there is a radical inconsistency to the treatment afforded to Christian believers and that of most other religious groups."

We constantly hear appeals for tolerance. The question remains -- Why does it not apply to Christians? Why does diversity not include Christianity? Too much contemporary behaviour seeks to obliterate our Christian heritage.

In Canadian media, the National Post stands out as a giant among pygmies in its coverage of religious, particularly Christian, matters.

Church and State

Unpublished email to the National Post, Dec 5, 2011

Gagan Rehill (Letter, Dec.5) writes that the U.S. Constitution "clearly stated the separation of church and state". Not even remotely so. Nowhere in the Constitution does that expression appear. The First Amendment speaks to the protect churches against governmental interference, that is, against the establishment of a church.

Later judicial distortions of this obvious meaning gave rise to the American concept of separation of church and state. Fortunately, it is irrelevant in Canada where we do not get into the nitpicking about such matters.

Mr. Rehill should know that the first to advocate recognition of the duality of church and state was Jesus when he said, "Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar -- and to God what belongs to God." Is it because they do not believe in God that atheists are unable to acknowledge this distinction?

Bombs From an Earlier Generation

An unexploded bomb dropped by the Allied air force during World War Two has this week been defused in the German city of Koblenz. In 1997, the President of Germany was forced out of his residence due to the discovery of unexploded ordinance under the presidential palace. Soon after that, thousands of residents of Hanover were evacuated while another bomb was defused.

Given that 2,000 tonnes of bombs and munitions are found each year in Germany, there is nothing unusual in this. Some of these air raids consisted of up to 3,000 bombers -- American by day, British and Canadian by night.

Sixty-five years after the last bomb was dropped during the Second World War, danger still lurks. There are areas of France which have yet to be cleared of First World War ordinance.

It's poignant to reflect that some of those bombs were manufactured in Toronto, dropped from aircraft made in Toronto, and flown by young men from Toronto.

Unexploded German bombs continue to be uncovered in England. The Imperial War Museum estimates that of the 19,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on London during the Blitz of 1940-41, 10 per cent did not explode, much of it remains buried somewhere in the city.

People, not then born, live today with a legacy of possible sudden death bequeathed to them by people likely no longer alive.

A legacy of the First World War continues to take lives one century later. During one of the epic battles at Ypres in Belgium, the British alone fired more than four million shells into the German lines. An estimated 30 per cent of those shells were duds or slipped deep into the ground unexploded, causing two or three deaths of local villagers a year. Farmers refuse to plough their fields, for fear a blade must strike a shell. Curiously, this ordinance rises ever so slightly as time goes by..

We have cause to worry at home as well. In April 2014, a 105-millimetre live shell was found on the land of the Enoch Cree First Nation west of Edmonton, Alberta. From 1942 to 1944, part of this land was used by the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan to teach Allied crews navigation and bombing techniques.

Medieval Education

In a recent report (Deliver us from the universities), National Post columnist George Jonas wrote that the "origin of schools and scholars is ecclesiastical, not liberal." This implies a difference, if not a dichotomy, between ecclesiastical and liberal.

History illustrates otherwise. In the Western World, the liberal arts began in Catholic institutions. Refusal to acknowledge this fact still handicaps victims of the Enlightenment who speak of "bookish monks looking for heresy", and use the word medieval as a pejorative.

What was actually taught in these places of learning?

Erasmus (1466-1536): "The task of fashioning the young includes instilling a love for, and thorough knowledge of, the liberal arts."

Required reading for Thomas More (1478-1535) while at Oxford included Aristotle, Boethius, Cicero and Ovid.

The curriculum of the sixth century cathedral schools consisted of the seven liberal arts. Boethius (475-525) listed them: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.

Bicycle Safety

Email to the Toronto Star. Unpublished

Re Woman killed when bike collides with large truck, Nov. 8 (2011):

There are ways of reducing such tragedies. One would require the installation of turn signals every two or three meters along the sides of large vehicles, and that they be operated well in advance of the intersection where the driver intends to turn. Similarly with cars, turn signals should be incorporated into the outside rear mirrors. And rear turn signals should be mounted on the roof corners of cars, as with the DS model of the French Citroen.

Food Engineering

A November 2, 2001 newspaper report tells of food experiments in the American military. "The U.S. army wants its soldiers on the battlefield alert and performing well," the report begins. "Our mission it to assure the U.S. fighters are the best fed in the world."

Soldiers receive a variety of foods, from caffeinated meat sticks to baked goods containing omega-3 acids. The latter reduce bad cholesterol while increasing good cholesterol, we are told. The caffeine would keep them alert. Another experiment involves a complex carbohydrate called maltodextrin. This source of "extra energy" is served in apple sauce, dubbed Zapplesauce."

Is this the cold hand of big business directing the Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center of Massachusetts? In time, soldiers coming home from war may be addicted to these concoctions.

Coming soon to a grocery shelf near you will be "nutritious and battle-tested (fill in product name)."

On the other hand, this food manipulation may be kept secret in order to get the public addicted to certain products. Business interests have already successfully lobbied governments to enact laws to keep consumers unaware of food products that have been genetically modified. These same interests may keep the public ignorant as to which products are laced with caffeine, Omega-3 acids, maltodextrin, or whatever.

Note: The European Union proposed that sugar and fat content be included on food labels. This initiative was snuffed out by food industry lobbyists.

Indian Residential Schools

Email to the Toronto Star, October 31, 2011, Not published.

Re A century of RCMP ignorance (Oct 30):

Media reports of the Indian residential schools has left the general public with the belief that 150,000 aboriginal children were "torn" from their families, "forced to lose their culture", "brutally punished",  and "sexually abused." Without minimizing what harm was done, there is an untold aspect to the story.

The Mt. Elgin Indian Residential School in south western Ontario was built in 1849 by an Ojibway chief, Peter Jones, also a Methodist minister. Jones visited England to raise building funds, while local aboriginals donated land for the school and model farm. As there was no federal government at that time, the school was totally church-financed.

Mt. Elgin and other schools in the area were located on land donated by Aboriginals. School was a short walk from home. Attendance required no compulsion.

Chief Jones intended that classes be taught in English. No talk or fear of "cultural genocide."

The James Bay treaty, among other treaties, was signed by Indian chiefs who realized the benefits of a European education. They knew the operative language was English -- the common language among children of different tribes. To state the signatories were unaware of what they were doing smacks of paternalism.

Discipline in these schools differed little from that in public and parochial schools of the time.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been informed that some of the sexual abuse was perpetrated by senior students and band elders.

Lea Meadows, a worker in human rights and conflict management for 20 years, and an Aboriginal, wrote in the Calgary Herald that her mother's time in a residential school "included some of the happiest days of her life," that her education helped her through university where she became a teacher, and that she returned to teach at a residential school "to provide the same opportunity for other aboriginal girls and boys".

Common media opposition to the contrary, it is also to be hoped the Commission learns of those who benefited from their residential school experience.

The Feast of Life - a Prayer

Dear God, thank you for the feast of life
You have spread before us.
Grant us the courage and strength
To drink deeply the wine of joy,
To savour fully the fruits of the earth, and
To enjoy completely the friendships we have created.

Bombardier versus the Taxpayer

Since 1982, Bombardier Inc. has received over $1-billion in government grants and loans.

According to Andrew Coyne writing in Maclean's, Bombardier is not in the aircraft business. "It's business is collecting subsidies. The aircraft are effectively loss leaders, sweeteners thrown in to keep the supply of government funds coming ..." The cost of these subsidies is borne by the taxpayer.

The company recently posted notices of dividends. One would think the government to demand re-payment of this corporate welfare before the company is allowed to distribute profits to shareholders.

To the extent that dividends are paid, to that extent the taxpayer is subsidising the company's shareholders.

Government Attacks on the Family

The first principle of society consists in the marriage bond, the next in children. So declared Cicero 2,000 years ago. As the basic unit of society, the family plays the primary role in education. So declares the Charter of the United Nations.

Historically, education began in the home, then with private tutors, eventually with teaching institutions operated by non-governmental secular and religious organizations. Government is a late-comer to this process.

A public servant of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) bearing the title "co-ordinating superintendent, equitable and inclusive schools" recently published and distributed student planners to Grade Two pupils. Among other topics, the planner referred to prostitution, female circumcision, Dyke marches and Palestinian solidarity.

On the provincial level, Ontario Transportation Minister (and former Education Minister) Kathleen Wynne, a lesbian, uses her office to promote a curriculum that teaches sexual orientation in Grade Three, masturbation in Grade Six, anal intercourse in Grade Seven.

Premier Dalton McGuinty approves of men prancing naked down our main streets, and on parade floats rubbing their genitals, and simulating anal sex. Under the guise of “equity,” the Ontario government urges schools to participate in the Pride parades.

From the TDSB text book Are You A Boy Or A Girl?

Page 44: Read some traditional folktales and fairy tales with the class. Have students write/illustrate their own "gender bending" versions.

Page 53: The class discusses the the significance of Toronto's annual Pride Week celebrations.

Pages 54-56: Search images of Pride Week ... make posters for the TDSB float and/or school bus that are in the Pride Parade. Additionally, students have their own Pride Parade in their school.

Page 56: Read Gloria Goes to Gay Pride. If this story book is not available, cut out a photo from a newspaper or magazine of the Pride Parade.

The common media tell us to take our families to Pride activities. Yet these same people censor their coverage of the event by not publishing photographs of naked participants, or blanking out their genitals. They do not want children to see these things in their media, yet affirm that viewing it in the flesh is quite acceptable.

What the Ontario government describes as consultation is merely telling parents what will happen. "We do not take public referenda on curriculum," Wynne condescendingly warns. Big Sister knows best.

Parents are not allowed to remove their children from the classroom during controversial discussions. The TDSB won't even tell parents when it happens. Study after study has revealed that students learn better when teachers and parents work closely together. This initiative alienates a large part of the population, to the detriment of our children.

Among other measures lacking transparency is the TDSB's Curriculum - JK to grade 3. It orders: "Should schools send notes of permission slips home before starting any classroom work on LGBTQ (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/two spirited, queer) issues. NO."

If parents decide to homeschool their children, Ontario Human Rights Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall will examine all educational materials to ensure it includes what Commissar Hall (as she is know in the media) deems adequate promotion of homosexuality.

Ontario's future is foreshadowed in London, England. Teachers there must report any children, as young as three years old, who utter words deemed by the teachers to be politically incorrect. Accused children's names are entered into a government data base where they are permanently recorded as racist or Islamophobic etc., depending on what was said. This information remains there to be used against them as adults.

In June 2009, Swedish police and social workers seized a seven-year-old boy from his family because his parents chose to homeschool him. Authorities have permanently destroyed parental rights, and actually jailed some parents. Sweden learned this from Germany where homeschooling was first declared a crime by the Nazis. That's what purported modern governments are capable of doing.

Back in Ontario, we have bureaucrats and politicians imposing on our young people their views of sex, family life and other personal matters beyond their authority. This unwarranted intrusion into the exclusive jurisdiction of parents is an attack on the family.

State intervention into education must be limited to tax gathering, basic curricula standards, and uniformity of examinations. It must not use education to further a political or social agenda.

The Right to be Offensive

One evening last February, French fashion designer John Galliano, in a drunken, drug-driven stupor, shouted racist and anti-Semitic insults at a couple in a Parisian restaurant. He lost his job at the Dior fashion house, and was charged with the crime of rendering "public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity." Yes, that's actually a crime in France. He faced six months in prison and a $30,000 fine. Found guilty, he was sentenced to a suspended fine.

Feel-good laws override basic rights, in this case, the right to be offensive. They attack freedom of expression. Galliano's confrontation was non-violent. The only harm done was hurt feelings -- a matter better settled in civil court.

In a different context, Salman Rushdie advised, "It's better that even the worst things be expressed. Evil doesn't disappear by being obscured."

From a Globe and Mail editorial of November 6, 2010 -- "This newspaper has argued that offensive and disgusting opinions, including deeply racist ones, should not be criminalized under anti-hate laws, because those laws may silence legitimate debate and because the best way to deal with offensive views is to trounce them in the public square. But we draw the line at expression that promotes violence."

The post you are now reading was influenced by our family's experiences in downtown Toronto in the 1930s and 1940s. Some neighbours regularly shouted across George Street, "dirty Catholics," "dirty Germans" and other terms of endearment.. My parents were German-speaking Austrians. Our reaction was that those neighbours had a problem, not us. This harassment in no way diminished our self-confidence, as is too often now alleged by "victims" in similar circumstances. Our neighbours, all of whom later became good friends, had the right to be offensive, the right to be wrong.

Had there been a human rights commission at the time, my parents would have avoided it. Had they done so, and the neighbours forced to give us a bag of money, as is the incentive today, would we ever have become friends?