Hate speech should not just be speech that you hate
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
180.78453
Summary
The debate about free speech in Canada is happening again, and it's a little different than it was 10 years ago. I had a minor epiphany the other day, when I was watching Mark Stein, John Robson, and Lindsey Shepard testify before the Justice Committee.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
I had a minor little epiphany the other day. I was watching Mark Stein, John
00:00:13.640
Robson, and Lindsey Shepard testifying before the Justice Committee when I
00:00:17.200
realized it's happening again. The debate about free speech in Canada. And I don't
00:00:23.520
just mean the debate that we have, you know, every six months or once a year or
00:00:27.520
what have you, when there's somebody on campus who's giving some rather pretty
00:00:31.560
basic and harmless speech and a bunch of SJWs and Antifa people show up and pull
00:00:36.060
a fire alarm and riot and so forth. And we all say, no, people should be free to, you
00:00:40.180
know, say anything aside from slander and libel and death threats and etc. I don't
00:00:44.100
mean that. I mean the much bigger debate that we had a version of 10 years ago
00:00:49.060
when Mark Stein and Ezra Levant and others were before the human rights
00:00:52.920
tribunals. And there were judges, courts, kangaroo courts, quasi-judicial bodies,
00:00:59.580
politicians, parliamentarians weighing in on basically whether or not people should
00:01:04.400
be punished for saying things that some people don't like, that other people deem
00:01:08.960
hateful. It was a really interesting debate to be a part of a decade ago. To
00:01:13.880
watch it all unfold, there were some great people putting forward some great
00:01:17.640
arguments. It was a very energetic and exciting time. And the right side won. These
00:01:23.200
Section 13 laws, which were deemed unpopular by a lot of people, not just
00:01:27.720
conservative-minded people, but liberals and centrists, people really all across
00:01:32.220
the board who basically believed in that idea that, well, I may not believe what
00:01:37.040
you're having to say, I may not believe in the exact things you're saying, that I
00:01:40.500
will fight for your right to say it. All of those people stood up and they all
00:01:44.660
stood up together. Andrew Lawton and I were talking about an event that he
00:01:48.560
recalled being at a number of years ago, where liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein
00:01:52.340
stood beside Ezra Levant and others who, you know, people who are generally not of
00:01:56.140
the same opinion and actually standing in the same room in the same event, talking
00:02:00.440
about why free speech mattered. And I was a little disheartened when I had that
00:02:05.320
realization just the other day that it's happening again. The debate is
00:02:10.280
happening again. Because while it was a very vibrant time 10 years ago, and why
00:02:15.240
more or less the right side won, things are different now than they were 10 years
00:02:19.940
ago. And there's a lot of people who just view the world and these issues very
00:02:25.200
differently. And I don't think they're as open and as amenable to a lot of the great
00:02:30.320
arguments we heard 10 years ago that we are today. Trigger warnings, safe spaces,
00:02:34.860
microaggressions, all those sorts of things. Those didn't exist 10 years ago. I mean, they don't
00:02:40.000
exist now. They're all just bizarre figments. But people very, very passionately hold on
00:02:45.000
to them. And there are things that are out there in the activist square. That's the kind
00:02:49.480
of stuff that the free speech warriors will be dealing with this time around. And I'm a
00:02:54.680
little nervous. I'm not necessarily optimistic that things are going to prevail. We've got
00:02:59.180
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who for about a year now has really been harping on about
00:03:02.960
how there's this awful stuff happening on the internet, and we got to do something about
00:03:06.800
it and so forth. The platforms are failing their users. And they're failing our citizens.
00:03:15.640
They have to step up in a major way to counter disinformation. And if they don't, we will hold
00:03:23.680
them to account and there will be meaningful financial consequences. And you go, look, yes,
00:03:30.560
there are increasingly people on social media who are just saying mean things and rude things
00:03:35.660
and spewing their venom and so forth. Govern yourself accordingly, folks. Be polite. Be
00:03:39.920
well-mannered to others. You know, articulate your opinions well and so forth. Take the high
00:03:45.160
road rather than the low road. All that kind of stuff. But that's just up to us to be decent
00:03:49.880
and respectful human beings. Do we need the government? Do we need the nanny state? Do we need
00:03:54.280
big brother coming in and weighing all of that for us? Because ultimately that was what a lot
00:03:58.920
of people felt those Section 13 hate speech laws actually were. And there were people who
00:04:03.860
were actually involved in those human rights commissions. Commissioners who did acknowledge
00:04:07.880
that the net was cast too wide. This was not precisely defying terms like slander and libel
00:04:14.520
and so forth and, you know, death threats. This was other stuff. This was basically about
00:04:19.360
policing people for their speech that you decided you hated. Hate speech should not just be speech
00:04:25.640
that you hate. So 10 years later, here we are. The conversation is flaring up again.
00:04:31.400
We're gonna see the debate happen. And I think it's gonna be different than it was 10 years ago.
00:04:37.040
It's gonna be different in some very interesting and troubling ways.