Cities Under Siege
Episode Stats
Words per minute
188.09247
Harmful content
Misogyny
6
sentences flagged
Hate speech
5
sentences flagged
Summary
On this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, I discuss the protests, riots, and looting across North America since the death of a police officer in a confrontation with a bird watcher in Central Park, as well as what we can learn from them.
Transcript
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This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, how should we respond to protests, riots, and looting across North America?
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More lockdown hypocrisy from the government and big tech censorship.
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Welcome everyone to the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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As I record this, things are happening across North America at such a pace that there's no point in my view even going through the latest news
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because I think that by the time you listen to it, by the time you are done listening to it, things will have changed.
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I'm going to talk about some of the big stories that are happening and some of the narratives that are emerging.
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But I want to talk about the riots that are taking place across North America right now, mainly the United States,
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but the violence, the protests, the looting in a bit more of a reflective way rather than a journalistic way.
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And, you know, the benefit of this being a talk show is that I kind of have the flexibility to go wherever I want with it.
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So I thank you for indulging me if you've made it this far in the show or in this particular episode.
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When I did the last show, I actually was speaking about, I don't know if it was last show or two shows ago,
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but sometime last week, I was speaking about the woman who's been minted Central Park Karen, Amy Cooper,
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this woman who had called the cops on the guy and I'd made a bunch of comments.
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I spoke about it at quite a bit of length, actually, about my resistance to social media mobbing
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and how even if she's in the wrong, I don't like having people's lives ruined because of these mistakes.
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And I got actually a lot of pushback from people, some people who said I was being defensive of a racist,
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other people who were just more interested in the dog than they were in the birdwatcher.
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But I bring that up now to say just how small that incident seems in light of everything that's happened
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in the week since or five days since or however long it's been.
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And, you know, at the time, we knew that George Floyd had been killed.
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And a lot of people were viewing what happened in Central Park in the context of what had happened in Minneapolis.
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And, of course, now the tensions across the country have ballooned and it's become about protesting.
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It's not just about people like they are in many communities across North America coming together and saying Black Lives Matter
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and we need to take a stand against police brutality and we need to fight against racism and all of that,
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which I think is an absolutely worthwhile thing to do.
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And I think in Canada, it's easier to be pro-police because despite the fact that we have issues,
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most of the issues we have in Canada, in my experience,
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and I'm talking about my experience as a journalist and columnist and commentator here,
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have been with the institutional sides of policing, not the officers themselves.
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My issues have been with the brass, with the access to information, with the transparency, with the politics,
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I am saying that, generally speaking, in Canada, we don't have what we see in the United States all too often,
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which are people that are being subject to brutality, subject to not being given the benefit of the doubt,
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subject to a lot of things that we need to be resisting in society, up to and including death.
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And I think George Floyd's killing last week is not a new thing.
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And in fact, I've seen a lot of black people in my circles that have been very critical of this renewed interest in the subject almost,
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not because they don't want people to pay attention to it, but because they're like, where have you all been?
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And one post I saw, and I haven't received permission from the person to share it,
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It said, you know, that they're basically not too optimistic because all the white people that are saying,
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yeah, Black Lives Matter are going to forget and move on within a couple of days once this initial wave dies down.
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And all of this is to say that right now, there is a difference between the people who are protesting,
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the people who are raising an idea, a thought, a call to action, even if it's done in a very passionate or angered way,
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And the fact that one bleeds into the other doesn't mean that they're all the same.
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You know, I don't even like the term peaceful protest.
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And the reason why I don't like the term peaceful protest is because I think that a protest is by its nature peaceful,
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When you have to call it a peaceful protest, it means that you can call rioting and looting a form of protest as well,
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And I don't want this to be about semantics, but I would say that, you know, the rioting is not a form of protest.
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It is rioting. It is looting. It is destruction.
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And there are many, many reasons why it needs to be condemned.
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For starters, I mean, based on morality and on efficacy.
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No one has the right to destroy another's property, to destroy another's livelihood,
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whether it's through a social media mob or a literal mob, a literal mob on the streets carrying torches and lighting fires and smashing windows.
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It's not even like all of these people that are dismantling these physical structures and buildings and burning things and burning police cars and smashing the front windows of CNN.
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And then it's not like they're actually winning people over.
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So the problem that I have with a lot of protests and with a lot of movements is that no one,
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and I don't want to say people are stupid, but no one seems to look a little bit down the line to see what it is that they want or what it is that they expect to happen.
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Look, I'm a big believer in the fact that you have to look two or three or four or five moves ahead.
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And this is not because I'm a particularly calculating person.
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But the one thing in my limited knowledge of chess that I've learned is that you have to look not just at the moves in front of you,
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but you have to look at where all of those are going to go and where all of those are going to go.
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And right now, for the people rioting, not the people protesting.
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For the people rioting, where do you think this is going to go?
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So, you are either going to win people over or you are going to terrify them.
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I mean, right now we have people who have had to shut down their businesses for months and months and months because of COVID.
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And now in cities like Atlanta and Minneapolis and Louisville, you have businesses that are just getting ready to maybe reopen.
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And boom, all of a sudden they have to deal with civil unrest and riots.
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Or they have to risk just having everything in their business destroyed, trashed, stolen to such a point that insurance won't cover.
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What COVID-19 won't do to you, the rioters will.
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And whatever the rioters don't do, who knows what will come along down the line.
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I mean, I know people were joking earlier this year about, you know, the biblical levels of plagues, you know, from coronavirus to murder hornets.
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Last week there was a story I saw about coronavirus monkeys.
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They were monkeys that escaped with COVID-19 samples from a lab and smashed them.
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So, now we've got monkeys that are spreading COVID-19.
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You know, all of the things that have happened this year that we've been able to kind of laugh at and joke about.
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It's the early stages of what could become a civil war.
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I say it to point out that right now, people are taking a battle-like mentality, a war-like mentality, where they're not thinking about collateral damage.
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They're not thinking about the actual implications of what they're doing.
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You know, for example, let's talk about the rioters here.
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A lot of these people, I would say perhaps most, are not actually allies of the black community.
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In fact, if you look at the pictures, most of them are not themselves black.
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A lot of these are your garden-variety Antifa anarchists or people that are just complete ne'er-do-wells and criminals that want to seize this civil unrest to just get off on doing whatever it is that their criminal hearts want to do.
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But these people are not and surely cannot think that they are making a point of blacks standing up for something or standing up for black people in the pursuit of something by going and stealing this, by smashing this window, by throwing bricks, by dragging police through the streets.
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Police officers are on the ground being dragged through the streets.
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So, from an efficacy perspective, surely no one thinks this is winning over hearts and minds.
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And, you know, the people that are suffering, especially in communities that have a lot of minorities and communities that have large black populations,
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this looting and vandalism and rioting is, of course, harming black business owners.
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You know, I saw a story last week that was kind of interesting that black businesses are pretty much disproportionately affected.
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Black owned businesses are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
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And this was, I think, a very jarring stat for me because, again, in Canada, we don't really speak of things along racial lines like you hear in the United States.
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It was in the Washington Post, number of working black business owners falls 40% far beyond what other groups are facing, beyond the experiences of other groups.
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So, already you have a disproportionate effect where black businesses are being targeted here.
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It's gotten so bad with the riots and protests that even Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton, who has never met like a race-baiting race war he didn't like,
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has said that the destruction of black-owned stores in Minneapolis is reckless.
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So, he's understanding that, hey, you know, the people that are suffering right now are not, you know, the big whitey enemies here that you're trying to target,
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but the actual people that you're targeting are the ones that you claim to protect.
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I saw one story, a black business owner weeps after looters destroyed the sports bar he invested his life savings to.
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Today, we found core boy Bala, who invested his life savings into opening this sports bar, cleaning up.
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While our camera was there, looters came back to try to steal his safe.
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Looters, while he is there, while there is a news crew filming, coming back and trying to take aim at this man's business.
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Another story that jumped out that, again, I mean, just the sheer absurdity of this.
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Riots have destroyed a $30 million affordable housing project in Minneapolis.
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So anything that I've ever seen, anything I've ever read has talked about the ways you lift up people in poverty, the way you lift up people who are disadvantaged is through housing.
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So here you have $30 million being spent on an affordable housing project.
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I don't know how many units it was going to have.
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And that's now destroyed because of the fires that were setting everything ablaze.
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So all of a sudden, again, people that were going to be helped are now hurt by this.
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Now, we've heard a number of reports of people that are being busted in places like Minneapolis that are from out of state.
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This is why Donald Trump has talked about declaring Antifa a terrorist organization.
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Look, I'm all for going after people that are sowing this sort of terror, which is what it is.
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The problem with calling it an organization is that that assumes there is, you know, some organization there.
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Whereas instead, you just have a bunch of people that like to pick up the brand name.
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I mean, Antifa is more of a franchise than a chain.
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So I don't know how effective it will be at anything.
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But certainly there are people that are waving that Antifa flag that I think need to be shown the justice that they are proclaiming to stand up for and speak for.
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And, you know, it's so challenging for me because all of this has now taken away from what was a very valid and many would argue a very necessary fight,
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which is the fight for racial equality, the fight to stand up against police violence when it's happening.
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And a lot of this comes down to, A, the need to stand up for civil liberties, B, the need to stand up for reform of the criminal justice system,
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which, again, the left and the right have both failed profoundly on.
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I think Trump has done more to try to move on this file than Obama did in eight years.
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But ultimately, we then go back to the protest side of this.
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They all say they want change, but what is it they actually want?
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And this is why I find a lot of protests are lacking because they tend to reveal anger, but eventually they fizzle out.
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And I don't think they really get what they want because a lot of the time it's not clearly articulated what they want.
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This was, I think, the most absurd part of this.
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So there was a video that was posted by former presidential candidate Kamala Harris,
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and it was posted, I believe, by Kamala Harris, of Kamala Harris, protesting outside of the White House.
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Now, she wasn't one of the ones storming the gate to the White House.
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I mean, Donald Trump, actually, I was reading, had to go into the bunker because they were concerned that perhaps these rioters might breach the White House.
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But the Secret Service was able to hold them back.
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So Kamala Harris wasn't one of the ones with, you know, the pitchfork and the torch.
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But she was there protesting, clapping along, chanting along, and probably with a security detail that you can see is not on camera.
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But I'm thinking here, these people are protesting for changes to the system.
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And I know that the Republicans are in power right now, but I am sorry.
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An individual United States senator carries a lot of power.
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So these people are protesting to get people like you to pay attention, to get people like you to do something about it.
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So why are you out there on the streets clapping?
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And I'll give her a bit of credit because Kamala Harris has been there since 2017.
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So she's not one of these people like Joe Biden that's been in the Senate for, I don't know, like 72,000 years since dinosaurs roamed the halls of Congress.
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And anything he says that, you know, the system hasn't done, he's responsible for because he's been in that for decades.
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Whereas Harris, okay, she's been there a lesser period of time, but before that she was a criminal prosecutor.
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She has, again, done more to incarcerate and target the people she's claiming to speak up for than the people, than a lot of the people that she's protesting against with them.
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So all of this is to say, and it's not that she doesn't have a right to protest,
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is that all of those protesters should instead be turning to her and say, oh, yeah, we're glad you're on side.
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So when people who are in positions of power are going down this road of slacktivism and hashtagging and chanting and doing all this,
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when people who are, and it's not just Kamala Harris, by the way, she's just the one that was in the crowd.
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But when people who are in positions of power feel like they need to protest, I'm like, wait, what are the protests for?
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The protests are to get the attention of the people in charge and get them to do something.
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Now, what that something is, there is a lot of gap.
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There are a lot of gaps there of what it could be.
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But the people in positions of power to start protesting fails to accept that they themselves have power.
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And then we get back to this very uncomfortable and I will say unpleasant point that I don't know what the change is.
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And I truly, truly wish that anyone who is a member of the black community or another minority community,
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if you have concrete solutions, please let me know.
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I will read them on my show because I want a solution to this.
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It wasn't a death that we can just say, oh, well, you know, that's just what happens when you resist.
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I mean, it's not even like from some of the videos, like he was resisting, by the way.
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So in this particular case, you had this incident that happened.
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Charges being laid didn't ameliorate the anger.
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In fact, the anger only went up in volume anyway, just like it didn't.
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And this comes in a string of incidents that have really captivated that racial tension,
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such as the Arbery shooting in Georgia a couple of weeks ago,
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where, again, justice was very swift to start acting.
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And I don't proclaim to know a lot about the facts of these cases because I'm seeing what everyone else is seeing.
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But certainly in the Minneapolis case, in the George Floyd case,
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it was very clear that what had happened shouldn't have happened.
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And unfortunately, it's taken a lot of rioting right now,
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which has now taken away from the serious discussions,
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which has taken away from the ability for people to have adult discussions.
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You can feel that what happened to Floyd was an injustice
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and similarly feel like what's happening to burning cities right now is an injustice.
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And you can also do what I'm doing, which is sitting back from a place of safety right now
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and saying, OK, this is going to do more to set back the real discussions,
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because now it causes people to turn on the protesters,
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because the protesters and the rioters get lumped into the same category.
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And, you know, I have a lot of respect for individual police departments,
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police officers that are doing their best to de-escalate now.
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And I should qualify this by saying that I'm generally not a fan of virtue signaling policing.
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I don't like when police start to become community liaisons over actual law enforcement officers.
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You have some cities that are right now in flame and other cities
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where police and protesters are marching alongside each other.
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Now, I do think that some of the criticisms I would put here
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are the same as the one with Kamala Harris, where, I mean, they're protesting you.
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You can just do what they're asking if you want to play ball with them.
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The police chief in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is marching with protesters.
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They had, it sounds like, a very constructive approach to this.
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And then the Green Bay police chief, Andrew Smith, was joining the march.
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Another example of this, not far from me in Michigan, in Genesee County,
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the sheriff of Genesee County decided he would walk with the protesters.
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You know, all of these things, they make for nice moments.
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If the problem is the system, and you need systemic change, then you can't just have a
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wave of protests and expect that things are going to be fine moving forward.
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If it's legislative change you need, you need legislation.
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If it's cultural change you need, you need cultural change.
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Because the root of change is winning hearts and minds.
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That's not going to happen if people are turning against you because they see you lobbing
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So this is, I guess, the question that I would put to people.
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And this is not a challenge in the sense that I'm not criticizing or critiquing.
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And I've seen a lot of suggestions to this that are more abstract.
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Is it about attracting a different type of police officer?
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Is it about having more racial diversity in police forces?
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Is it about having greater checks and balances on the legislative side?
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I know Justin Amash, who is a congressman, has talked about removing a little bit of the
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automatic protection that is afforded to law enforcement officers when they are facing
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So is it about stiffer penalties so that police will think twice?
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You know, I think that there are different types of people that are attracted to policing.
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I think you get people that are true community servants.
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They want to serve their community and you get people that want to walk around and have
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I mean, you get the same dynamic in politicians.
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I think that's going to happen in anything where you have a level of authority.
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Unfortunately, the authority that police carries is coming with violence sometimes.
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So all of this is to say that right now we are facing, and by the way, I think a lot
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of the Black Lives Matter protesters who are genuinely trying to advance a really solid
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and sound vision are the ones that should be condemning the rioters.
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And when people start saying, well, I'm against rioting, but I'm against looting, but I'm
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That's the same as what you say all lives matter is on the other side, which is just refusing
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to call a spade a spade and address an issue head on.
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So everyone on both sides of the legitimate protest needs to be condemning the rioters and
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And when I've seen protesters and I will say even armed militia guarding businesses, I'm
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And with all the horror, with all the terror, with all the fire, with all the disruption,
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I wanted to end with some stories of human grace here, if I can, because this is going
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to be so profoundly important if society is to weather this.
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And in particular, in Louisville, Kentucky, where a police officer got separated from his
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unit in the midst of the chaos outside Birno's, which is a pizzeria in Little Sicily.
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And this photo serves as a great ad for Birno's Little Sicily.
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Police officer got separated from his unit in the chaos.
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A group of men, all of whom are black, formed a human shield around the police officer, protecting
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the police officer from the rioters that would have done God knows what to him.
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And we can see examples of that from looking at, like I mentioned earlier, the video of
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So here you have the protesters who are arguably protesting against police that decide to link
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You can have a humanity, even in the face of those you disagree with, and an understanding
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We'll be back in a moment with more of The Andrew Lawton Show.
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One thing that a lot of the protests have revealed, apart from the, you know, crux of them, is the
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hypocrisy about getting together, about mass gatherings.
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So when people were protesting the lockdown itself, when people have been going to Queen's
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Park or Parliament Hill or rallying in cities across America, all of the lefties were saying,
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But when they're protesting for a cause that the left is behind, of course, you know, you
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don't need to worry about it, which I find to be absolutely great, because there was a
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bit of a standoff on Twitter between Emmett McFarlane, who's a perennial commentator of all
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things Canadian politics, who was accusing Robbie Suave, who's actually going to be on the show
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So Robbie had tweeted, the media said reopening Florida beaches was an invitation to mass death.
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Why is it wrong to hang out at a beach or a park, but not to gather in public and shout,
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And Emmett McFarlane, of course, is mocking that saying, why is the beach hangout not the
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So yeah, if the virus is going to kill grandma, if anyone goes to the beach, surely it will
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also have very negative consequences to people that are gathering for a mass protest.
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So it's interesting how the science depends on the particular political persuasion of the
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But I mean, really, that's all besides the point, because government officials are still telling
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everyone officially to, quote, stay home, stay lives and all that stuff.
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But then we had this photo that was posted on the weekend by the Dows Lake Pavilion, which
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is an individual place that does, I guess, boating and water sports and stuff in the Ottawa
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I used to live in Ottawa, but fortunately, I know very little about the city otherwise.
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And they were promoting socially distanced kayaking with Catherine McKenna, Patty Hajdu,
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And they said, there's nothing like a little socially distanced R&R out on the water.
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So look, I'm all for getting out and doing some kayaking.
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So I don't really care about kayaking and politicians doing kayaking and all of that.
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But it is really funny that these people who are saying a day earlier that, no, no, no,
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We're all so busy dealing with things in our own ridings.
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The next day are all cabinet members having basically a cabinet meeting on the lake, which
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And again, you know, as Canadians still try to get the right in many parts of the country
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to go camping, to do a lot of outdoor things, which are reopening gradually.
00:27:48.760
It's kind of interesting that these lawmakers who have been telling everyone else, no, no,
00:27:52.980
Don't even go outside, are now out there on the water having a nice little kayaking trip.
00:27:57.660
So rules for me and not for thee, which was the title of a previous edition of the show
00:28:01.960
and one that I feel like I keep wanting to bring back.
00:28:07.780
So let's talk about this story here for a moment, because right now the government is
00:28:13.880
still facing a bit of a challenge in where it goes from here in the pandemic.
00:28:18.420
And we know the economic issues are all going to be there.
00:28:21.400
But I every now and then get polls and I get them because I'm signed up for somehow, I
00:28:28.000
don't know, I'm signed up for one of the big polling companies, a poll list.
00:28:31.780
So I'll get phone calls and emails every now and then.
00:28:34.040
And I like it because it's always good to find out what questions people are asking.
00:28:38.200
And one in particular jumped out at me because ECOS, which does a lot of the government polls,
00:28:43.920
has been doing these, they call them environment scans, I think, or public opinion scans,
00:28:49.520
where they they basically just at random points in time, send out a bunch of questions on behalf
00:28:54.280
of the federal government to gauge where people stand on a bunch of issues that the federal
00:28:58.440
government is dealing with at that particular moment.
00:29:01.080
So clearly right now, that's the coronavirus pandemic.
00:29:04.400
Now, I can't say with 100% certainty that this particular poll was on behalf of the federal
00:29:11.440
It may not be, but I'm pretty sure it is based on the wording and the types of questions and
00:29:16.480
all of that, and it's from ECOS, the source is me, I got it myself.
00:29:19.940
So it wasn't sent to me by someone where I can't verify it.
00:29:24.420
And a lot of it was pretty standard, you know, what do you think about this?
00:29:28.320
But there were two pages that really give us a glimpse of what the government is going
00:29:32.980
to try to do potentially in response to COVID-19.
00:29:39.280
The question, there have been some discussions about whether the federal government should focus
00:29:43.380
its economic relief efforts on clean energy to help deal with climate change and move
00:29:51.980
And the questions are kind of leading or the statements that you have to respond to.
00:29:56.660
Much of the talk about climate change is exaggerated and we shouldn't act too quickly.
00:30:00.820
I think the COVID-19 crisis has given us the opportunity to invest in clean energy and
00:30:08.240
I don't believe all this talk about greenhouse gas emissions causing global climate change.
00:30:12.340
I think focusing federal government relief efforts on clean energy will help with both
00:30:16.560
economic recovery and environmental sustainability and so on.
00:30:21.900
So for starters, they're just poorly worded questions.
00:30:25.500
You can either be a climate change denier or you can think that the government needs to
00:30:29.480
be spending every single penny it has and more on climate change programs.
00:30:34.540
And the reason for that is that, you know, there's no time like the present.
00:30:37.820
So the government is basically, if this is a government poll, which I suspect it is, the
00:30:42.800
government is basically trying to shoehorn climate change programs, which are historically
00:30:47.160
expensive and ineffective under the guise of COVID-19 relief and economic relief.
00:30:53.640
So unless you work for the green energy sector, you're probably not going to be getting much
00:30:59.160
The other question I thought was very interesting.
00:31:02.020
And this is one that I know will rub a lot of people the wrong way.
00:31:06.180
Please rate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements.
00:31:10.440
One line in particular, it will two lines, I guess it is every Canadian's civic duty to
00:31:16.120
get the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it becomes available.
00:31:19.400
And the other one here, social distancing rules should be kept in place until a COVID-19 vaccine
00:31:25.900
So this tells us about the moving goalposts of this.
00:31:28.560
At first, it was, we just need to flatten the curve.
00:31:30.980
And then once the curve was flattened, it's no, no, no, we need to stay a little bit longer
00:31:37.360
And then it was, okay, well, now you got to stay until the vaccine is available.
00:31:41.100
And now people are talking about social distancing until the virus is eradicated altogether, which
00:31:46.020
should be, you know, at some time, you know, 2247.
00:31:51.420
The year 2247, I'm sure we can all go back to our normal lives.
00:31:54.900
But this is a very concerning line of questioning, pitching social distancing and vaccines as
00:32:03.240
civic duty, as civic duty as though to say that you are not a Canadian, you're not a patriotic
00:32:11.360
Despite the fact that a lot of people are uneasy about vaccines themselves, a lot of people are
00:32:16.880
uneasy about Chinese made vaccines, which it sounds like the coronavirus vaccine may well
1.00
00:32:23.780
And also the word mandatory appears in this polling page with regard to testing, saying
00:32:29.540
that testing should become mandatory depending on where you rank your response on that statement.
00:32:35.640
But that basically is showing us where we're going here, that if you're concerned about civil
00:32:40.500
liberties and the civil liberties of having to stay home, of not being able to go to whatever
00:32:45.200
store you want and all that stuff, there could be bigger challenges ahead.
00:32:49.340
So again, I want to preface, well, not preface because I guess I'm like five minutes into
00:32:54.040
it now, but I want to establish that this is not about using these as though they are
00:33:01.400
But generally speaking, policy is a bit downstream of polling.
00:33:04.700
And a lot of the times it's governments trying to get the political cover to do what they
00:33:10.240
So don't be surprised if you see something along these lines start coming down the pipeline.
00:33:17.560
And that's something we got to be very mindful of because when it comes to vaccinations, and
00:33:21.800
I don't want to say this, I am not someone who is anti-vaccination.
00:33:31.680
And the second you start robbing people of their autonomy, especially on things like this,
00:33:36.180
because if we wouldn't see a flu shot mandatory, I don't think we should be making coronavirus
00:33:42.380
And that doesn't seem like an unreasonable proposition.
00:33:45.440
But if it starts becoming this civic duty narrative, which, by the way, is the precursor
00:33:52.260
But if it starts to become where this narrative unfolds that you have to, and if you don't,
00:33:56.400
I mean, like all of a sudden, it's going to start being like masks where, you know, people
00:33:59.940
are publicly shaming those who aren't wearing masks.
00:34:03.540
And by the way, I mean, when I when I've gone out, I haven't worn a mask.
00:34:06.260
And I'm seeing more and more people who are, and I think most people just mind their own
00:34:12.140
I was at Home Depot the other day, and I walked the wrong way down one of the aisles that had
00:34:17.840
the arrows or whatever, which no one actually pays attention to.
00:34:20.640
And I actually saw a guy shake his head at me and kind of look down to the thing.
00:34:27.340
Now, maybe he was just thinking of something in his mind, and the answer was no, and it had
00:34:32.360
But but I was I went down the wrong way and otherwise empty aisle that he was coming out
00:34:36.480
So there was no interjection or interaction with anyone else except for his little head
00:34:42.920
And I in my mind, I'm like, I haven't had a good fight in a while.
00:34:45.980
So in a mind, I was like, I was like, oh, I just dare you.
00:34:51.640
So I went back and I still haven't had my fight yet.
00:34:53.940
So if you want to pick a fight with me, I actually know I'm doing I'm very convivial today.
00:34:58.700
But but again, you know, it's like, I think it's going to be like that with masks.
00:35:01.660
At some point, I'm sure someone is going to be told in public, you need to be wearing
00:35:05.860
And a lot of this comes because the government has been giving just absolutely incoherent
00:35:12.480
I mean, for example, like, remember, the government was saying masks make things worse than, you
00:35:17.480
know, wear one if you want one to now you need to wear one.
00:35:19.740
And then they went back down to we don't know what they're going to do.
00:35:23.100
Fauci had made some comment last week about masks being more symbolic than anything else,
00:35:27.520
which I'm like, you know, there's enough symbolism in life.
00:35:29.700
I don't think you need to have a mask that's in high demand to make a symbolic statement
00:35:36.460
But all of this is to say that, you know, you're going to see the same things unfold.
00:35:41.620
And when you start to have peer pressure become the guiding force, no one is going to end up
00:35:48.720
We'll be back in just a moment with more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:36:06.300
Last week, Donald Trump had a standoff with Twitter, his preferred mode of communication,
00:36:12.420
having not a great amount of confidence in the mainstream media to get his message out.
00:36:19.620
Twitter had labeled his tweets at one point misinformation, at another point put a big
00:36:26.500
This was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as Donald Trump's tolerance for big tech.
00:36:31.420
So he threatened and delivered an executive order that would aim to remove some of the
00:36:36.300
protections, some of the liability protections that social medias employ, social media companies
00:36:41.840
The basis of this is that they identify as platforms rather than publishers and should
00:36:47.740
be basically subjected to a level playing field in that they shouldn't have to be accountable
00:36:55.300
And the goal of this is to force them to not censor content.
00:37:00.020
Conservatives oftentimes very critical, myself included, of an anti-conservative bias from big
00:37:05.780
But the problem is, I think the cure is worse than the disease when it comes in the form of
00:37:11.780
So how significant is this platform publisher divide?
00:37:15.420
And more importantly, is the big tech oligopoly, if you will, a justification for government
00:37:22.680
I want to talk about this with Reason.com editor Robbie Suave, author of a fantastic book,
00:37:28.420
Panic Attack, Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, and also has another book in the pipeline
00:37:39.160
You and I had talked about this very briefly in a social setting a couple of months back,
00:37:43.920
and I had shared with you something that I know you've dealt with yourself, which is
00:37:47.760
this frustration with people on the right who are in every other area, anti-regulation,
00:37:54.460
But on social media, they tend to not only turn a blind eye to it, but as we're seeing
00:37:58.660
in the last week, actively encourage government to intervene in what are ostensibly private
00:38:05.160
What's your response to this executive order last week?
00:38:08.100
Yeah, I mean, I think the best thing you can say about the executive order is that it won't
00:38:12.820
have any practical effect, because it was sort of empty.
00:38:17.320
It really just asked Ajit Pai to look into the issue, didn't compel him to do anything.
00:38:23.660
Again, you would actually have to have Congress look into this to seriously do anything.
00:38:27.860
The president only has so much authority to unilaterally command investigations and compel
00:38:34.580
Yeah, so like you said, you would think you could fall back on principle to be the reason
00:38:40.460
conservatives shouldn't take this series of steps against big tech.
00:38:50.540
So, of course, you can find examples of mistreatment of conservative speech by the tech
00:38:59.960
On the whole, that social media has been bad for conservative speech or conservative media.
00:39:07.960
I mean, Facebook is routinely a place where conservative news websites like the Daily Wire,
00:39:14.140
Ben Shapiro, for instance, they perform terrifically on that platform.
00:39:18.240
The kind of gatekeeping of the traditional media, which is much more hostile to conservative
00:39:24.640
views, you get around that by being able to air your views on social media.
00:39:30.400
So that's not to say they're beyond reproach and there aren't some legitimate criticisms,
00:39:35.120
but I'm just, I'm really astounded at how easily and quickly and automatically people
00:39:40.720
like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, et cetera, are reaching for government intervention as the
00:39:50.360
And I mean, I would take a bit more of a critical look than you tend to of social media companies,
00:39:56.600
because I do think there is an anti-conservative bias.
00:40:01.660
And you look at Donald Trump and Twitter, for example.
00:40:03.900
I mean, up until last week, Donald Trump has had quite a positive relationship with Twitter.
00:40:08.780
In fact, in many cases, Twitter can be linked to his rise to the presidency.
00:40:13.220
So you can't say that the conservatives are being completely stonewalled on these platforms.
00:40:18.320
I guess what it comes down to is that a lot of people on the right are saying that, okay,
00:40:24.620
We just want a level playing field, this platform publisher divide.
00:40:28.260
And I know that there is a protection carved out there for platforms.
00:40:32.040
But I also think people tend to overstate the importance of that distinction.
00:40:38.360
So this is the Section 230, the law that has to do with this.
00:40:45.840
A lot of people think that it was explicitly, and conservatives often speak about it like
00:40:51.840
What the law said is you have to be a platform or a publisher.
00:40:54.300
And if you're a platform, you get all these special protections from liability, from being
00:40:59.240
sued for having false statements or something like that appear on your platform.
00:41:02.820
Whereas if you're a publisher, you're doing some kind of moderation, some kind of curation
00:41:07.380
the way like a book publisher or a library would do, and then you would be liable.
00:41:11.140
So conservatives are saying, well, they're acting like a publisher because they're taking
00:41:14.440
action against some speech or in a politically non-neutral way.
00:41:20.960
But of course, the law didn't actually compel neutrality.
00:41:27.240
So there's a little bit of wishing Section 230 said something other than what it does
00:41:32.060
I won't go so far as to say Section 230 is perfect or something.
00:41:36.280
There are changes I would make to it if I was the one altering it.
00:41:42.860
I think you could have more insistence on privacy protections, for instance, would be something
00:41:48.560
I might like to see in my ideal version of the law.
00:41:51.900
But the issue is I would be also fearful that any attempt to rewrite the law would get rid
00:41:58.980
of these protections in a very harmful way because, look, the result of making Facebook,
00:42:07.720
Twitter, et cetera, become more liable for speech that takes place on their platform, the obvious
00:42:13.480
result of that would be more censorship, would be more moderation, more sort of borderline
00:42:23.320
That's the stuff that would go under a ... I mean, there could be Trump tweets that are
00:42:28.900
up now that would not be up under a regime where Twitter feels like it could be sued
00:42:34.180
by anyone who's a ... I mean, let's think of Joe Scarborough and that series of tweets
00:42:41.080
So it's fine to complain about the unequal treatment, the bias.
00:42:46.640
You know, we can talk about how we address that.
00:42:49.000
But again, this seems like a taking away Section 230 in the kind of blanket way that, again,
00:42:59.980
I don't think the consequence of that would be better landscape for conservative speech
00:43:04.160
on the internet, but in fact, quite the opposite.
00:43:07.200
All of a sudden, you force risk aversion to become more of a priority than an open platform,
00:43:12.940
however many holes there are in that idea of a completely open platform now.
00:43:17.800
But I guess where I would ask you about this is that we've had social media companies like
00:43:23.720
Facebook, like YouTube, like Twitter that have gone after ... I'll use extreme examples
00:43:28.740
I know they don't represent the mainstream right, but you know, you're Alex Jones types.
00:43:32.880
And I mean, maybe not even ... Maybe that's an example that I think establishes them all
00:43:36.980
And my issue with this as a free market person is that I don't think that people should
00:43:41.020
be building their business models based on other companies and based on other companies'
00:43:45.300
business models, because if you have a path to success that relies on YouTube getting
00:43:50.800
you views or Facebook getting you shares, eventually you're at the mercy of those things.
00:43:55.360
But do you think there is some truth to this idea that these companies are effectively public
00:44:01.380
And it's not to say that they need to be subjected to the regulations and restrictions that governments
00:44:05.960
are, but that their role in society is public platforms.
00:44:10.260
I mean, obviously they are functioning to a degree as the public platform.
00:44:15.500
And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg has said, for instance, that he, to some degree, views Facebook
00:44:24.120
You know, they offer their terms of service, right?
00:44:28.140
They outline what are the rules and procedures under which you can operate on this platform.
00:44:33.640
I generally think they should be open, honest, and transparent about what those rules are.
00:44:40.680
I think if they take action that is outside the bounds of what those terms are, they should
00:44:47.600
It's still, though, it's like difficult to hold them accountable in a like violation of
00:44:52.060
a contract circumstance because you're, again, you're not paying for these services.
00:44:55.520
It would be a different thing if you're paying for the service and you could, you know, you
00:44:58.760
could present some, well, this was fraudulent behavior or something.
00:45:01.040
But, again, this is a free platform that was provided to you by a company that doesn't
00:45:06.520
That's a tremendous, you know, that's a tremendous boon, in fact, to a lot of independent journalists,
00:45:11.540
self-published people, conservative commentators, activists, even non-conservatives, people
00:45:16.860
of all kinds who have an ability to transmit information, to communicate with other people.
00:45:25.760
I think often the bias is on the part of the users, though.
00:45:28.500
A lot of conservatives have this idea that there's some cabal, like Jack Dorsey is sitting
00:45:33.620
in his, you know, his evil tower and deciding what speech to go after.
00:45:41.980
That might have been true with the Trump fact check.
00:45:44.280
But a lot of it is it's complaint driven, right?
00:45:47.100
The platforms don't do anything until someone complains.
00:45:49.700
It might be the case that very progressive minded people are more litigious.
00:45:53.280
They're reporting more speech they don't like and then actions taken against it.
00:46:06.980
So that's an issue with, you know, YouTube has, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of
00:46:12.220
new hours of content, like every couple seconds, something like that.
00:46:21.040
And then they'll take action once there's complaints.
00:46:23.880
So if you if you made them liable or responsible, I mean, how would YouTube even operate?
00:46:28.320
They would have to review all the all the footage before it goes up.
00:46:32.140
I mean, it would I don't think do we want that?
00:46:34.360
I don't think conservatives should want that to be the case.
00:46:36.780
I mean, you know, Prager University's complaints about YouTube notwithstanding.
00:46:43.980
There are certain areas of the Facebook and Twitter experience that are very much human
00:46:50.880
I mean, Twitter moments is one example where you've got people at Twitter that are trying
00:46:55.960
And I don't mean that in the sinister cabal way, but but just a narrative of tweets that
00:47:03.900
We know there's some human intervention in what's trending or not.
00:47:06.960
I guess the question would be, does that make them by definition publishers?
00:47:11.640
Because they're choosing what to amplify and what to share.
00:47:15.140
Now, whether or not that that should make a difference as far as regulation, it's a different
00:47:19.220
But I do think that there is, by the company's own admission, a level of a human curation
00:47:28.160
And in truth, Section 230 was specifically designed to make it so that the platforms could
00:47:33.840
do some amount of curation without being treated as publishers.
00:47:38.520
That's what actually prompted Section 230, because there was a court decision where they
00:47:42.660
told I can't remember which platform it was, but they told them that, well, oh, so you're
00:47:46.800
well, you're you're you're you know, you're taking action against like obscenity or something
00:47:50.500
So you're not you're not just letting anybody post.
00:47:52.480
So then you can be liable because you're you're you're behaving like a publisher rather
00:47:57.940
So then the actually the law was to make it so that if they take they if they censor speech
00:48:03.560
that actually everyone agrees with would like off the platform, just kind of crazy stuff that
00:48:08.180
they're not going to be treated the same way like a book publisher would be treated.
00:48:11.420
So so there's I mean, there's some amount of of of good faith moderation that is not
00:48:18.500
political in nature that we probably do want taking place like it's a good thing that this
00:48:23.480
is a private company rather than the public square.
00:48:25.520
I mean, in the public square, right, the Westboro Baptist Church can shout obscenities at the
00:48:30.620
funerals of soldiers saying, you know, things more vile than anyone can even imagine.
00:48:35.420
And the Supreme Court said in a not narrow decision that that's acceptable speech because it's
00:48:39.880
the public square and its First Amendment protected.
00:48:42.080
So on one hand, it's like there are benefits to the fact that Twitter is a private company.
00:48:46.600
They don't have to let that be there if they don't want to.
00:48:53.680
If you really dislike it, you can find another service to use, I guess.
00:48:57.560
But there's some you know, there's some level of like harassment and horror that is a function
00:49:02.300
of the Internet that they are taking action against in probably a responsible way.
00:49:06.900
Or if you were saying they are they are truly the public square and they are bound to the
00:49:10.920
First Amendment understanding of speech, then there'd be a lot of horrible stuff that they
00:49:15.820
would have to allow on the platform that might make it an unpleasant place for people just
00:49:23.020
So that's that's one that's one advantage of keeping them a private entity rather than
00:49:29.000
Yeah, that's a great point, because I know that various companies or people have tried to
00:49:33.620
make, you know, completely 100 percent free speech friendly platforms.
00:49:37.360
And unsurprisingly, they become magnets for the the least desirable form of speech, the
00:49:42.660
type of people that either on principle or because they know they won't make the cut
00:49:49.060
And it does, I think, very much ask the question of, you know, should you be careful what you
00:49:53.160
wish for if you want a First Amendment platform?
00:49:56.380
And I know that I think it was Dennis Prager or PragerU had sued very unsuccessfully YouTube
00:50:01.300
on these grounds, they tried to say that, you know, the First Amendment should extend
00:50:05.460
to YouTube and the court, I think, very correctly shot that down.
00:50:09.000
But it is weird that all of a sudden and I don't want to take aim at people on the right
00:50:13.820
But but the ones who are being hypocritical on this, the same people that stand up for
00:50:18.640
a baker to deny making a gay wedding cake, for example, are now saying, no, no, no,
00:50:23.740
the Constitution has to apply to YouTube and Facebook.
00:50:31.540
I certainly don't want to compel a small business owner to engage in work that violates their
00:50:38.540
I think that violates their freedom of religion, their free expression rights.
00:50:42.620
So, yeah, it's very baffling to me that so many conservatives, it's the same principle
00:50:51.280
And I just also think, you know, let's say Trump loses or in four years or whatever, eventually
00:50:59.660
Elizabeth Warren is the most vocal opponent of Section 230.
0.92
00:51:05.020
She wants to aggressively regulate these companies because she thinks Facebook in allowing a greater
00:51:11.780
level of free speech and saying, you know what, we're not going to fact check everything.
00:51:16.980
We're not going to try to go through which political ads are misleading or not.
00:51:26.260
Elizabeth Warren types hate that, and they want to punish Facebook for doing that.
1.00
00:51:30.420
So they want to give the government more power to intervene in what these companies' policies are.
00:51:35.060
So I think it would just be so short-sighted for conservatives, for Republican senators to set up some kind of commission,
00:51:43.780
which was really Josh Hawley's idea at one point at least.
00:51:46.280
It's like conservatives should always fear the bureaucratic answer to this, where there's going to be like a committee of government insiders to decide these.
00:51:53.320
Like, I don't understand how anyone remotely right of center could think that is going to result in an outcome that is favorable to more conservative speech online.
00:52:03.040
And I think maybe the conservative movement broadly or conservative politicians will remember that when we no longer, when the right no longer has so much power and influence over government.
00:52:17.600
Robbie Suave, senior editor at Reason and author of Panic Attack, Young Radicals in the Age of Trump.
00:52:29.200
If you want to let me know what you think about that interview or anything else in the show or anything else at all, really, I may regret saying that.
00:52:38.380
We'll be back in a couple of days here on Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show on True North.
00:52:45.420
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Laughton Show.
00:52:47.580
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.