Juno News - LAWTON： Reject political tribalism

00:00:00.000 Happy Festivus to you all. It is the joyous Festivus season, which means it's time for

00:00:10.400 perhaps a little airing of grievances. Now, one thing that I am going to air as far as grievances

00:00:15.880 are concerned is something that's been nagging away at me for a little while now, the need to

00:00:20.720 reject political tribalism. Now, when I say political tribalism, I'm not saying rejecting

00:00:26.420 the idea of having a side, of having a party, of having a philosophical outlook, but rather the

00:00:32.380 idea of embracing it in a tribal way where the only way you can acknowledge anything is good is if it

00:00:39.200 comes from your side. We have seen in the last couple of years in Canada people on the right

00:00:45.080 that have done the wrong thing and people that are on the left that have done the right thing. Take a

00:00:50.280 look, for example, at Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philbot, two women who were liberals through and

00:00:55.700 through but stood up when it mattered on questions of integrity. We've seen conservatives that have

00:01:01.020 fallen short of it, like throwing Michael Cooper, the conservative MP, under the bus for saying what

00:01:06.280 anyone with a brain was thinking. He just had the temerity to say it out loud. These things happen

00:01:12.380 all the time, and the problem is that you have far too many people that are unwilling to acknowledge

00:01:16.960 when their side screws up and unwilling to give credit where it's due when someone on the other side

00:01:23.660 might do something well. This is paramount because you lose the moral high ground to criticize anyone

00:01:29.560 when your ability to judge the moral worth of an action of a decision depends on who's the one that

00:01:36.440 made it. And this is not to say I haven't been guilty of it. I've tried to overlook that, and I've

00:01:41.320 tried to move past that, and I hope we all can. Now, I have friends of mine that are genuinely of

00:01:47.360 all stripes. I have friends who support the NDP, friends who support the liberals. I think I have one

00:01:52.240 Green Party friend. I don't have any Bloc Québécois friends, and I have friends who support the

00:01:56.820 Conservative and People's Parties of Canada. And the reason this is important is because it's the

00:02:01.880 only way you can ever break out of your own bubble, to talk to people that view the world differently

00:02:06.920 than you do, to let them challenge you, to challenge them. At best, you become more strengthened

00:02:12.180 in your resolve. At worst, you maybe change your position or learn a little bit about how it might not

00:02:18.440 be as black and white as you once thought. I don't want this to come across as a lecture. I don't want

00:02:23.420 it to come across as preachy. If anything, I'm asking us to all accept that our humanity matters

00:02:30.180 more than our political identity. And as politics gets messier and messier, this has never been a

00:02:35.580 more important lesson to learn, and one to internalize, and one that I'm going to, heading into

00:02:40.340 2020, try to internalize and embrace to the best of my abilities as well. The reason this is so

00:02:46.740 important is because at a certain point, every politician that we think is the best is going to

00:02:51.720 screw up. And we're going to look very foolish if we have embraced around them a cult of personality.

00:02:57.360 Support the ideas and support the people because they're championing these ideas. Don't hit your

00:03:03.220 wagon to a person who, like any human being, is probably going to disappoint you at some point,

00:03:09.280 certainly if they are a politician. We give thanks to the politicians that are standing up for what's

00:03:14.160 right. We have to make a climate where there's more of an incentive for them to stand up for

00:03:19.540 what's right. And that's what happened around Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. And in the case

00:03:24.740 of Jody Wilson-Raybould, she was rewarded for it by being re-elected as an independent. So let that

00:03:30.720 be my grievance aired for this 2019 Festivus season. For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.

Juno News - December 23, 2019