Juno News - August 10, 2019


Big governments make small citizens


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

186.99677

Word Count

1,347

Sentence Count

92

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary

In the wake of recent mass shootings across the U.S. and Canada, what do we do about it? Are there other things going on than just lax gun control? Or is there something more to the problem?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I'd like to discuss today, if you will indulge me for a few minutes, about something that
00:00:13.560 is not a specific political issue, a specific public policy issue, but a broader, more thematic
00:00:19.540 conversation, that of social cohesion and civil society.
00:00:24.720 This has been on my mind a lot lately, the past few days, the past couple weeks, because
00:00:29.160 there's been a lot of troubling stuff happening in North America.
00:00:32.520 You've had these mass shootings, these massacres, one of them by an anti-immigrant person posting
00:00:37.460 that manifesto online, the other by this far left-wing pro-Antifa type character.
00:00:42.620 So you've got that going on down south.
00:00:45.200 Here in Canada, there's been some concerning scenes over one weekend.
00:00:49.040 There were many shootings happening in bars and so forth in the Toronto area.
00:00:52.940 And then we had the manhunt that ended in bodies being found.
00:00:56.260 These two young men who told their parents they were going to look for work and instead,
00:01:01.900 so police believe, they ended up randomly, it seems, killing some individuals.
00:01:06.580 And we know a little bit about the backgrounds in all of these people.
00:01:09.060 Well, not the shootings in Toronto, but the manhunt here, the massacres in the U.S.
00:01:14.040 And the sort of knee-jerk place to send this conversation is in a couple of directions.
00:01:19.220 One is gun control, and everybody's invariably going in the gun control direction.
00:01:22.980 And then you have the mental illness and the mental health direction.
00:01:25.980 Although in this case, these don't seem to be individuals who exhibit some sort of serious
00:01:31.060 mental health problems, as we've seen in some shootings.
00:01:33.320 So they're not going in that conversation.
00:01:34.740 They're focusing on the gun control conversation.
00:01:36.880 Because while I think it's easy, I think people understand it.
00:01:39.680 You can kind of hashtag it, more gun control and so forth.
00:01:42.400 And look, I've read, I'm familiar with all the arguments before, all the arguments against.
00:01:47.680 I don't think gun control is really the solution to what ails society right now.
00:01:52.500 Although we see politicians ranging from the far left to Donald Trump himself say,
00:01:57.020 yes, we'd like to change background checks or this and that restriction.
00:02:00.760 So perhaps there are some things to be done on the gun control front.
00:02:04.240 But I think the bigger question, what ails society today?
00:02:08.920 And maybe what ails young men today?
00:02:11.160 I never think it's fair to go after men in particular, young men.
00:02:15.920 But we see a lot of these situations, whether it's these cases or even these guys going off
00:02:21.140 and assigning a fight for ISIS.
00:02:22.640 And predominantly, they are young men.
00:02:24.780 What's happening?
00:02:26.980 Are there other things going on rather than just two lax gun laws?
00:02:30.540 There was one Republican politician.
00:02:33.440 She was a low-level state representative.
00:02:35.080 She made a post on Facebook.
00:02:36.720 And she said, let's talk about the real problems here.
00:02:39.160 And she listed a whole bunch of what she saw as societal ills that were going on.
00:02:43.160 Now, I don't want to...
00:02:44.160 And then she had to apologize and bring down the post because there was a big outcry across the country.
00:02:49.880 CNN covered it and so forth.
00:02:51.160 I don't want to litigate what she posted because some of the things she said, I agree with others.
00:02:54.940 I don't disagree with.
00:02:56.020 I don't agree with.
00:02:57.160 I don't think they are the cause of societal problems.
00:02:59.620 But I think more broadly speaking, this sort of lack of social cohesion, this lack of civil society is a thing.
00:03:07.700 We see the statistics.
00:03:09.320 We see the data of basic things of, you know, amount of time people are spending just being couch potatoes
00:03:15.620 or just being on their online devices.
00:03:17.640 And what is that doing to us?
00:03:19.820 The lack of enrollment in civil society organizations like putting kids into, you know, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts
00:03:27.020 and older people joining groups like the Knights of Columbus and so forth.
00:03:31.240 Volunteerism rates, charitable donations and so forth.
00:03:33.880 There's a lot behind that.
00:03:34.820 I'm not saying people are becoming selfish.
00:03:36.420 A lot of the charitable donation stuff is because taxes have become too high
00:03:39.540 or people are just giving their money, you know, other ways that aren't tracked through charity.
00:03:43.400 But we do see a decline in all of this.
00:03:46.680 And we'll forget that woman's Facebook post.
00:03:49.200 I think the best kind of description of all this is in a book that I bring up as much as I can.
00:03:55.060 It's by the historian Neil Ferguson.
00:03:56.940 It's called The Great Degeneration.
00:03:58.760 Neil Ferguson usually writes very long books that take a while to read.
00:04:01.780 This book is only like 150 pages or so.
00:04:04.180 You can read it quite quickly.
00:04:06.240 The Great Degeneration.
00:04:07.920 It explains this broader erosion of civil society and why it's a problem.
00:04:12.980 The lack of involvement in these voluntary associations, charitable giving,
00:04:17.820 and people just not connecting as much as they used to do.
00:04:22.980 And I think it's a really, really important thing.
00:04:25.160 I garnered a little bit of controversy because I wrote a column a few months ago
00:04:28.600 asking do we need national service in Canada?
00:04:33.640 And a lot of people took that to be calling for conscription.
00:04:37.320 Now, I meant a different type of national service,
00:04:40.460 a sort of civil national service.
00:04:42.700 France is actually undergoing it right now.
00:04:44.600 They're doing a pilot project for it where young people, teenagers, it's mandatory,
00:04:48.740 although in the pilot project only 5,000 people are doing it,
00:04:51.560 where for about two weeks you go into a sort of basic training,
00:04:55.060 not a military basic training,
00:04:56.460 but you're learning CPR and map reading skills and other sort of basic skills.
00:05:00.520 And then for another two weeks you're put with a sort of not-for-profit,
00:05:04.340 a charitable organization and so forth,
00:05:06.080 and you're making a contribution.
00:05:07.920 And they're having the debate in France right now of do we actually want to do this?
00:05:12.040 And I suggested Canada should do something like this.
00:05:14.440 And the opinion was very divided.
00:05:16.340 I mean, half people said,
00:05:17.560 yes, we absolutely need something like this.
00:05:20.280 Young people are too irresponsible.
00:05:21.780 They don't think about their community anymore.
00:05:23.560 And then the other half people said,
00:05:24.800 this is fascism, screw you.
00:05:26.360 We don't need anything like that.
00:05:27.480 That's too close to conscription.
00:05:28.900 I think more and more now,
00:05:31.960 yes, we do need to do something like that.
00:05:34.800 We need to look at this idea of the great degeneration,
00:05:37.620 as Neil Ferguson puts it,
00:05:38.820 and say, how can we start to get things back on track?
00:05:44.180 Do I have the answer?
00:05:46.160 No, I don't.
00:05:48.460 Bringing in various different programs,
00:05:50.300 different ways to connect and strengthen our society,
00:05:53.940 strengthen our cohesion and so forth,
00:05:55.360 I don't, because it can't be hashtag.
00:05:58.260 It's not hashtag gun control.
00:05:59.960 It's not hashtag here's an easy answer,
00:06:01.820 pass this one piece of legislation.
00:06:04.900 And it's probably not going to be legislation,
00:06:06.580 because I think part of the problem,
00:06:07.560 part of the worry this day and age,
00:06:09.460 is I find a lot of young people
00:06:11.160 don't realize that not every solution
00:06:14.320 is a government solution.
00:06:16.660 They don't realize that we as communities
00:06:18.600 actually have the ability to solve
00:06:20.020 a lot of our problems ourselves.
00:06:22.800 It's very concerning, and it creates this problem.
00:06:24.760 There's this saying that says,
00:06:26.720 big government makes small citizens.
00:06:28.960 You hear a lot of people say,
00:06:29.980 oh, there's an affordability issue with housing.
00:06:32.440 What's the government going to do about it?
00:06:34.640 Maybe it's not actually a government problem.
00:06:37.300 Maybe it's not actually calling for a government solution.
00:06:40.100 So stepping back there as well,
00:06:42.060 that's going to be incredibly challenging.
00:06:44.080 You know, it's not even just hashtag gun control.
00:06:46.200 It's not hashtag anything government can do.
00:06:48.660 It's something very different.
00:06:50.540 It's something very broader.
00:06:51.920 I don't have the quick fix, single answer.
00:06:55.720 But I think at least having that conversation,
00:06:58.320 acknowledging that social cohesion, civil society,
00:07:02.500 I think that's the direction.
00:07:04.400 That's the direction we should be taking the conversation
00:07:06.820 in all the days, the weeks, the months, the years,
00:07:10.320 moving forward.
00:07:10.940 What do you think?
00:07:12.180 What do you think?