Juno News - Ep. 5 ｜ Barbara Kay ｜ The Woke Left, Cancel Culture and Radical Trans Activism

00:00:00.000 We're in the midst of a zeitgeist and when you're caught up in a cultural 0.89

00:00:06.180 whirlwind like this the ability to stand outside it and say but this makes no

00:00:13.180 sense and you think I'm just an ordinary person I'm not some great philosopher or

00:00:19.560 some erudite you know and I can see that it makes no sense and then when I say

00:00:25.280 that I get people saying oh you're so courageous and I'm like what are you

00:00:30.780 talking about why is it courageous to say that two and two equals four like so if

00:00:37.100 that's courage now then are we already living in some kind of totalitarian 1984

00:00:43.580 world we all know the woke left has gone too far but they've been going too far

00:00:48.280 for years and while the majority of Canadians reject their divisive brand of

00:00:52.880 identity politics and outrage culture the deranged radical mob on the left

00:00:57.920 continues to have undue power over our society how can we stop the cancel

00:01:02.540 culture foe outrage mobs on social media how can we combat the narrative that

00:01:07.400 Canadians who aren't woke are simply racist sexist homophobic islamophobic or

00:01:13.880 transphobic in a world where accusations can amount to a guilty verdict by an

00:01:19.040 angry mob on Twitter how can we have honest conversations about the important

00:01:23.180 issues of our day and how in this environment can we possibly preserve both

00:01:28.520 freedom of speech but also basic democratic rights like due process

00:01:32.900 innocent until proven guilty and the right to an appeal in today's episode of

00:01:37.280 true north speaker series I'm pleased to be joined by a writer and journalist

00:01:41.660 who's been fearlessly addressing these important cultural issues for decades in

00:01:46.820 Canada Barbara Kay is an award-winning author and journalist and has been a 0.97

00:01:52.040 columnist with the National Post since 2003 she also contributes to the post

00:01:57.500 millennial and has published a number of books including her most recent novel a

00:02:01.520 three-day event published in 2015 Barbara is a strong advocate for free speech a

00:02:07.100 steadfast supporter of Israel and a fierce opponent of both identity politics and

00:02:12.800 radical feminism she is no stranger to controversy and has been targeted by the 1.00

00:02:18.020 fake faux outrage mob on Twitter and social media on a number of occasions but

00:02:23.240 she continues to stand her ground push for what she believes in and offer her

00:02:27.740 thorough and thoughtful analysis on the most complex issues of our time Barbara is a

00:02:34.220 cultural warrior an incredibly brave woman and one of my personal heroes in

00:02:39.020 Canadian journalism it's my pleasure to be joined by Barbara Kaye today

00:02:52.880 so Barbara Kaye thank you so much for joining true north it's really a pleasure to

00:02:57.460 have you on our program how are you doing I'm fine and I'm really pleased to be here

00:03:02.180 it's a following your work for a while and and I think you're doing great stuff so

00:03:08.960 I'm very honored to be here thank you Barbara I always start the conversations

00:03:14.000 asking about the kind of current landscape we find ourselves in with this

00:03:18.060 really strange coronavirus and sort of hit the West and you know destroyed our

00:03:23.840 economies with the lockdowns a sort of government overreach you've been writing

00:03:27.920 about a different aspect of it that I personally wasn't really aware of I have a

00:03:31.780 young son he's not in school yet but one of the things that you've written about

00:03:35.380 that that I found quite eye-opening was the disparities between different types

00:03:41.080 of schools and so you wrote about example in Montreal of a public school a

00:03:46.720 mother with three children in public school compared that with your own

00:03:49.840 grandchildren who go to a private school and it was sort of like a night and day

00:03:54.100 difference in how the students are treated how they're sort of nurtured through

00:03:58.300 this time and how the schools have adapted to this new form of you know

00:04:02.200 interacting with people only online so I wonder how it is it you came to write

00:04:07.560 about that and and maybe you can describe a little bit about what what's

00:04:11.060 happening at some of the schools across Canada well I came to write about it

00:04:15.860 because actually I have five granddaughters three in Toronto and two in

00:04:21.780 Montreal and all of them are in a very privileged category of being in private

00:04:30.180 schools but I find interesting about private schools is it's the one area where

00:04:34.680 you don't get a lot of politicization and that is because doesn't matter if

00:04:41.520 you're extreme right right center right left or extreme left all parents want their

00:04:48.660 children to get the best education possible so a lot of lefties send their

00:04:54.800 kids to private schools and so you don't hear them talking so much about they

00:05:00.180 don't use it as a weapon a political weapon for oh white privilege or any of

00:05:06.060 that kind of stuff they they sort of mute on that point because you know you may be

00:05:12.020 very much for the people but when it comes to your own children you want the

00:05:16.940 best advantages for them and that's universal that is a universal desire of

00:05:22.180 parents and actually I have no problem with that because if you're not looking

00:05:27.140 out for your kids who will so um I I was amazed at how quickly for all my five

00:05:35.300 grandchildren their schools if you look at them all together there were four

00:05:40.620 schools involved all private and all within a weekend like the schools closed

00:05:46.720 on a Friday by Monday all of them were up and running with remote learning um the

00:05:53.620 younger kids had five hours of instruction a day the older kids had uh six and

00:06:00.400 excuse me my youngest one was in public school but she's seven so she just for her 0.97

00:06:05.480 it's not it's not that uh it's not that uh um uh important that she be you know keep

00:06:13.140 up her learning and she could do it easily at home with the help of her parents but

00:06:18.780 for the uh for the older kids they they actually took to it very well they were

00:06:24.980 still doing tests and assignments their uh attendance was mandatory um so they

00:06:32.620 treated it as if it was school and the school treated them as if they were in

00:06:36.160 class including dress codes um and participation and attitude I had a letter

00:06:43.240 from a young woman who I I just she's a terrific young woman that I met through

00:06:49.040 she was a reader and we got to know each other and uh she's she's been very good on

00:06:54.680 on helping with research of various kinds anyways she she said you know um I was

00:07:00.420 thinking you might do a column on the difference between public and private my

00:07:04.000 three kids are and she described her day her days in public school and this was a

00:07:08.560 good public school she was she's in a very you know middle class area uh with a

00:07:13.400 school uh in the english language school board that is uh considered to be a very

00:07:18.800 good school and then she described about first for the first two weeks they shut

00:07:23.300 down completely it was nothing nothing then there was um they got directives on

00:07:29.220 websites they could go to um that she said were very unhelpful because they were

00:07:34.580 very generalized and they took a lot of navigating but the kids the big thing was

00:07:39.880 that even when they did have some remote learning which was at most an hour a day

00:07:44.300 and never more than that um the kids were not obliged to go they were told that

00:07:50.420 their marks could not go down so in other words they were going to graduate with

00:07:53.900 their marks could go up but they could not go down um there were no tests there

00:07:58.760 were no real assignments so basically they were off school they were off school

00:08:04.760 unless they wanted to be on school and even those that were good students like her

00:08:09.340 children they totally were unmotivated because they said well it doesn't count

00:08:13.360 for anything and when she tried to help them they were like well you're not my

00:08:17.960 teacher you know and i said wow it's like two different worlds um and this is

00:08:23.800 not just a couple of weeks but four months of learning that's almost half a year

00:08:28.560 um that's gone gone and i thought there really are two classes of family life

00:08:37.400 going on and uh one is pretty good uh it meant with with the private schools the kids

00:08:46.420 were busy most of the day which allowed the parents to do their remote work from home

00:08:52.320 and my other friends in laura's case the public school parent she had a job that she 1.00

00:08:57.680 had to do remotely on top of educating her children uh and the fact that she was trying 0.98

00:09:04.260 very hard to educate them made her stand out i think amongst parents in public schools most

00:09:09.640 of whom i think just pretty well i shouldn't say most maybe there were many who were attempting

00:09:16.040 to do the job of teachers um so i thought wow you know and then i began to hear uh once i wrote my

00:09:24.940 first column on that i started getting emails from people in the states saying oh no my public school

00:09:31.600 system is very good they started on remote learning right away and they did this and they made sure

00:09:38.140 that we had uh the kids all had ipads and they made sure that they had wi-fi and they made sure of

00:09:44.020 this and made sure of that and i'm thinking oh that's interesting so it's not as it's not because

00:09:48.860 uh what for example in ontario the teachers union said well uh we can't have some kids learning and

00:09:57.560 some kids not you know some kids are poor they can't afford uh devices for all the children

00:10:03.780 then i heard that in bc uh telus had joined up with the government to make sure that all kids that

00:10:11.920 needed them had ipads with um uh with wi-fi enabled you know why i guess with those little things you

00:10:20.980 put into them the the what's it called uh the key the key so

00:10:27.540 there was no excuse there was no excuse for the failures except that the unions didn't want their

00:10:35.320 teachers working and they don't want them going back and they didn't want them going back either

00:10:39.140 they were so afraid for them you know that it's it's so wild i mean especially here in ontario

00:10:45.540 because the students already missed a significant portion of the year because the unions uh were on

00:10:50.500 strike and then and then you add this you know it's interesting barbara because i always sort of my

00:10:55.720 experience when it came to public school versus private school i always had this idea that in the u.s

00:11:01.120 the the situation of public schools especially in around cities was really bad um the the the school

00:11:07.200 funding comes from local property taxes you have situations where wealthy neighborhoods have really

00:11:12.460 good schools and poor neighborhoods have terrible schools and you're not allowed to go to a school

00:11:16.340 in a different area whereas my idea was in canada was different you know public school is a priority

00:11:21.660 um there was a little bit of school choice in that you know in in alberta and ontario at least you

00:11:26.660 could choose to go to a catholic school board or a public school um you know there was a little bit

00:11:31.700 more leeway and and generally speaking public schools were well funded and good but but the

00:11:37.260 description you were describing it really made me feel concerned for canada and the state of our

00:11:42.640 public sort of institutions that that drive you know drive our national pride from the idea that

00:11:48.000 canada is a pretty egalitarian society that most people they want to can go on to university and can

00:11:53.140 you know succeed in whichever line of work they want but but i i think you're right and that the

00:11:57.780 coronavirus is really highlighting um some discrepancies and it almost felt like a race to

00:12:03.760 the bottom like the excuse that was given by an ontario uh school teacher that wrote to you saying

00:12:09.300 yeah exactly what you just said you know it wouldn't be fair if we taught some kids because

00:12:14.120 poor kids might not have devices totally an excuse and again accommodating the sort of lowest

00:12:20.560 on the state of trying to promote greatness and and teach you know the bright students to to excel

00:12:25.860 we're sort of saying well no one can learn because we wouldn't want to harm like the you know like

00:12:30.880 bottom five percent that might not be able to to access it the same way did do you think this says

00:12:35.540 something more broadly about the state of canadian public schools yeah i do i mean i look i think

00:12:42.180 when you have a monopoly or near malop well it is a monopoly uh in ontario for example one of the

00:12:48.940 one of the distinctions i should have made was between the english schools here and the french schools

00:12:54.300 um the french schools uh it's very interesting they in quebec they subsidize uh they subsidize

00:13:02.760 the amount that uh would be spent on the curriculum that the government demands so in other words since

00:13:10.940 a lot of private schools are teaching beyond that they still get subsidies for following the curriculum

00:13:17.840 after all their parents are still paying school taxes but they're also so as it turns out you

00:13:23.960 can go to a private school in quebec for um five thousand dollars maximum in montreal and something

00:13:31.160 like three or four thousand dollars a year outside of montreal well that's really not a lot of money

00:13:37.100 for many middle class parents whereas in ontario since they don't subsidize private education

00:13:43.020 it costs between 20 and 30 thousand dollars a year per child so you're really talking about an

00:13:50.160 overclass uh in ontario that are getting fabulous education um and the rest i don't know i guess from

00:13:57.420 school to school you know some schools are better than others but it's a monopoly uh in my opinion

00:14:03.480 there should be charter schools there should be i mean all kinds of competition to the public schools

00:14:09.140 that are available to everyone uh so that they you know pick up their act and that they they get

00:14:17.140 better but you know in a monopoly uh in a monopoly um there's no incentive where the unions are very

00:14:24.740 strong where everybody's afraid to push back against the unions um in a situation like this they treat

00:14:31.720 it as the right of their and they don't work in the interest of the kids they work in the interest of

00:14:37.640 the teachers so here they have have all their teachers being paid i don't think they got any

00:14:42.720 paid docked or you know they didn't get anything off like the public all public servants uh full pay

00:14:49.620 for not a great deal of work um they've ruled out any possibility of coming back in august oh no no no

00:14:56.480 you're not adding on four years you know four weeks to the to the school year so i this is it's

00:15:02.840 quite disturbing to me i i you know i believe in um i don't believe in socialism but i do believe that

00:15:11.720 all kids uh need to get something like the same uh opportunities uh for education that's so basic

00:15:21.460 and it it so defines uh where you're going to end up in life uh so i find it kind of disturbing

00:15:28.560 this situation well especially certain subjects i know like you know learning a second language

00:15:33.800 in french or doing math you go six months without oh yeah practicing i mean you can really lose

00:15:39.260 a lot of what you've learned and it could really set you back um the the next year so what are what

00:15:45.800 are teachers doing if if they're not uh one of your columns mentioned that that their unions don't

00:15:50.360 allow them to do tele-learning so they're not allowed to do zoom calls with students uh do you know

00:15:56.460 what they're what they're currently doing uh it's kind of there's no set rule i think one of the

00:16:02.420 rules was well you can on an individual basis if you want but you don't have to um and it shouldn't

00:16:10.500 be more than this many hours a week i i don't think it was very well defined one teacher wrote to me

00:16:16.320 defending the union and the decisions they made and she said well um i have to teach my own children

00:16:25.080 education so how am i supposed to be expected to teach uh you know to teach classes by zoom

00:16:32.040 so i was sort of taken aback because i thought well look you're doing an essential service

00:16:39.000 how do nurses uh go and do their work at the hospitals they put their children in daycare the 1.00

00:16:45.220 daycares were open for essential services well they were in quebec i'm i assume they were this idea

00:16:50.860 there's a kind of snowflakey attitude i find amongst public school teachers um that they

00:16:56.820 and a lot of them didn't want to go back because they were afraid that the children were going to

00:17:02.240 bring the virus to school with them and uh they they they were quite fearful and and and i thought well

00:17:10.860 they think it's okay for grocery clerks to work as an essential service because they're going to get 1.00

00:17:17.880 their groceries but they don't see themselves as an essential service that and there's really the

00:17:24.540 data are very very positive about children being in school and not you know especially young children

00:17:31.620 in elementary school and the data is very very universally positive on kids being such a low risk

00:17:40.120 for transmission even if they have it that uh a teacher teaching you know successfully from the

00:17:47.840 middle class it it just wouldn't be really much of an issue but they're making an issue out of it

00:17:52.080 so speaking of that the idea that kids don't really doesn't really seem like a lot of kids get

00:17:57.540 coronavirus i don't think there's been any deaths certainly not in canada uh for anyone younger than

00:18:02.260 teenagers um not not only have they canceled schools they've completely canceled sports seasons which

00:18:07.920 you know the idea of which i remember when i was in high school i can't remember what grade i was in

00:18:12.580 but there was a big strike i went to school out in british columbia and a lot of the students that

00:18:17.080 were competing for scholarships you know all of a sudden that became in jeopardy because they

00:18:21.420 couldn't continue their sports seasons they couldn't play basketball or volleyball or whatever

00:18:25.240 their sport was you wrote about uh how two of your granddaughters are seems like they're pretty

00:18:29.260 competitive hockey players ice hockey players which by the way is awesome i love that um i played hockey

00:18:34.680 growing up too but it was a bit different back then because i had to play with boys for most of

00:18:38.380 the time so you know you're talking about how the seasons cut off again even though there isn't

00:18:43.740 really any uh data or anything pointing to the fact that kids can can spread it or that the kids get

00:18:49.680 sick from it and kids all the way up to teenagers um and and and what a drastic effect that can have

00:18:55.380 on the development of sports um so why don't why don't you tell us a little bit about uh what's

00:19:00.880 happening and why you think that uh kids should be able to go back to playing sports well first of

00:19:06.900 all um the stats on um kids under the age of 19 uh in this country are so low that they are statistically

00:19:18.380 not even a statistic uh i just looked at the latest stats for who's you know the case history the cases

00:19:26.420 and the age groups and age 19 and under so far there have been 33 in all of canada 33 admissions

00:19:38.560 to hospital two had to go to the icu and there have been no deaths not few zero so there are zero deaths

00:19:48.460 in canada for anyone age 19 and under and that should tell us that there's absolutely no reason

00:19:57.460 uh with stats that low i mean kids die from the flu they we take risks with them getting injuries

00:20:05.700 concussions everything else there's absolutely no reason especially the outdoor sports um you could say

00:20:13.160 well soccer they're up close and personal they're breathing into each other's faces but

00:20:16.920 if if very young children do get this disease it's not i mean there's no indication that it's going to

00:20:25.280 be serious uh they might even be asymptomatic but uh certainly i think i think kids should get back

00:20:33.800 into sports um and look you can always if if one child say got very sick you could say okay we're

00:20:42.380 stopping them again but give it a try you know like with these kinds of stats it it doesn't make

00:20:48.960 any sense to keep uh kids in isolation and there's nobody to speak for them you know there's nobody

00:20:54.960 speaking up for them their own parents are hysterically terrified for no good reason at all but because

00:21:00.980 they've been encouraged to be by the media um and they're now they've got they're they're being made

00:21:07.860 fearful about kawasaki syndrome you know uh because there's been like 10 or 12 incidents in the world

00:21:15.020 of uh kids getting kawasaki syndrome this you know it's an inflammatory disease but they don't

00:21:23.440 understand that you can get that from any virus or any infection and it's treatable and no children

00:21:30.960 die from it but it's been hyped up in the media and the word the very words it sounds like something

00:21:36.260 doesn't it sound monstrous kawasaki syndrome you know and and um i spoke to a pediatrician about

00:21:44.100 this and she was like yeah this is this is such a sidebar to any discussion about children she's all

00:21:50.820 for kids going back to sports and she wrote an op-ed in the montreal gazette i thought it was very brave

00:21:55.860 of her because uh the minute you say on facebook or twitter yeah let's get the kids back into sports 0.75

00:22:03.400 oh so you believe in children dying you know or they think they're going to infect their parents

00:22:09.720 but study after study is showing that when children do in sweden say where they never had a lockdown and

00:22:16.640 the kids were in elementary school in iceland where the kids are in elementary school not a single

00:22:22.480 parent has been infected through a child being at school and perhaps having it asymptomatically or even

00:22:31.720 having it with symptoms so so far the transmission rate seems to be non-existent or statistically

00:22:40.200 not worth consideration it's so interesting barbara i mean how many times over the years have

00:22:46.200 conservatives have you and i been accused of fear-mongering and hyping up hysteria and and

00:22:52.440 creating moral panic or or whatever uh about issues that we care about and then you know here we are it's

00:22:58.200 just so interesting to see how government officials and the media have just been over the top fear

00:23:03.800 mongering i think so i yeah i agree and it's it's interesting to being here in quebec because

00:23:09.720 uh our premier francois legault who's he's he's really trying very hard and i think he's he's he has

00:23:17.080 done as good a job as possible under the circumstances he didn't create this terrible nursing home situation but

00:23:22.360 we are the epicenter here of death and mostly because of the nursing homes and the areas in which 0.98

00:23:29.080 people live who take care of these um these poor people but he said uh the other day he said you know

00:23:39.560 about the kids going back to school he said uh it turns out that when polls show that francophone

00:23:47.640 parents are much more willing to send their kids back to school than english parents and it's quite 1.00

00:23:54.760 a big disparity i think it's something like 70 of francophone parents were willing to send their kids

00:23:59.560 to school as against 30 of anglophone parents that's a big disparity and he was very frustrated about

00:24:06.840 that and he said your english media are hyping up fears and he pointed to the montreal gazette who

00:24:14.040 instantly responded oh that's terrible you're you know but he was right he was right uh whenever

00:24:19.480 they can find an article or you know uh somebody that can point to uh this case or that case there's

00:24:26.200 all these human interest stories of somebody oh no he was only 40 and he got very sick and he was in

00:24:31.480 the icu well it does happen but that shouldn't be the whole story it shouldn't occupy you know half the

00:24:38.280 newspaper um and i do think the media the english media look you've got a we've got a prime minister

00:24:45.400 who's terrified of this thing he won't come out of his house i mean he comes out everybody stands like

00:24:51.000 40 feet away you know respectfully so that god forbid someone should cough um he's very scared and he's

00:24:58.440 projecting a terrible fear uh across the land so everybody else you know you see the premiers they're

00:25:06.120 sitting at their desks with their health minister beside them and this one and that one and presumably

00:25:11.320 they've all been tested so they know it's okay um he is the only leader in canada who has not

00:25:18.760 even you know going to the house of commons seems to him like you know walking into the land of mordor

00:25:23.640 or something um he doesn't consider it an essential service somehow to keep parliament going groceries yes

00:25:31.240 liquor boards yes you know but not the house of commons so um yeah you're right uh we're the ones

00:25:39.800 accused of creating moral panics but uh and i believe in treating pandemics with respect and with

00:25:47.640 but with data like not with fear every federal program um and not just here in a lot of other places too

00:25:56.520 we have not seen tremendous rationality across the board uh in dealing with this so we have seen

00:26:04.920 that emotion from federal politicians barbara but they also always rely back on their same sort of

00:26:10.440 tried and trusted trope of liberals which is that they only care about data and science and that all

00:26:15.960 of their decisions are derived from sort of this expert consensus and it's interesting i've seen you

00:26:21.800 tweeting a little bit about this topic but you know the idea that we had these models for coronavirus

00:26:27.400 that came out and most of the models were completely off by like orders of magnitude they they totally

00:26:33.240 miss misrepresented um how deadly it was what the death rates were they only looked at you deaths per

00:26:39.160 people who tested positive as opposed to the idea that you know many many others would be asymptomatic

00:26:44.520 and then we saw some of the uh elites the the supposed experts who said you know absolutely be socially

00:26:50.920 locked down breaking some of their own rules there's famously a british um advisor to the government

00:26:56.440 who was a scientist that came up with this model neil ferguson who said you know absolutely don't go out

00:27:02.440 and intermingle and then he was caught having sort of liaisons with with uh with a younger woman

00:27:08.440 uh outside his family and so so sort of like you know they're above their own rules that they set

00:27:13.400 and yet and yet they continued as you say you know only expert rule it's sort of become the liberal

00:27:18.440 ideology that they don't have their own opinions it's just like whatever the science the scientists

00:27:23.400 tell them which always happens to coincide with their own sort of ideology you also mentioned that

00:27:29.880 you know if we can't even predict uh coronavirus how can we expect the alarmist climate models for

00:27:36.600 thousands of years down the road about the the supposed planet um and and its uh temperature how

00:27:42.360 can we how can we expect those models do you think this will punch a hole in that sort of leftist

00:27:47.160 mindset that um you know the science is always impartial and that's always correct well i i would

00:27:53.080 like to think that but i i honestly don't think that climate alarmism is something that people uh

00:27:59.640 reason themselves into and you know as you know the old saying you can't reason somebody out of what

00:28:05.240 uh they weren't reasoned into and this idea i would say a large uh a lot of people do not understand

00:28:13.800 the difference between data and models like in other words predictions and actually what has

00:28:22.120 happened you know and there's a gigantic difference between analyzing um history and what has happened

00:28:30.680 to what you think will happen so your example of neil ferguson who i notice in the british media they

00:28:37.000 call him mr pants down caught with his pants down yes his models but this wasn't the first time his models 0.73

00:28:42.760 were off his models were off for sars and other uh and you know when you you get scientists that are

00:28:49.400 married to a certain you know like like michael mann and his hockey stick which has been debunked many

00:28:55.800 times but you know he's still with the premise is still based on a debunked model um and we know uh

00:29:05.560 that so many of the predictions from the climate alarmist from the 90s on none of them virtually none of

00:29:12.200 them have come true and they haven't come true not they're not off by a little bit but they've been

00:29:17.000 off by as you say orders of magnitude um you know new york should be underwater by now i mean if we had

00:29:23.400 listened to al gore in 1998 so uh it's amazing to me that year after year after year uh the models don't

00:29:33.640 come true the predictions don't come true uh and then people well yeah all right so it wasn't quite

00:29:40.840 okay but still we have to we have to realize that the world is coming to an end you know i mean the

00:29:46.680 the the big picture thing they won't let go of it um and uh in 12 years the world is going to end

00:29:56.360 greta thunberg uh following her this pipe pipe piper thing a little child shall lead us uh this this

00:30:03.400 seriously uh um offbeat young girl who who uh the science that she's getting is fed to her 1.00

00:30:15.080 by people who have a very vested interest in seeing her brew eat um so there's no consensus that that's

00:30:25.800 that in itself is not a fact there is no consensus on climate alarmism uh the only thing that's that

00:30:39.800 can be said to be settled is stuff that's already happened and then you base your analysis on that so

00:30:45.640 nothing that has happened was what was predicted to happen and yet so no i i i i i i never underestimate

00:30:56.760 um people's ability people's amnesia and uh people's ability to cling to uh an idea that seems

00:31:08.280 uh like it should be true uh so i i don't know if this will have any effect at all but it should

00:31:13.960 it should sorry someone's ringing my front doorbell um sorry yeah oh yeah my husband works in tech

00:31:22.120 whoa and he's yeah we have everything so but anyway i don't know how to turn it off that's

00:31:28.200 the problem i don't know how to turn the doorbell thing off um it seems like it's like there's a big

00:31:34.840 divide between this sort of elite opinion and the opinion of the officials and sort of everyone else i

00:31:40.280 know uh you reviewed uh douglas murray's latest book and we had douglas murray on an earlier episode

00:31:45.560 um the madness of crowds and you basically say actually let me pull the quote that you have

00:31:49.560 because it's it's really good um you you say murray cuts through the doubt sewing incoherence of social

00:31:56.280 justice babble to say eloquently what 95 of us believe but have been made fearful to say aloud read

00:32:02.760 it so i i thought it was interesting that you you say you know 95 of us believe that this sort of

00:32:10.280 you know when it comes to identity politics what what they're pushing is just total nonsense and yet

00:32:16.840 you know those five percent then that that that that push it you know that that believe in it that

00:32:22.120 that adopt it push a sort of like mob culture uh cancel culture woke social justice how is it that this

00:32:29.640 five percent have been so empowered now maybe it's a different five percent than the five percent that

00:32:34.840 push the global uh warming alarmism but but but still it's it's very much a divide between the sort

00:32:40.920 of you know elite opinion and everyone else so so how we found ourselves in the situation where

00:32:46.120 you know a small sliver of the population get to dictate to the rest of us what we

00:32:50.360 what we must believe and how we must behave well i i i think throughout history it's never been more

00:32:57.160 than a very small percentage of the population that when they feel passionate about something

00:33:01.880 and they are usually they're almost always intellectuals so they are very good at the at

00:33:07.720 the jargon and the babble and the uh convincing you they're very good at gaslighting is what i would

00:33:15.640 say they're good at um they're very good at proving to you that what you see is not and what you can see

00:33:25.480 is real is not real and i think it was hannah arent who said something that the totalitarian impulse

00:33:33.080 is the uh is the ability to

00:33:38.200 extinguish the line between fact and fiction in people so you they're always sowing doubt

00:33:45.080 and when i say 95 of us believe it i'm afraid to say it that i think people are almost they don't

00:33:52.760 even know what they believe anymore because they feel this tremendous pressure to um to

00:34:02.600 not seem as if they are ignorant or racist or phobic or this or that they that they have been convinced

00:34:11.800 that what they believe or what they think they see with their own eyes or you know um it's that they

00:34:19.400 possibly are harboring these negative thoughts and beliefs so they why would they say them aloud and then run

00:34:28.280 the risk of having people call them all these terrible things and the idea of being called a racist in our

00:34:34.840 society is such it's such a damning um you know it's such a or misogynist or you know these are very

00:34:43.880 damning charges you don't want to you don't want to have them leveled at you and there are consequences

00:34:48.840 to them you can get fired you can lose your gig uh i've lost a few myself at the cbc so i know how easy it is

00:34:55.640 um and uh especially now of course the latest thing is this is trans mania and uh this is where

00:35:08.600 people have been shut up they've been made to shut up you know there was islamophobia they were made to

00:35:16.200 shut up about that uh so we've had we've had many different forms of political correctness right now it

00:35:23.160 seems to me that it just comes at me from all directions uh is this um hysteria madness of crowds

00:35:32.280 madness dealing with this this gender um this world of gender dysphoria and gender uh the erasure 0.97

00:35:42.200 the erasure of uh boundaries the erasure of dimorphism the erasure but what it comes down to is the

00:35:49.480 erasure of women it's not you know it's it's it's it's it's it's not about getting into a world where

00:35:56.680 gender doesn't isn't meaningful it's about getting us to a place where it isn't meaningful to be a woman 1.00

00:36:04.600 so anybody can be a woman well you've written about this a lot and i always learn new new terms and new

00:36:10.600 concepts when when i'm reading your your work all right i didn't know about uh rapid onset gender dysphoria

00:36:17.320 i didn't know about uh turfs uh trends what is it trends uh exclusionary radical radical feminists 1.00

00:36:25.400 yes um and and and the the idea that uh the erasure of women um there was a ontario mpp she put out a

00:36:33.000 tweet uh to justin trudeau so over mother's day long weekend or the weekend justin trudeau was giving

00:36:39.640 one of his daily addresses and he kind of made it creepy i thought it was a little creepy he said okay

00:36:44.120 moms leave the room i want to talk to the kiddies it came across a little creepy uh but then once

00:36:49.560 once the kit the mom supposedly left the room i don't know if anyone actually you know huddles

00:36:54.120 around the tv to watch the prime minister give his stupid little press conferences but in his mind they

00:36:58.360 do and so once the parents had left the room he he tells you know kids to do something special for

00:37:03.480 mommy on mummies on mother's day which was actually kind of sweet um but anyway this ontario mpp

00:37:09.000 said uh in response she said prime minister justin trudeau just a reminder not all families are

00:37:14.920 heterosexual so in referencing mother's day to children during your code 19 uh press conference 0.68

00:37:20.440 please speak of parents instead of the exclusive mom and dad references that erase lgbtq families and

00:37:27.000 moms um so for me i mean i'm a relatively new mom and mother's day is probably the most special day

00:37:33.560 of the year especially when you're a new mom and the idea that now the left is coming after mother's

00:37:38.200 day and saying no no you can't have mother's day because not all families have moms well there's

00:37:42.920 just a couple things off the bat first of all it kind of to deny basic biology every single human

00:37:49.240 being on this planet has a mother i mean whether or not they live with that mom whether or not they

00:37:53.400 were adopted or whatever they were still brought into the world by a woman so to say let's not have 1.00

00:37:58.680 mother's day um is kind of ignoring some basic facts there and then the second thing is that we also

00:38:04.760 have a father's day so if you come from a family which i imagine you know there aren't that many

00:38:09.800 but sure there's some families that either you know don't have a mom that can be a widowed father

00:38:14.680 or two to dad situation they still have a day they have father's day so so so it kind of i just don't

00:38:22.200 understand the whole point behind a woman who's dr jill andrew who i imagine she's a professor and not

00:38:28.600 a medical doctor but for her to say no we shouldn't have mother's day because it excludes 0.86

00:38:33.080 some people to me is a very anti-women statement but i guess this is just sort of par for the course

00:38:38.840 on the left with the ideology yeah because pushing goalposts is part of the revolution you know when

00:38:44.040 you're when you're working for the revolution um it can't end right uh the whole point of revolutions is

00:38:51.320 uh if it ended then your part you know you wouldn't have anything to do anything to activate about

00:38:57.400 so you know you get uh when when when you get uh gay marriage accepted and gay parents accepted

00:39:05.720 uh what are you going to do yet you have to keep pushing that envelope i feel sorry for

00:39:09.000 justin trudeau by the way sometimes not not often but in this case i do because you know he can't win

00:39:15.480 when he was in that uh town hall and somebody said mankind oh no no no no no we say people kind

00:39:21.960 do people kind so he tried really hard you know to to uh be so woke uh that he was and then everybody

00:39:29.480 laughed at him for that um so this now he's he's thought well the feminists are going to love this 1.00

00:39:35.320 you know and do something nice for your mom um so he can't win there either because well you know

00:39:41.320 we're not all women um and you're absolutely right first there is a father's day but i think i was

00:39:47.560 probably prescient when many many years ago when my kids were very young and i always found mother's

00:39:53.000 day very excruciating because i i found it a it's like a hallmark uh day and it was not meaningful to

00:40:00.360 me because i always thought well if your kids love you you don't need a special day for them to tell

00:40:05.240 you and if they don't love you then it's kind of hypocritical if they only choose that day to to

00:40:11.480 you know make a big deal out of you um and at one time you couldn't help being a mother and

00:40:16.200 you had 20 kids and you were working your butt off you know then i could see a special day for

00:40:21.640 mothers but now anyone who is a mother is because they chose to be a mother and you know do they

00:40:28.600 need to be honored for that especially anyway that's a philosophical question but i think he was

00:40:35.160 you're absolutely right if you are two gay men with children so father's day is your day like

00:40:41.640 if you're trans uh and you think you're a woman so then you should relate to mother's day and if

00:40:47.960 you're trans i mean there's no logic to this idea that nobody should get to be called a mom it's part

00:40:54.440 of this trend to women erasure that women real women i know i get flack for that real women should not get a 0.99

00:41:05.960 special anything they shouldn't have locker rooms to themselves they shouldn't have rape crisis

00:41:11.480 centers to themselves they shouldn't have sports to themselves so whenever you say that something is

00:41:18.280 female specific like mother's day then you're getting into that territory where wait a minute wait 1.00

00:41:24.280 a minute wait a minute are you trying to say that only women get to celebrate this day no no no no 1.00

00:41:30.920 no um and and it kind of sends a little panic through the ranks because uh you've got to be

00:41:37.560 ever vigilant about erasing that boundary line you're not allowed to categorize by sex you can only

00:41:43.880 categorize by gender so mother's day throws a spanner into the works because it celebrates 1.00

00:41:50.600 biological mothers that's that's tough for them um and that's what she's trying to do 1.00

00:41:56.840 is erase that boundary and we must not allow her to succeed a lot of people would think it was very

00:42:04.440 anti-trans or anti-something to speak up about it but thank you for speaking up well i mean i know in

00:42:10.840 the past you've compared this sort of new identity politics with communism and in the ideology and this

00:42:16.200 sort of totalitarian mindset um you also wrote that um for those who follow gender politics vocabulary

00:42:24.040 and manipulation by ideologues is one of the biggest cultural stories of our time i i'm familiar

00:42:29.320 with uh orwell's uh politics in the english language and sort of the use of of manipulating language to

00:42:35.880 to to get to to desired ends and you know this isn't the only example i mean the reason everyone's

00:42:40.680 talking about the united nations uh similar to what justin true tried to do although i think justin

00:42:45.800 true meant to say mankind don't say mankind say humankind but he accidentally said people kind which

00:42:50.840 just sounds so silly but i mean there's there's some example i mean the un just tweeted this help

00:42:55.240 create a more equal world by using gender neutral language if you're unsure about someone's gender

00:43:00.200 referring to a group um you know and then they give this like handy little guide of don't say husband

00:43:05.000 and wife just say spouse and and and don't say policeman say police officer i mean it's it's just so silly

00:43:11.480 barbara and yet i i mean also it's kind of contradictory because it's put out by un women so you're you're

00:43:17.000 still allowed to say women uh which as you pointed out doesn't mean women anymore it means anyone who

00:43:22.360 believes they're a woman um but but apparently uh we can't say a salesman because it could be a

00:43:29.160 saleswoman or so you just just say salesperson we've seen so many examples i mean this is sort of like

00:43:34.680 political culture political correctness that's been around for for decades but there's sort of this new

00:43:40.920 fervor behind it now um and and and having sort of the united nations of all groups trying to tell us

00:43:46.840 you know not to say so some of them don't even make sense um apparently you're not supposed to

00:43:51.480 say maiden name anymore to refer to a woman's last name before they were married you're supposed to

00:43:56.120 say family name um but but family name usually just means your last name not your former last name so

00:44:01.640 that doesn't even make sense barbara but again so you know obviously the reason they go after language

00:44:09.160 is because it's the way to manipulate the sort of way that we think and believe and it kind of goes to

00:44:13.720 that totalitarian or communist mindset um i i hope that people laugh and tease them you know this

00:44:20.040 this un tweet got ratioed so there's way more people making fun of it and commenting on it than

00:44:24.520 actually sharing it and liking it but but obviously this kind of like this kind of you know correction

00:44:30.360 of language is is having some momentum and people are running with it uh why do you think it's so

00:44:36.280 important to to stop this kind of stuff i mean i think it's very important because of what you

00:44:40.280 mentioned before you mentioned orwell he was very aware who controls words controls thought uh and he

00:44:47.400 controls uh it's like who has it's who it's lenin's who and whom if you can control the language language

00:44:55.960 is something that is common and should grow organically um if you are starting to tell compel

00:45:01.960 speech and tell people uh that it's no it's not a negotiation uh language anymore uh and words don't grow

00:45:09.720 organically they grow by fiat like and now we are going to change look i i was warning about this when

00:45:17.320 we changed the word marriage which always meant one thing and suddenly said no it's a new meaning and

00:45:26.440 that's it and then everybody was shut up because if you were against gay marriage uh as opposed to

00:45:32.600 being four civil unions which i always was um then you were homophobic that was that became the bright

00:45:38.920 line between being homophobic and being not homophobic uh so having suffered through that one myself and

00:45:46.440 being called homophobic a million times and having to explain look i'm i'm not against gay rights they can 0.87

00:45:54.520 be the same but they cannot be called the same thing once you call it the same thing then what it was

00:46:01.480 before no longer applies um and everybody just kept saying no you're a homophobe like that was it that

00:46:08.440 was settled science you know if anybody that was against well i i think i was right then i'm still

00:46:13.800 right but it doesn't matter that's the law and that's the way it is but that was that to me was the

00:46:18.280 opening wedge end of a wedge in which you could say if you will not say that a man who identifies as a

00:46:25.960 woman as is is a woman then you're a transphobe um and that is now considered the settled norm and

00:46:33.160 that that came about because of bill c16 and jordan peterson at the time was laughed at when he said

00:46:40.200 you'll be put in jail eventually if you will not um if you will not agree to say that uh you know a man

00:46:47.800 is a woman or or or whatever oh don't be ridiculous well we're pretty well there right now um so that was a

00:46:55.560 very badly conceived um law but it is a totalitarian thing to say that you do not have the right to

00:47:09.160 say what is that two and two equals four because to say that a man cannot be a woman is the same as

00:47:17.240 saying two and two equals four no you must say two and two equals five and that was the whole point of

00:47:22.440 1984 was at the end of that book he when he did say i now realize that two and two equals five what he

00:47:33.640 went through his punishment was such that he emerged from it saying i believe it i believe that two and

00:47:40.920 two equals five because he now understood that logic was no longer something apart from human beings or

00:47:49.560 apart from any ideology truth was what the communist party said is truth and what they think is truth

00:47:59.960 is whatever serves their interests we're seeing that now as uh knowledge of the communist china

00:48:08.120 the party of china um as information comes out about what they covered up and the lies uh but they

00:48:17.080 don't see them as lies whatever is in their interests because that's that's communism that's totalitarianism

00:48:22.840 truth is what is good for us um so and this trans activist movement as far as i'm concerned it is a

00:48:30.680 totalitarian movement because uh it punishes you for stating the obvious but it also punishes women

00:48:38.840 um for being phobic um for being phobic for wanting their sex-based rights and to maintain their areas of

00:48:46.200 privacy i think what's unfolding is shocking and outrageous and and coming from women themselves deluded 1.00

00:48:55.880 feminists who think that trans acceptance means destroying uh privacy rights of women 1.00

00:49:03.960 women it really the madness of crowds is the only hysteria is the only way and you asked me at the

00:49:12.040 beginning why do i think this so few people can control the narrative on this thing um this is

00:49:18.600 what a zeitgeist is we're in the midst of a zeitgeist and um when you're caught up in a cultural whirlwind

00:49:26.760 like this the ability to stand outside it and say but this makes no sense um and you think

00:49:37.800 i'm just an ordinary person i'm not some great philosopher or some erudite you know and i can

00:49:44.680 see that it makes no sense and then when i say that i get people saying oh you're so courageous

00:49:51.320 and i'm like what are you talking about why is it courageous to say that two and two equals four

00:49:59.000 like so if that's courage now then are we already living in some kind of totalitarian 1984 world i know

00:50:07.160 i'm sorry if i'm exaggerating and obviously this isn't soviet russia and this is not communist china

00:50:13.880 but the the way of thinking that leads to acceptance of these kind of norms we have a prime minister who

00:50:25.160 believes that certain a certain way of thinking precludes your worthiness to to um serve uh in in any

00:50:36.040 civic function function if you believe that abortion is murder that's one of those two and two equals four

00:50:43.320 things i'm not saying it is murder what i'm saying is it's a perfectly reasonable proposition to believe

00:50:50.440 that a human life begins before birth if that's your premise and so but to believe that i i can i can

00:51:00.360 i can discuss anything with someone who believes that but what i can't stand is for someone to say

00:51:07.320 that is an idea that uh no civilized person uh that is a barbaric idea or that is an idea that cannot be

00:51:17.560 entertained you have no place in our society that was something justin trudeau said do you remember when

00:51:25.240 he was talking to the group of people who live near um in quebec the what's the road that everybody

00:51:32.840 rocksham road yes rocksham road the townspeople that lived near there who were expressing fears

00:51:39.320 about these great hordes of people coming across the border and when one it was in french he was

00:51:47.080 speaking in french and this woman expressed her fear and he pointed at her and he said you don't have a

00:51:57.960 place in our society he said it three times for her fear and i thought to myself you're our prime minister

00:52:08.280 and you are telling as citizens of this country that the right to express a fear

00:52:17.080 fear and a legitimate fear is makes you unworthy of participation in civic life uh with that that

00:52:29.960 summer jobs thing you are not worthy you are not worthy all right we're not going to jail for it

00:52:37.720 but we are being made to feel that it takes courage to express your fear

00:52:45.640 to express the idea that a biological man cannot be a biological woman you can identify as that this

00:52:55.160 takes courage um honestly candace i uh in sometimes i wake up and i say i'm glad i'm not going to live too

00:53:06.200 much longer because i don't think i could i if it goes much further then it's gone and then we have

00:53:14.520 parents who think that their children dressing up in drag and the cbc celebrating um kids

00:53:23.560 dressing up in this sexualized way is not only fun it's not only harmless but it's something for other

00:53:32.280 children to emulate um and the duplicity with which they they made this idea into an acceptable idea

00:53:40.920 who was it that said oh yes it was sky gilbert this author who wrote about that cbc drag uh documentary

00:53:49.720 he said he said it's not that we live so much in an immoral society we live in a prurient society

00:53:57.960 and that really spoke to me because i have often said that the primary characteristic when it comes to

00:54:05.640 children and and it we're in a very voyeuristic society um where

00:54:12.120 the idea of peering into a child's mind and manipulating it to accept the idea that sexual

00:54:23.560 that's that it's okay to think about sex before a child is ready to think about sexual desire and

00:54:30.760 sexual attraction and all of that planting those ideas in kids minds and then when you talk about

00:54:38.440 trans you talk about gender dysphoria it's just a way to get into their heads so you can talk about 1.00

00:54:44.200 sex it's just coming at it from another way um you're trying you this is this is grooming this is grooming

00:54:54.280 as child abuse and the parents in that documentary um how different are they from beauty pageant moms 1.00

00:55:02.200 remember those beauty pageant moms that and most of them were either women who used to be pretty but 1.00

00:55:08.920 are no longer or they're fat and they're old or they're you know uh the same with these drag uh kids 1.00

00:55:15.080 if you looked at all the parents involved there most of them were sorry to say uh very unattractive

00:55:21.880 um and they're hanging on to these kids with their beauty and the eyelashes and the sparkle and the

00:55:27.000 this and that that was one of the creepiest things i've ever seen and it came from

00:55:31.640 our funded national um for that reason alone i think the cbc should have been

00:55:38.920 killed well it seems like they use the same playbook over and over you started by talking

00:55:44.760 about gay marriage and how you you oppose it just because of the the manipulation of language

00:55:49.400 i have to say i was uh just getting into politics when that debate was happening and i was much more

00:55:54.520 in a libertarian perspective where i just thought of it as sort of you know an equality issue like

00:55:59.960 you know if men and women can get married and they have all these benefits of of uh being married

00:56:04.840 and taxes and all that kind of stuff then you know it's only fair that that would also apply to

00:56:09.160 two men that are gay that you know didn't choose to be gay but they are and and and and the idea that

00:56:14.120 people who opposed it were transphobic that was sort of what i believe because that's that was the

00:56:19.400 angle because of the word because of the word equality i think that the word equality is one of the

00:56:25.640 most badly used words uh because there's two kinds of equality there's equality of value and then

00:56:32.920 there's another equality of function does every does every person in our society have to be able

00:56:39.720 to fill the same function in life as the other person you know uh phyllis schlafly who they just did 0.98

00:56:46.840 a documentary that has been somewhat controversial uh on hulu and one of the reasons that uh when she 1.00

00:56:53.800 the equal rights amendment was at the basis of that too remember uh and the reason it failed one of the

00:57:00.280 the reasons it failed was because she made the case she said you want true equality what's going to 0.89

00:57:06.840 happen is you're going to take away women's rights she says because if you want true equality then you 1.00

00:57:13.000 have to make women uh fulfill the same obligations for the military draft and she was 100 right about 1.00

00:57:19.080 that and the women and the feminists said uh uh uh uh no no we're not accepting that she says if you 1.00

00:57:24.280 don't accept that then you can't pass the era and she was 100 right so uh those are those are the kind

00:57:31.400 of arguments that i wasn't even exposed to and that's kind of the problem i was getting at was

00:57:35.960 you know i think that they use this playbook to say you know if you're against gay marriage it's

00:57:40.040 because you're homophobe case closed end of story and and and and if you're not paying that close

00:57:45.160 attention or you just kind of instinctually like i had a couple of guy friends that were gay and i was

00:57:49.640 like you know i was uh empathetic towards them and and and and i didn't know the whole part of the

00:57:55.080 argument i'd never heard the whole concept of like marriage always having a traditional value maybe i

00:57:59.720 wasn't very well informed i was a student marriage is an institution it's it's an institution that was

00:58:05.800 that was uh it became an institution to protect children to protect women and children basically

00:58:12.760 so that uh for inheritance rights uh it had all kinds of purposes you know if you left men to

00:58:18.920 their own devices why would a man want to tie himself down to you know that kind of an institution

00:58:24.840 if he didn't have to but men could see the value of it because it protected their own children

00:58:29.720 and uh marriage was always always tied to uh procreation and family and until like 10 minutes ago

00:58:40.200 and then suddenly it was about love huh no uh meeting is about love uh living together is about

00:58:46.840 love and you have the right anybody has the right to live together uh until they fall out of love so

00:58:53.400 it's not about uh it's not about um putting a seal of approval on your love because nobody uh has to do

00:59:01.400 a purity test when they get married nobody says are you really in love before you take out a marriage

00:59:05.720 license no if you're you know anybody could get married for any reason whatsoever you could marry

00:59:10.920 a man for his money nobody was going to question you about that so marriage was never about love um

00:59:17.960 civil unions if if if tomorrow the government said you know what we're getting out of the marriage

00:59:23.800 business it's none of our business because that was a pre-national institution uh why are we even

00:59:30.840 getting involved with this you know what we're only doing civil contracts anybody can get into them

00:59:36.040 anybody can make them um our divorce laws are going to be based on your contract that you made with

00:59:41.080 each other that's a good libertarian argument for civil contracts only then you want marriage okay 0.98

00:59:47.320 you uh go off in your backyard and or wherever you want your mosque or your synagogue or whatever

00:59:53.400 have your little ceremony it's not going to have any legal impact whatsoever because if you want

00:59:59.400 to get a divorce we're only granting civil divorces so that's not our business anymore so if if they did 0.99

01:00:06.680 that you would say oh okay i'm satisfied because now everybody's the same no that was sort of the

01:00:12.440 argument that was sort of you know the idea at the time was i was like you know just you call it a

01:00:16.680 civil union and then it's like well you might if everyone's calling it by the way i'm calling it marriage

01:00:20.840 so you might as well call it marriage but i think most of us who argued against gay marriage would

01:00:25.480 have been perfectly comfortable with everybody just having a civil contract what we didn't want

01:00:33.240 because when you change the word marriage you didn't just change the word marriage you changed

01:00:38.120 the word husband and you changed the word wife the word wife could not have possibly existed

01:00:45.000 without the word husband the word husband never existed without the word wife

01:00:50.440 they didn't mean anything else except the marriage partner of the opposite sex now suddenly a husband 0.99

01:00:58.680 can be a husband to a man i find that as weird as you telling me that a man is a woman

01:01:06.120 and i am being told that a man can be a woman and a woman can be a man but that's why looking back i

01:01:12.280 thought to myself i had that whole two and two equals five experience with men and women getting married

01:01:20.600 um i mean men marrying men because marrying the word marriage was already it meant one thing only and

01:01:30.040 it didn't only even mean in numbers polygamy is still one man marrying several women which we we don't

01:01:37.320 like for all kinds of other reasons but the idea was it was about procreation it was about family

01:01:43.960 and um you know and then you get people saying oh yeah but not all heterosexual people have children

01:01:53.480 and i'm like well not all citizens of canada vote you're going to take away their citizenship i mean

01:01:59.240 it's it's a paradigm it's not that every single person has to follow you know has to be a great citizen

01:02:06.520 uh if you've got citizenship you have the right to not take advantage of any of your civic

01:02:14.360 responsibilities um that's not something they can take away from you if you're born here you know

01:02:19.880 so um i didn't think any of the arguments i i thought i've never heard an argument yet that i

01:02:26.680 thought was better than my own arguments on the other side so i'm still you know but but that's over i

01:02:32.600 mean uh radio i was on a radio show once and he said oh are you still arguing against gay marriage

01:02:37.480 i said no i never do publicly because it's a settled question by law so why would i just to stir up

01:02:44.200 trouble but i mean we're talking now about what i did argue back then and and also like i said it's a

01:02:50.200 it's a play playbook that they've used over and over and i think that some of the fears of people

01:02:54.280 who were arguing in in favor of preserving the definition of marriage was you know it's sort of a

01:02:59.240 slippery slope argument that once you change some of the vital definitions then like you said it's

01:03:04.120 not about family anymore it's about love and you know when you put love and kindness and all these

01:03:09.720 other things ahead of tradition and responsibility you kind of end up with like a nihilistic world where

01:03:16.280 men can be women and and children can be sexualized and and i feel like a lot of the fears that people

01:03:22.360 were sort of predicting that were dismissed as being alarmist and prejudiced it has sort of come true and

01:03:28.440 they've used that same playbook barbara um you know when there's a islamic terrorist attack in europe

01:03:34.120 and and citizens are slaughtered in the name of islam uh you know we're immediately shifting to the 0.76

01:03:41.080 concept of islamophobia and and and sort of western you know imperialism or american voyeurism being the

01:03:49.320 true cause of terrorism and you know we're not talking about the actual damage to society we're talking about

01:03:55.960 sort of making victims of the perpetrators of crime and it you know and then we see it again with sort

01:04:02.360 of global warming that this is a settled science if you don't believe it you're out and and you can't

01:04:09.000 you don't even have a place in in society or same with someone who believes in abortion and that sort of

01:04:14.280 goes against their scientific views as well because as we're learning more and more um about you know

01:04:20.280 babies in in in utero and and and and the development of the heartbeat and and all kinds of stuff um

01:04:27.880 sort of goes against the argument that it's just a cluster of cells or whatever and yet we can't even

01:04:32.120 have that discussion because it's settled and well i mean we now have we now we now have um a few

01:04:38.040 governors in in in the united states who uh signed on to uh post birth abortion that was that was an idea that

01:04:46.680 was floated a few years ago by a few yeah the the governor of virginia yes okay so so everybody said

01:04:55.640 look if you go back to the beginning of abortion you know when changing the abortion laws it was oh no

01:05:01.320 no it's it's going to be uh safe uh infrequent and uh what was it safe rare yeah safe legal and and and

01:05:10.360 rare yeah you know uh so it's not rare and uh it's pretty safe and it pretty legal but um what has

01:05:20.440 happened is that it it it uh it now it's it's become a sort of litmus test for uh being an enlightened

01:05:29.160 human being is to and if you are even against you if you're even for any regulation and i am for

01:05:37.640 regulations and people look at you like oh no no that you you know this is anti-woman to be to want 1.00

01:05:45.320 regulations did you know that we still are one of the only countries in the world and i think the

01:05:51.160 other two are both communist countries cuba north korea that have no regulations like all countries have

01:05:59.320 used to be you know that you had to go through a bit of a process uh you didn't just walk into an

01:06:06.360 abortion clinic and have it you know you so we've lost our sense of um what is almost what's seemly and

01:06:19.640 it's just a row of check marks are you if you're anti-abortion uh then you're uh not a fit human

01:06:27.080 being for this planet kind of thing and and they're very extreme judgments very extreme judgments um

01:06:33.720 um so like this guy gilbert that i referred to before and he wrote an article in quillette

01:06:39.960 about how he found the the the drag queens documentary cbc's the drag queen he found it

01:06:47.480 very duplicitous and was shocked by it and said look uh the whole history of drag queens is about 0.76

01:06:54.120 homosexuality and about gay liberation and this whitewash trying to pretend that these kids involved in 0.71

01:07:02.360 it are not gay kids oh no no no it has nothing to do with gayness it's it's about self-expression you

01:07:09.080 know uh it it was all absurd uh but it's all part of an ideological push uh to i think it's voyeurism

01:07:19.880 i think we are very voyeuristic uh or our our chattering classes perhaps you know first of all they're obsessed

01:07:27.160 with sex obsessed with gender obsessed with um transgression of norms very anti-family very anti i

01:07:36.920 i would say very anti-social in the sense that if everybody had their views and if everybody acted

01:07:42.440 like them uh it would be a society with no boundaries whatsoever and no protections for children

01:07:48.840 one of the interesting things i wanted to ask you about you know we talked a little bit about how

01:07:52.680 if you have the wrong views you you're not fit and you get excluded there's a new kind of rise of

01:07:58.200 cancel culture where if you say anything that's slightly offbeat you know even if it was in a

01:08:02.840 different context or at a different time when those kind of things were more generally accepted they get

01:08:07.160 cancelled and you know in some ways we're getting more and more paranoid um and and and and uh just

01:08:13.480 completely unwilling to hear views that we don't agree with but there's also a creeping trend barbara of

01:08:19.320 almost like a prudishness or or puritanical revival i know um there was a comic aziz and zari who

01:08:27.320 basically got canceled because he went on a bad date and then the girl wrote about it and talked about

01:08:31.800 how she felt humiliated and all this kind of stuff and he didn't do anything wrong he thought they were

01:08:36.680 having a good time i thought that was a terrible smear job i think uh uh you know she tried to make it 0.99

01:08:43.720 sound as horrible as she could and it wasn't horrible at all like he was he was okay he didn't do anything

01:08:48.680 wrong i mean she anyways um it was kind of a sad example of it's kind of a sad example of modern

01:08:54.840 dating you know there's sort of meaningless sex and that's the end of it and the girl might feel bad

01:08:59.000 afterwards and the guy doesn't know that she feels bad but but again the idea that he would get

01:09:03.080 canceled and his career basically is over after that um and then there there was a recent example

01:09:07.960 barbara i wanted to ask you about because there was a nhl player um named brendan lepsic and basically

01:09:14.440 someone hacked into his friend's instagram account and screenshotted a bunch of their private

01:09:19.160 conversations and so this guy he uh he played for the washington capitals and he wasn't a star player

01:09:24.760 or anything he was kind of a third string uh you know backup guy that's been trying to make his way

01:09:29.800 into the nhl but from all from from the instagram messages seemed like the guy was a pervert like he 0.56

01:09:34.760 he liked commenting about women and he'd make fun of people on instagram make fun of women for being fat and

01:09:40.680 make fun of other players wives and all this kind of stuff he seemed like kind of a jerk an immature guy

01:09:45.640 but you know he's having private conversations and when i read through what what he had said it kind

01:09:50.840 of reminded me of like the show sex in the city and you know those women it basically that's all they 1.00

01:09:57.480 did you know the idea that these are some women they're supposed to be like modern women and this 1.00

01:10:01.480 was a really popular show in the 2000s um basically all they do is obsess about sex uh have meaning

01:10:07.080 meaningless relationships um make fun of men talk intimately about their sex lives all these kind

01:10:13.560 of things that had never really been done before in television i don't think um it kind of reminds me

01:10:19.320 like basically all this guy in the nhl did was the equivalent of what the whole series of sex city was

01:10:24.120 when women do it we sort of like celebrate it as female empowerment and then when men do it it's like

01:10:29.560 what what a dog um and and his career is over the guy got the guy got his contracts done the

01:10:35.240 washington capitol's terminated in the nhl is censoring censoring him like you know and and

01:10:41.240 and the conversations barbara were meant to be private they weren't meant to be public so the

01:10:45.400 guy kind of got you know in a bad situation you don't you don't really feel sorry for him because

01:10:50.040 from the messages he seems like he's a pretty bad guy or a jerk anyway but it's still the idea look uh

01:10:56.760 you know these locker room conversations uh this is this is very old news and a lot of especially

01:11:04.280 athletes i don't think athletes would deny it they're jocks they're uh they're very macho

01:11:09.640 they're very into their masculine about uh strength and and talent uh so sometimes you know that goes

01:11:18.360 with the territory and that's the way it is and always has been you're absolutely right about this

01:11:22.920 puritanical stuff like women uh the whole point of the women's movement was supposed to empower women 0.98

01:11:29.560 to be like men we can be and and as you say when they are like men in terms of their crudeness

01:11:35.720 sex in the city stuff um yes uh people laugh they make fun of men they can say really rotten things

01:11:42.760 about men they can say uh you know oh all men are terrible they're all you know we should shoot them

01:11:48.360 all or you know that kind of thing is considered just fine uh but the minute a man looks sideways or

01:11:54.760 you know a little makes a joke um they're you know it's fainting couch feminism oh you know and it is 1.00

01:12:03.640 like this new religion um this idea that women are so fragile at the same time they're allowed to put 0.84

01:12:11.720 themselves in situations where their mothers or grandmothers would have been don't don't do that or

01:12:18.840 something bad could happen to you you know so uh it's it's very it's very the two things don't go

01:12:27.560 together they they feel they have they have social power women have tremendous social power and we've 1.00

01:12:34.440 seen the evidence in what you just said a private conversation or this ansari incident or al franken for

01:12:42.760 making a joke you know with with uh careers have been just ruined uh over a bad remark or or you know

01:12:52.600 an untoward gesture or whatever so i yes uh it is it's like a strange puritanical religion where women 1.00

01:13:00.040 are goddesses uh can do what they like and say what they like um but the minute anybody but the the

01:13:07.640 minute a man does or says something the slightest bit crude you're over you know your life is over

01:13:14.200 and everybody goes along with it um i don't get it i think maybe that's changing a little bit this

01:13:20.280 tara reid story with joe biden has done a lot to show up the hypocrisy uh of this whole attitude that

01:13:28.440 you know it's terrible horrible horrible uh when when conservative men are

01:13:34.280 uh alleged to have done something naughty but um we don't believe i mean not that i do believe her

01:13:42.200 i think she sounds like a nut but uh it's a double standard right all of a sudden they care about due

01:13:48.120 process and about hearing you know but i mean when it came to brett cavanaugh and the the story of

01:13:54.280 christine blazey ford i mean her story was equally unreliable and it changed it didn't have any yeah right 0.74

01:14:02.040 and and even though there were sort of public uh unearthings of documents that contradicted her

01:14:06.840 accounts um you know again her changing story she said it was four men then she said it was two

01:14:12.120 she had the the summer wrong uh she said it was all based on doing renovations that she came to

01:14:17.480 this revelation doing renovations in her home in palo alto and then city records show that the

01:14:22.200 renovations have been done like five years earlier so i mean i mean there were all kinds of

01:14:26.360 contradictions there too but no one wanted to talk about those back then barbara well we've got some

01:14:31.720 questions so here at true north we have club members and and those are people who sort of

01:14:37.080 subscribe to true north and give us uh donations regularly which we're very appreciative of and if

01:14:43.160 you're a club member you get to ask questions directly to our guests so we've got a couple

01:14:48.120 questions for you barbara from our club members i'll start with this one because it's uh kind of related

01:14:53.640 to um what we're just talking about this is from jessica she says hi barbara do you consider yourself

01:14:59.480 a feminist i used to but it doesn't seem like feminists stand up for women anymore 1.00

01:15:06.120 uh well thank you for that question that's a good question i uh have never considered myself and

01:15:12.600 i don't like ideology so i don't i don't anything that has an ist on the end of it is always a little

01:15:20.040 suspect to me uh so i'm careful about it i do believe in uh the equality of value uh between men and women

01:15:29.800 uh i do believe in in level playing fields um and i all all of course believe in human rights in

01:15:37.720 general women obviously should have the same human rights as any as men uh so i suppose you could say 1.00

01:15:46.760 that is feminism but why would you have to say it's feminism why couldn't you just say i'm a classical 1.00

01:15:51.800 liberal uh because those are the tenets that any classical liberal would hold so i think that's what i am

01:15:57.880 great um this is a question from phil he says jordan peterson's message of individual responsibility

01:16:05.480 is such a simple message but has uh was much needed in the day particularly to younger individuals

01:16:12.200 do you think jordan peterson why do you think jordan peterson became such a popular figure

01:16:16.440 what was it about his message that resonated with so many people

01:16:19.880 i i i think jordan peterson uh is an exceptional individual and i i actually said in one article

01:16:30.920 that i wrote about him i called him a prophet uh a prophet for modern times and uh i based that

01:16:37.800 on the fact that uh the ancient prophets what made them stand out uh was that they were they had the

01:16:44.520 boldness and the insight to uh push over idols they they were not afraid uh to uh to point out the

01:16:56.520 uh absurdities or the uh absurdities or the immorality or whatever of things that were held sacred in their

01:17:03.320 day but were wrong so in that sense i i think that he is that kind of a voice also in his recognition

01:17:11.800 that life is about suffering i think he has a very timeless view of life and he's not uh he has one foot

01:17:19.080 rooted in his own historical moment but um again he has that prophetic um sense of the world uh in in

01:17:30.280 as as throughout all of history and from the past into the future um and the big philosophical truths

01:17:38.200 when he says life is suffering that is not something most people really believe anymore i think this

01:17:44.360 virus has shown us has shocked a lot of us into uh you mean we can't control this we can't you know uh

01:17:52.920 people who have decided that life is you know they they have their lives all mapped out and air

01:17:58.760 conditioned and they have their degree and they have their job and they're this and they're that and

01:18:03.640 he's saying no you're going to you're going to have a moment when you recognize that that suffering

01:18:09.640 comes into most lives at some time or another you just have to deal with it you can't um you can't

01:18:15.480 you can't cure every ill you can't heal uh you know people's pain uh and you you'll never make people

01:18:24.040 true truly equal to each other there will always be inequalities i think this speaks to

01:18:29.960 the common sense of most people but his other message uh you can control your attitude to life that

01:18:37.640 is something you can have control over and you can make life a lot better for yourself by

01:18:43.800 externalizing that sense of control doing things like put order in your life bring order back into

01:18:50.440 your life um and uh you know do the small things and i mean his 12-step guide uh was very much on a

01:18:59.240 higher level than most you know uh wake up every day at the same time you know have a good breakfast

01:19:04.920 that i mean but it was a step above that because it was so much more philosophical but uh well

01:19:11.240 sometimes those basics of barbara are are what kind of get you on track i mean it reminds me of what

01:19:15.800 you're talking about with kids in school you know if you don't have a schedule it's hard to even order

01:19:21.000 yourself exactly be prepared to to get tasks done and that's sort of the very first step so yeah the idea

01:19:27.160 of order is so important he says what you do is who you are so you've got to make what you're doing

01:19:33.640 uh the real you you've got to be in alignment with that and he also said some one of the interesting

01:19:41.080 things that i think he said is you don't know what you think until you say it out loud or until you say

01:19:47.080 it out loud to somebody else uh he says that's why freedom of speech is so important because sometimes

01:19:55.160 you don't know what you believe until you're allowed to work it out in a dialogue with somebody

01:20:00.120 like you and i talking about marriage say and you say oh well i used to think this and i've

01:20:05.240 yeah well okay equality that's important but what we mean when we say so it's when we start to speak

01:20:11.880 that we come to terms with what we think but if but that's why they're so clever about the words

01:20:18.280 and saying you may not think this so they they they right away they're they're cutting you off at the

01:20:24.600 thought level well it's never going to come out of your mouth then and if it doesn't come out of your

01:20:28.760 mouth then you don't really know what you think you only know what you're not allowed to say you only

01:20:33.720 so that you you stop yourself you try to stop yourself from thinking what they don't want you to

01:20:38.760 say um and he says all kinds of things like that i i don't have uh my notes on him in front of me but

01:20:48.120 uh there's a thousand things like that and they and every time he he makes gives a talk or gives an

01:20:53.800 interview there's a pearl in every in every statement i think the other thing about jordan

01:20:59.960 i if you if you meet him and the way and you have a private conversation with him you feel like you're

01:21:07.240 being heard really heard for who you are he's very humble he's a very humble person so there is also that

01:21:16.440 prophetic sense he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't believe in himself he's not people say oh he's a

01:21:23.560 cult no cult leaders believe that they're very special people um he doesn't want you to join the

01:21:30.760 cult he wants you to be you it's interesting that you said that because like people always say oh his

01:21:36.280 message is so simple and you know i've heard him kind of being dismissed as like oh yeah jordan peterson's

01:21:41.880 interesting if you've never heard the debates about post-modernism that came up like 30 years ago or

01:21:46.840 whatever but i i agree with you barbara i feel like he has so much wisdom that you know you can

01:21:52.520 take from it what you what you will if you just want to say oh it's a simple message but to me even

01:21:56.920 on the right and conservatives uh conservatives and conservatism i know you don't like isms but

01:22:02.680 the idea libertarians you know the central kind of concept to me was always based around human

01:22:07.320 freedom and human flourishing so you know individuals need to be unleashed and we need to get

01:22:11.480 government out of the way and all this kind of stick and and so the central tenant being freedom

01:22:16.600 and then when jordan peterson came around he was sort of saying well yeah i mean freedom from

01:22:20.920 government is all good and you don't want a tyrannical government but you know there's something else that's

01:22:24.920 more important which is you finding meaning in your life and you do that through taking on new

01:22:29.720 challenges and like you said suffering and through individual responsibility and it's like yeah you know

01:22:36.360 why don't we talk more about that such an interesting idea and i know that that's something that

01:22:41.080 probably my parents generation was taught very thoroughly and and definitely for my grandparents

01:22:46.040 and you think of all the suffering that the past generations did to you know create this free

01:22:50.840 flourishing society but then for the younger generations millennials and and generations no

01:22:55.960 one's really telling them to to take on more responsibility and and to you know sort of the

01:23:01.160 idea of like short-term pain for long-term gain or you know you want to build the conditions in your

01:23:06.200 life to have meaning you know again through suffering like even even just having a family

01:23:12.120 you know in some ways you know having children is well i think a huge sacrifice the idea of sacrifice

01:23:18.440 is something that he talks a lot about uh and you're right that's very unpopular the idea of sacrifice

01:23:23.800 you know but i have to be me uh i have to uh there's with millennials i think that they've i think

01:23:29.480 there's this whole culture of safetyism it's one of the reasons why we're so hysterical about this

01:23:34.360 virus is this idea that any anyone should get it is so horrible um you know it's it's the whole idea

01:23:42.680 that nobody should take a risk nobody can take risks but the millennials are going to be very changed

01:23:48.520 by this experience i think um we'll look back i think in 10 or 15 years a lot of books will be written

01:23:55.720 about um about the societal cultural social changes that uh this brings about well i hope you uh write

01:24:05.880 one of them barbara because you have a lot uh of insight on this topic the next question comes from

01:24:11.000 carol carol says can you ask barbara what she thinks of the lineup of contenders for the conservative

01:24:16.920 leadership race and if she's willing to endorse any one of them well interesting uh i should get that

01:24:23.640 question now because i'm actually uh gathering material for a column i'm going to write um on

01:24:29.240 the conservative race i think it is a very important race uh because i think the next election may come

01:24:35.160 sooner than we think uh because of uh the profligate amounts of money uh that you know the the crazy

01:24:45.560 amounts of money that are just pouring out uh because of an extended lockdown um yes i think uh that

01:24:54.280 well the the the candidate that appeals to me the most is aaron o'toole and i think i might want to

01:25:04.760 endorse him because well look basically it's between him and mckay uh i could never endorse mckay i

01:25:12.280 uh i've seen he's he's he's not strong he's not he's weak he's vacillating and i know it's a small

01:25:22.360 thing but he's a career politician or he was for so many years and never actually took the trouble to

01:25:30.200 learn any french uh that's kind of shocking to me i don't see how you can have ambitions in this country

01:25:37.560 uh above more than you know provincial level and not um make it your business to learn functional

01:25:47.720 french so that that that put me off him um i like o'toole's uh stance on many things i like his tough

01:25:56.600 approach to china which is not just now but has been for the last couple of years

01:26:00.520 um i like his what he has to say about freedom of speech i like what he has to uh i think making

01:26:07.640 the uh his kickstarter idea you know that the millennial millennials have to be concentrated on and

01:26:14.840 uh reawaken we have to reform a middle class in this country i like what he has to say in a lot of

01:26:19.960 things i'm there's a few gray areas um i'm not so sure that he understands what the word islamophobia

01:26:26.920 means in that m103 um he he was willing to have that stay in the motion and uh i have a questions

01:26:35.880 i have a few questions actually i've put to his um communications people in fact i'm going to hear

01:26:41.160 back by the end of the day i i have very specific questions uh that i would like answered so uh but i i

01:26:47.960 believe that overall i could uh he strikes me as a leader he strikes me as having strong leadership

01:26:55.160 qualities he strikes me as um he inspires trust uh he seems real i like his military background

01:27:04.120 i like his i like the fact that he has a military background um it doesn't happen often in canadian

01:27:10.360 life does it right and i think people that go into the military in a you know more than a perfunctory

01:27:17.240 way um they have a certain set of values that i relate to i like his uh he has a very open and

01:27:25.480 natural unpretentious uh but take charge kind of uh attitude about him when i compare him uh his

01:27:34.280 affect to that of justin trudeau it's like whoa you know uh really to me there's it's it it's really a

01:27:44.440 significant chasm between them in terms of uh a natural uh leadership as opposed to uh a natural

01:27:54.600 wish to be in the public eye and a natural wish uh to be um seen and um uh adored you know there's

01:28:06.200 quite a big difference yeah so when when justin trudeau first sort of showed up on the scene and

01:28:11.160 decided he wanted to be prime minister and then it sort of seemed inevitable that he was going

01:28:15.160 to he seemed like he was like an aberration to me because canadian politicians are supposed to be

01:28:19.640 like boring and sort of understated and dry and just focused on getting the job done and it's not

01:28:25.320 like a glamorous thing in canada you know maybe in the united states it's supposed to be like hollywood

01:28:30.120 for ugly people or something but in canada it wasn't really like that so i feel like you know

01:28:34.920 erin o'toole might be a step back towards like traditional canadian leadership i remember at the last

01:28:40.440 conservative convention when they selected andrew share to be a leader they were going through the

01:28:46.440 videos of all the candidates and i remember seeing erin o'tools and i didn't really know

01:28:49.720 very much about him but i was like wow that guy seems really good like he he should be leader but

01:28:54.840 you know i didn't know i didn't really know anything about him he was so understated and so

01:28:58.680 yeah maybe this is uh maybe this is his time now we have no i just got to say it's a very tough uh

01:29:06.120 a big tent to yeah there's a lot of groups to appeal to and very tough uh but a social conservative

01:29:13.560 is just not going to make it in this country or i mean even if they do we saw what happened to sheer

01:29:17.960 it's impossible you can't square that circle has to be somebody who uh who just deals uh with the fact

01:29:25.560 that certain ships have sailed uh so to speak and um i i think he seems like the best uh that could

01:29:34.760 appeal to all groups in a certain way i mean i don't think he'll be you know social conservatives

01:29:39.240 will be happy with him but they're not happy with anybody um so it's it's it's sort of sad state of

01:29:45.080 affairs that i i don't know what portion of the canadian public is pro-life but i think the portion of

01:29:50.680 the public that would want some restrictions like you said on things like late-term abortion or sex

01:29:55.000 selective abortion is much higher than we you give credit to and yet that that those kind of issues are

01:30:01.800 rules we know from polls that uh something like 90 of canadians would be happy with some regulation

01:30:08.360 there's only about five percent of canadians who believe absolutely pro-life and some and five

01:30:14.040 percent that believe absolutely uh in no restrictions whatsoever so it but the thing is there's timing is

01:30:22.360 very important in these things and i think he knows it's just it's not the right time sooner or later

01:30:28.120 there will be a right time but for a politician to say and part of my platform will be regulation

01:30:33.640 on abortion he knows like it's like people have already been brainwashed into oh he's oh he's a

01:30:40.280 misogynist he hates women so you it just can't be done can't be done now i think you need a pragmatist

01:30:46.360 he is a pragmatist i can see that so fair enough i think that's a good point okay barbara just last

01:30:52.440 question here it's sort of related this is from josie she asks is there hope for canada and our

01:30:58.120 children and grandchildren's future under this government it seems that all of our parties are

01:31:02.440 so corrupt including the conservatives the only one i trusted was jim karahalias my parents came

01:31:08.680 from greece and they know firsthand what this is this is her quote not mine what the bloodthirsty

01:31:13.720 ottoman invaders did to christianity um i don't know if you're familiar with jim uh karahalias and what

01:31:20.120 how he was sort of removed from uh being able to even run and which which kind of goes to what

01:31:24.440 we were talking about earlier with cancel culture and and uh certain views just being outside the

01:31:29.880 realm of what we're willing to have as part of our conversation so did you think there's any hope

01:31:35.080 under the current system uh do i think there's any hope for people to be um utterly uh true to

01:31:44.600 the idea that every voice should count and every you know um i don't know if i would say it was corrupt

01:31:54.040 to sort of limit uh to say well we can't endorse uh this person that i i think pragmatism and

01:32:02.760 corruption are two different things uh a party has as its fundamental obligation uh to to make

01:32:12.120 the the greatest effort to get itself elected uh that is its primary purpose and uh then under

01:32:23.080 subheadings under that purpose uh what are you going to do what how far will you go and what will

01:32:28.760 you do to get elected uh that then you start running into difficulties like well can we tolerate this

01:32:35.480 can we think you know our our who do we have to please uh and everybody has to make these decisions

01:32:42.120 and i don't call somebody automatically corrupt simply because they say i'm sorry that that attitude

01:32:49.000 is is uh unacceptable for you know uh it's a very tough call sometimes but i don't say they're corrupt

01:32:58.760 to do it i say they maybe they're over uh being over cautious uh because they want to have the best

01:33:05.960 chance of getting elected um so i try to be not so judgmental because if you want to be pure if you

01:33:15.000 want to be totally pure you're not going to get elected that's the reality and i think there's a

01:33:21.640 pretty big distinction between uh someone who's more like a public intellectual or a journalist or people

01:33:26.600 like you and i who can really have open debates and discuss issues you know kind of more from an

01:33:32.360 academic position maybe or philosophical compared to a politician who's doing sort of retail politics

01:33:38.520 and also has to appeal to the most people the big tent concept and you can't alienate people like we can

01:33:43.720 have discussions about our fears of you know creeping islamitization or islam you know writing off

01:33:49.880 islamophobia um but but but for a politician who's trying to you know get elected and part of it

01:33:57.400 barbara is they you know they're stuck in a position where the mainstream media is clearly left-wing and

01:34:02.920 has a bias against conservatives um which maybe i'll just ask one final one final question um you know

01:34:10.360 there's been a rise of independent media independent voices i know you at one point a while ago were involved

01:34:16.120 with the rebel and then you parted ways but you've been pretty involved with the post-millennial um

01:34:21.240 and you know you've seen what we've done here at true north just kind of trying to promote uh almost

01:34:26.840 like a parallel media where we have a pretty big following on social media and we have these kind

01:34:30.840 of conversations and we try to push the envelope on different issues that the mainstream media has said

01:34:35.240 no no uh the science is settled or whatever do you see independent media playing a role in challenging

01:34:42.360 the mainstream media or do you think the mainstream media and their hold with you know the cbc and the

01:34:46.840 billions that they get and the newspaper bailouts and the hundreds of millions they get and you know

01:34:51.800 all these media institutions becoming more and more integrated with the with the state um is is it is

01:34:58.040 it impossible to uh to to beat them or to at least level the playing field well i i i do think that the

01:35:04.760 playing field is is a bit more leveled lately uh for example i was very interested when um uh the uh cbc

01:35:12.440 did a smear campaign both on uh the post-millennial and the epic times which i also write for and the

01:35:19.080 epic times is not only very conservative it's extremely anti-communist so they're they're focused 0.99

01:35:24.120 on china of course um and i thought well if it's when when you start being attacked by uh the state media

01:35:32.280 uh then you know that they're scared of you uh otherwise they would just ignore you so i thought

01:35:39.320 actually that was kind of a compliment to post-millennial when last uh summer uh the cbc did a

01:35:45.080 whole in fact they singled me out and they said oh yes very conservative views they have conservative

01:35:50.520 colonists barbara you know so so i thought oh great well then they're annoyed they're annoyed if

01:35:55.720 they're annoyed it means that we're getting under their skin uh that's good so um yeah i think 0.74

01:36:02.200 there's been a tremendous rise of great digital i think true north is a very good example you know

01:36:10.840 my son is uh working with quillette.com which i think has some fantastic uh doing fantastic exposing

01:36:19.240 the world to great writers and a lot of them are are cancelled writers um in fact uh you know toby young

01:36:27.720 who runs the uk edition of quillette he is a primary example of cancel culture uh you know very erudite

01:36:35.160 and had a distinguished career and it got wiped out in one tweet or you know it was horrible it was

01:36:41.960 a disaster but he's come back he's come back um and i don't know i i i you've got jordan's channel and

01:36:50.200 you've got uh youtube's galore you've got joe rogan and you've got dave rubin and uh man you could just

01:36:56.760 sit all day and watch listen to podcasts and watch youtubes and um so i think uh if you're looking for

01:37:04.200 alternate ideas they're there and they're uh and they're not of course there's the alt right and the

01:37:13.000 alt i mean not talking about the extremes i'm talking about people like you um now i know ezra is

01:37:19.160 considered quite extreme because he sometimes crosses lines uh which is too bad because he's

01:37:26.920 more often right than wrong um but if you but people want media that they can not only trust but they

01:37:34.440 can retweet and not get a barrage of oh i can't believe you read that disgusting or you listen to

01:37:40.600 those disgusting people um but i think there are uh uh seems to me every time i turn around my inbox is

01:37:48.440 just full of terrific material from the federalist and tablet magazine and and um i don't know all

01:37:55.640 these all these startups in the last five years uh it's a very rich cultural banquet that uh you have

01:38:06.040 access to there's still this idea that the mainstream media that only the globe and mail and this you know

01:38:12.200 the star and the national post have a right to you know sort of uh be be considered authoritative

01:38:20.280 well you know maybe uh but ordinary people can go where they want uh so if you add it up everybody who's

01:38:28.200 you know listening to or watching or reading um you know true north and others in that uh in that general

01:38:39.960 frame uh i feel encouraged i feel encouraged by that i don't know if it translates into winning the next

01:38:47.240 election but uh at least uh at least you don't feel alone at least someone i don't feel alone um

01:38:57.800 anymore uh in some of the stuff that i used to write about and uh i feel encouraged i do maybe i'm just

01:39:05.880 i want to find a reason to be encouraged but i know i think i am well barbara i think that's a terrific

01:39:12.120 note to end on then some optimism and some good news for the listeners and the viewers out there

01:39:17.480 so barbara it's been such a delight i've enjoyed every moment of our conversation thank you so much

01:39:21.800 for joining us i know i've enjoyed it enormously thank you so much for having me candace it was a real treat

Juno News - May 26, 2020

Ep. 5 ｜ Barbara Kay ｜ The Woke Left, Cancel Culture and Radical Trans Activism

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