Juno News - Big governments make small citizens

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. 1.00

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. 0.71

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. 0.85

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. 1.00

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?

Juno News - August 10, 2019

Big governments make small citizens

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