The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that Donald Trump is not allowed back on Facebook for two more years. This is a ruling that would have been overturned in a real court, but it was made by a foreign politician working for the Supreme Court.
00:12:23.520What was that? Was that the Taliban dynamiting statues that they found religious?
00:12:53.500religiously odious? What was that? Well, that was in the streets of Toronto where Antifa activists
00:13:00.040pulled down the statue of Egerton or Egerton Ryerson, after whom Ryerson University is named.
00:13:08.920Obviously, no police interference at all. In fact, as far as I know, days have passed and no arrests are
00:13:15.960being made because certain political crimes are exempt from law enforcement. Joining with us now
00:13:21.660to talk about this via Skype from Winnipeg is Spencer Fernando. He's got a new column on the subject
00:13:27.600entitled to, entitled, Why Are We Letting Mobs Decide Which Statues Get to Stand? Spencer, great to see
00:13:35.800you. What's your take on this whole thing? It's, it's a little bit unsettling to know that just anyone can
00:13:42.020tear down a statue just cause. Yeah, you know, I think it's the, the whole idea of just anyone being
00:13:49.720able to take down a statue is really independent from the broader moral debate on historical figures
00:13:55.240and what should be done about statues and, you know, plaques and everything. Uh, there's certainly
00:14:00.140a discussion and a debate to be had, but this is not the way to do it, right? I mean, cause you're,
00:14:03.880you're really, you're not giving anyone else a chance to have their opinion, to have their discussion,
00:14:07.560to really, you know, have a democratic, uh, debate, uh, or consensus around anything. It's just simply
00:14:13.880a group of people saying, Hey, we don't like this. We're going to tear it down. And of course,
00:14:17.260the question is if every political group, uh, in the country started acting like this,
00:14:21.100how do you think things would turn out? Well, that's a good point. I mean, there's statues in
00:14:25.060this country. I don't like, there's a statue of Norman Bethune. That's the Canadian doctor who was such
00:14:31.280a communist. He went to communist China and was a doctor with the Maoist revolution. There's
00:14:36.040statues for Tommy Douglas. There's some good things you can say about Tommy Douglas,
00:14:41.740but he was in favor of eugenics. And by that, I mean, sterilizing people who were mentally retarded,
00:14:48.500sterilizing people who he thought were low class. He was also actually tremendously against gay rights.
00:14:56.620Then again, almost everyone until a quarter century ago was. Spencer, I guess my point is,
00:15:01.160it's never dawned on me to tear down a statue of Norman Bethune or Tommy Douglas. I just don't
00:15:08.120think conservatives really do that even for statues they hate. Why does the left get a pass
00:15:14.000on it to, to tear down things they don't like? Well, I think, uh, you know, one advantage the left
00:15:19.760has, especially recently is how they speak with a lot of moral force. And what I mean by that is they,
00:15:25.520they speak in such a way that they don't really even consider the fact that someone could disagree
00:15:30.840with them respectfully, right? It's simply, look, we're on the right side of history. You're on the
00:15:34.540wrong side of history. So get out of the way or you're evil. And I think that scares a lot of
00:15:39.100politicians and it scares a lot of conservatives as well, who don't really, uh, you know, put the
00:15:43.480same kind of moral force behind their statements, behind their defense of history or defense of the
00:15:48.480country. And the problem is, you know, if you're just going to tear down these statues,
00:15:51.840nobody is going to hold up well as history goes on, right? If that's the standard,
00:15:56.600you know, none of us are going to hold up well, even the most progressive politicians,
00:15:59.620as you say, Tommy Douglas considered extremely progressive at the time, but not so progressive
00:16:04.420anymore. Right. I mean, pure Elliot Trudeau, very progressive at the time, but now, you know,
00:16:09.000not so progressive in the light of history in the eyes of many people. So if we're just going to
00:16:13.660pretend the past didn't happen, uh, then that, that gets very dangerous because you don't learn
00:16:17.900anything. It would make much more sense to start putting up, I'd say, uh,
00:16:21.840you know, put up plaques on some of these statues, go into the good that historical figures did and
00:16:26.360the bad, you know, don't, don't whitewash history. Don't pretend it didn't happen,
00:16:30.100but to just erase all of it and say, Oh, we're just going to tear the statue down.
00:16:33.220If we don't like something that's, it's a very dangerous precedent to be set.
00:16:36.260Yeah. And I think it's getting more and more extreme. I mean, when they first took, uh,
00:16:41.080Johnny McDonald off the $10 bill, I thought, Oh, well, they're, they're saying it's to be more
00:16:46.740inclusive with new faces. No, it was just to tear him down. And when Victoria removed the statue,
00:16:53.200I thought, well, that's just kooky Victoria, but now Charlottetown where the fathers of
00:16:58.560Confederation met, they're embarrassed by him. But you know what? I should tell you,
00:17:03.960Charlottetown was named after Charlotte, the wife of King George III. And Victoria, BC is named after
00:17:12.240Queen Victoria, BC itself, British Columbia named after Columbus. We're going to have to tear down
00:17:17.620everything. It's, it's going to be like sports teams where the only things you can name your
00:17:23.820sports team after are, are like animals or colors, you know, um, the Edmonton Elks or whatever. I,
00:17:32.180I'm worried that we're going to destroy. And that's a very Maoist thing to do, to destroy everything
00:17:37.780before you, to lose all memory, to start as if it's year zero right now. I think that this is out
00:17:44.580of hand. And I, I'm, I'm frustrated that the police and politicians are generally silent about it.
00:17:51.400Yeah, I think the one thing, and I think this is more for people who have studied, uh, the history
00:17:56.860of communism, which unfortunately not enough people have, you know, our society rightfully so is very
00:18:01.680wary of fascism because a lot of people study that and we're taught a lot about it. And so we're very
00:18:06.040wary of anything that seems similar to it, but we don't have that same weariness when it comes to
00:18:10.260communism, which is quite disturbing because communism of course killed far more people,
00:18:14.320even than fascism. And, you know, if, if people are trying to replace historical memory, um, or
00:18:21.280trying to get rid of historical memory, you have to realize that they're trying to replace that with
00:18:24.800something, right? There's certainly a new kind of ideology that they want in place. So the question
00:18:30.200is, what is that? And it's obviously not anything conservative or anything historical. It's obviously
00:18:34.460going to be, you know, a very, you know, far left kind of ideology. And that's, again, we've seen
00:18:38.860throughout history that leads to very dangerous places, right? Because when you disconnect people
00:18:43.040from history, you disconnect them from values, you know, the traditional values that built a country.
00:18:48.860You see that economically, right? All of a sudden, uh, the values of prudence and fiscal responsibility.
00:18:53.900Oh no, modern monetary theory, totally new idea. We'll try that out. We don't need to be careful
00:18:57.800with money and just, we can make it up. And so you see a lot of this happening all at once. And I think
00:19:02.320people need to really study history and say, look, you know, this doesn't lead to anything good.
00:19:06.340Canada is not a perfect country, but certainly compared to most countries, we've done quite well.
00:19:11.180And I think there needs to be an understanding that as, as imperfect as our historical leaders were,
00:19:16.840they built a country that is actually able to grapple with the past, to look at our mistakes
00:19:20.700openly, not to try to hide from it, to acknowledge what was done wrong and to try to fix it. And I think
00:19:25.800that that speaks well to them as well, because they built a country that could grow and change over
00:19:30.100time. So to just throw all of that away is going to throw away kind of the exact values and the exact
00:19:35.100things that made us the country we are today.
00:19:37.240Yeah. I mean, I think there's a few things that come to my mind. I mean, I'm almost 50. So I look
00:19:42.220back at my life and there's certain things that I'm so proud of at other moments that frankly, I'm not.
00:19:47.400I think every one of us, um, has made thousands, maybe, I guess, millions of little decisions in our lives.
00:19:54.080Some were good. Some were, were not. We had some finer moments than others. You're not going to
00:20:00.140cancel yourself because you said something dumb 30 years ago when you were a kid. And we, and I think
00:20:06.960there's a, that's how it's related to cancel culture. I mean, uh, you see early and earlier
00:20:12.380people in their teens, they said something in a dumb joke and now they're a grownup and they're
00:20:17.780being canceled for it. I think there's an analogy there. Was John A. McDonald flawed? Yeah,
00:20:23.100every human was, but to throw out the entire history, the entire legacy, because, because of
00:20:28.960something that in the light of 2021 looks bad, that would be like throwing out yourself because
00:20:35.440you're embarrassed of what you did when you were a teen. It's just, it doesn't work that way. And I
00:20:39.440think there's one more thing too, Spencer, which is it implies that there's some utopia out there.
00:20:45.260It implies that the critics are actually better than what they're tearing down. There's, and I put it
00:20:50.620to you there, there isn't a place better than Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom,
00:20:55.860Australia. Show me a place that didn't have slavery in the world other than Antarctica. Every
00:21:00.760continent had it. Show me a place that didn't have some immorality. I just think that it's a
00:21:07.020combination of cancel culture plus thugs who never have to say what their better utopia is. I don't
00:21:13.620know. I find it very disheartening. Yeah. A lot of it relies on historical ignorance. You know,
00:21:18.600I think the example of the States is a good one. You see people all the time saying, oh, America,
00:21:23.680it's just, it's a, it's a slave nation. It's all, it's all slavery, blah, blah, blah. I mean,
00:21:28.460they fought a gigantic war between one part of the country that wanted to continue it and one part of
00:21:32.800the country that wanted to end it. And if you look at proportionally the amount of people who died,
00:21:37.680one of the most brutal wars in human history and the side that was opposing slavery ended up winning
00:21:43.620and the country became a country that didn't have it. So the idea that people kind of,
00:21:47.260they forget that or they just ignore it. Like, oh no, the States is just, it's all still slavery.
00:21:51.120I mean, they fought a war about it. Right. So that's, that's one important thing. And then
00:21:55.120the Canadian example is, I think a lot of what's happening is this is a tool to control people,
00:22:00.380right? You talk about, you know, people, you can't just cancel yourself. I think that's,
00:22:04.380that's what a lot of people on the far left are really trying to do is they're trying to scare
00:22:07.900regular people so much and say, look, you must've said something or had some thought back sometime in
00:22:13.300the past. That was terrible. I know we could reveal that and we could, you know, ruin your
00:22:17.060ability to, you know, make money or to have a career. So you just better be quiet and go along
00:22:21.760with everything we say. And it's unfortunate working on a lot of people. One way you can tell
00:22:26.080is that when people feel, uh, you know, that they're, they're not online or they're not being
00:22:31.580watched or they're around people they can trust, they often talk a fair bit differently than they do
00:22:35.880in public. You know, people are not quite as politically correct, uh, behind the scenes as they are in
00:22:40.520public. And so I think what you're seeing is a lot of people really being controlled by fear and that
00:22:44.760never leads to a good place. You know, if you're trying to use fear to control people, then that
00:22:48.540means you have an agenda in mind that's not really good for them. Yeah. I mean, I know that under the
00:22:53.260Soviet, uh, Soviet bloc and in any authoritarian regime, you would have a conversation just with your
00:22:59.560tightest, most intimate friends and family that would, when you would have real talk, you'd be
00:23:04.800extremely careful and then you would have your public face with everyone else. And you had to be
00:23:10.400careful. And that's why the Soviets really tried to impress on children that it was patriotic to
00:23:16.760turn in your own family. Uh, in fact, the Soviet version of Boy Scouts, the young pioneers, they
00:23:22.080made their hero, Pavel Morozov, informant number one, this young, uh, children of Ukrainian farmer
00:23:29.060peasants who, uh, according to the mythology, turned in his own family for criticizing Stalin.
00:23:36.280Every single Soviet Boy Scout for 60 years, 50 years wore a little pin of this guy on their chest.
00:23:44.800The government was trying to break up the secrecy and privacy of even families. There's a terrible
00:23:51.120precedent here. Let me ask you, I'm just so sorry to see it come alive again. Can you name for me
00:23:57.040a leader, a politician, maybe with the exception of Jordan Peterson, can you name maybe an elected
00:24:03.960politician anywhere in North America who's speaking out against cancel culture in a way that
00:24:09.280is making a difference? Well, I'd say the closest, and again, you know, we've been very critical of
00:24:15.520him, you know, conservatives, people across the spectrum have been critical of him. A lot of other
00:24:20.180issues, but Jason Kenney, I think is, he's done a little more than anybody recently for, certainly far
00:24:25.280more than Aaron O'Toole, I would say, uh, to, to push back on that. And the reason, you know,
00:24:30.580we focus on conservatives is we don't even expect anything like that from Justin Trudeau or Jagmeet
00:24:35.260Singh, right? No one expects them to push back on that. They're pushing the other way. So you kind
00:24:39.920of, you almost criticize the people who you at least have some hope would push back. And Jason
00:24:43.400Kenney has done that somewhat and he received a lot of blowback for it. His problem is that, you know,
00:24:48.260conservatives are so angry at him for many other things with lockdowns and restrictions that he's not
00:24:52.700really getting too much backup. But on that, he has pushed back. But overall, you know, it's,
00:24:56.380it's, this is a big problem is the conservatives, they keep kind of giving into the left wing
00:25:01.820narrative and they keep, it's like, you know, Lucy with the football, you know, this time it'll be
00:25:07.200enough. This time we'll go far left enough and they'll finally, they'll accept us and the media
00:25:11.740will like us and the left wing groups will say that you guys are okay. And of course it just gets
00:25:16.200moved, right? It's never going to be enough. And so I think they need to realize that and start
00:25:20.100pushing back. And the other thing is, you know, I think a lot of injustice is being done
00:25:23.860to the indigenous community as well. And it's, it's the idea that people seem to act as if one
00:25:29.760group speaks for all indigenous people, right? I mean, there's a lot of varied indigenous groups
00:25:33.860in the country. A lot of people with very different perspectives, different views on, you know,
00:25:38.020tradition, different views on the future. And that doesn't really get expressed that much,
00:25:43.660right? As you see with the, you know, energy sector projects, when a group supports development or
00:25:47.760the oil industry, they just get attacked. Oh, you're just tools of the oil companies, right?
00:25:52.200But when a group says, oh yeah, we're against all development, oh, the media is all over, you know,
00:25:55.940political parties are all over it. So I think that's unfortunate as well. We're really kind
00:26:00.000of stereotyping indigenous people by letting just some people speak for all of them.
00:26:04.220Yeah. Well, very thoughtful comments. So Spencer, it's great to talk to you.
00:26:08.000Thanks for taking the time today. Your column again is called, Why Are We Letting Mobs
00:26:11.480Decide Which Statues Get to Stand? And, and let me close, let me say thank you to you,
00:26:16.100Spencer. But let me close by playing a clip of Jason Kenney standing up for these statues,
00:26:22.440including of John A. MacDonald. I have been very critical of Jason Kenney over the lockdown,
00:26:26.360but I accept your point, Spencer, that, that Jason Kenney has stood up against these iconoclasts,
00:26:33.860these statue smashers. So let me end this segment by throwing to a clip of Jason Kenney saying
00:26:41.240that. I'll say goodbye to you now, Spencer, but here's a clip of Jason Kenney.
00:26:44.320I think Canada is worth celebrating. I think Canada is a great historical achievement.
00:26:50.740It is a country that people all around the world seek to join as new Canadians. It is an imperfect
00:26:56.800country, but it is still a great country, just as John MacDonald was an imperfect man, but was still a
00:27:02.140great leader. If we want to get into cancelling every figure in our history who had, who took positions
00:27:12.780on issues at the time that we now judge harshly and rightly in historical retrospective, but if that's the new standard,
00:27:20.520then I think almost the entire founding leadership of our country gets cancelled.
00:27:25.660Tommy Douglas, who recommended the use of eugenics to sterilize the weak, as he said,
00:27:33.340to, if we talk about members of the famous five heroes of Canadian feminism and the fight for equality for women,
00:27:42.720some of them were advocates of eugenics that we would now regard as deplorable.
00:27:49.300So if we go full force into cancel culture, then we're cancelling most, if not all, of our history.
00:27:58.760Instead, I think we should learn from our history. We should learn from our achievements, but also our failures.
00:28:04.640Canada is doing that, just as we, as Prime Minister Harper, made the official apology for the terrible injustice of the Indian residential school system.
00:28:16.680Just as the government of Canada provided over $3.5 billion in compensation to residential school survivors as a symbol of restitution.
00:28:29.100And just as Canada has addressed other historic injustices, which we seek to reflect in the draft K-12, K-6, pardon me, social studies curriculum in far more profound ways than ever before.
00:28:44.120So I think it's much better that we learn from our history, including those periods of great injustice, without seeking to cancel our history.
00:28:54.960I think we need to know more about it.
00:28:59.100Hey, welcome back on my show on Friday. Akira writes,
00:29:11.060Of course, China laughs at all decent humanity.
00:29:14.600Well, of course, you're talking about them laughing at any commemoration of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
00:29:20.940They're laughing because they want to trivialize it.
00:29:23.420They're laughing because they want to profane it.
00:29:58.240And my point is, if we can forget such an important day in our history, of course, we're going to forget that important day in China's history, too.
00:30:08.520Yeah, literally today, Pastor James Coates lost his charter challenge to have his freedom of religion, and it was stamped by the authority of the state.
00:30:23.540A judge said, no, we can violate your rights.
00:30:26.320I'm sure there's judges in China that rubber stamp it, too.
00:30:30.100I think the differences between us and China are getting harder to enumerate every day.