Editor, the News:
Re: Next NDP candidate won’t be a white man (The News, Aug. 5).
Citing unproven allegations of systemic discrimination against a laundry list of supposedly disadvantaged groups vying for political nominations, the NDP has instituted a policy of blatant, indisputable discrimination against the discriminators, as a countermeasure.
If George Orwell were alive today, he would be green with envy that he didn’t think of this when penning his dystopian masterpiece, 1984, or his political allegory, Animal Farm.
I suspect that Orwell, himself a social democrat, would find the NDP’s nomination policy as logically and morally indefensible as I do.
Like many forms of so-called affirmative action, this breathtakingly stupid policy confuses two simple concepts: equality of opportunity and equality of result.
The NDP are rigging the race so that the “disadvantaged” (who become advantaged, but in the worst possible way) are guaranteed to win the nomination.
The party does so at its own risk: when you discriminate and throw merit out the window, nobody really wins. The excluded lose, the party loses, society loses. Even those who “win” lose – for their nominations will be forever tainted by their unfair advantage.
My sister is a pharmacist and my sister-in-law is a judicial justice of the peace. I’m both proud and grateful to live in a country and in a time in which they were able, with dedication and sacrifice, to reach their potential.
Their professional achievements were only possible because those who came before them paved the way, creating a society that at least strives, however imperfectly, to provide equal opportunities and reward merit.
The NDP’s discriminatory nomination policy is an insult to their achievements and to that legacy.
Kirk Brown
Maple Ridge