EZRA LEVANT ｜ Fascism is alive and well in Justin Trudeau's Canada
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Summary
A feature interview with Bruce Pardy, the law professor who fights for freedom every day. You don't have a lot of those left. I'm always amazed that he hasn't been sacked by his university for being too freedom-y. We'll have a great chat with him today, but let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. A feature interview today with Bruce Party, the law professor who fights
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for freedom every day. You don't have a lot of those left. I'm always amazed that he hasn't
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been sacked by his university for being too freedom-y. We'll have a great chat with him
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today, but let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com,
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click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month, and that might not sound like a lot of money to you,
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but it really adds up for us because we get no money from Trudeau and no money from YouTube.
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So it's really just you. You get a lot in return, though, the satisfaction of keeping Rebel News
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alive and the video version of this podcast. You know, nowadays it feels like censorship is
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Tonight, a feature interview with Bruce Pardy, one of the few remaining freedom-oriented law
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professors in Canada. It's December 27th, and this is the Ezra LeVance Show.
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You know, I enjoyed my time as a university student. Maybe that's why I spent seven years
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in university, but I didn't take enough of the classics of humanities, of history,
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of philosophy. I took more commerce and law, which really are trade schools, let's be honest.
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I'm not sure if I would do well in university these days because so much of it is infused
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with politics. You know, I always loved Shakespeare ever since high school.
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I don't think I could survive a Shakespeare course at a university because it would be
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unlocking feminist narratives or transgender narratives, and oh, they would find them.
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They would torture that text until they would find them. I just don't think I would survive there.
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I would probably try and get my professional degree and then scram as soon as possible.
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And I think it's because the culture of the University of Change. Of course, culture is just
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the plural form of people. What's culture other than a group of people and how they act and how
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they talk and how they think and what they value. And I think there's a change in the culture of
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academics themselves. Obviously, not all of them, but every year more old school professors retire
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and every year new professors are hired, promoted, and granted tenure. And I think the idea of a
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professor who loves a rollicking debate and teaches how to think rather than what to think, I just get
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the feeling that they are an endangered species. And I don't mean to call our next guest that because
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I certainly don't want to summon any demons that would take him out. But I really do think if I were
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a university student, I would choose my courses and maybe even my university based on could I find some
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professors that I respect, even if I disagree with them? Is there a professor who's intellectually
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honest and rigorous, who can handle an argy-bargy back and forth? I had a little bit of that when I
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went to law school some 30 years ago. I don't know if I would find that now. You probably know who I'm
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talking about because I can count the number of critical thinking, debate-oriented professors
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on one hand's fingers. What a pleasure to be joined by Bruce Pardy, professor of law
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and all-around good guy. Also, he's an expert with the McDonnell-Laurier Institute and with other
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think tanks because he does a lot of thinking. Professor, great to see you again.
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Oh, sure. Almost good to see you. Thanks for having me on.
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You know, let me just ask, how is school going? You're teaching again, right?
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How are the kids? I'm calling them kids. Everyone younger than 40 is a kid to me. How are the students?
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They're great. They're good. I have two groups in the fall term, and they're both terrific. One's a
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first-year group, and one was an upper-year seminar course. And, you know, they're good. They have
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open minds, and they're inclined to speak when given the chance.
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Have they selected your class because of you, because of how you address things, or is it almost
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random? I mean, I would think that students with a particular point of view might seek you out. Is
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that happening? Well, they don't have a choice in first year. So, they may have either won the
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lottery or lost it. I'm not sure which they think. You can choose your seminar courses every year on
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your own. So, some of them may have self-selected. Who knows? I can't tell you for sure, but I enjoyed
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the group. So, forgive me. I just have one last question, and I'll move on to your ideas. But I am
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sort of daydreaming about what it would be like to be in college these days. I remember
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about 30 years ago, I attended a class that would absolutely be banned in 2024. It was
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the retired professor. He's retired now, Tom Flanagan, who was a professor at the University
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of Calgary. And he taught a course called Biopolitics, where he sought to understand,
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are there any links between biology and politics? He would try and answer questions like,
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why are there more men in politics, especially at high levels, than women? Why are there more men
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in certain professions than women? Why are so many women in nursing and education and so many men in
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carpentry and deep sea fishing? So, he would try and find a biological route. You would never be
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allowed to teach that. I don't think that would be called racist and sexist and things like that.
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There were some students, professor, who chose that class to spar with Dr. Tom Flanagan, to argue
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with them. And it actually made the class wonderful. I mean, I was an ally of Dr. Tom's, but I love that
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there were feminists who showed up every day, and they really teased out, coaxed out the debate. Is there
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any of that going on? And this is my last question about your teaching. Just forgive me. I'm just so
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excited that you're back in the classroom. Do you have any students who say, I'm going to take on
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Bruce Party? I'm going to out-debate him. Does that happen?
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It happens. It happens on occasion. Sure. And I enjoy that too. I would like my students to do that,
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and occasionally they do. And that's very much encouraged in my classrooms. I can't speak for
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the other classrooms. I'm not in there. But that's always been my idea as well of what a good
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university environment is. So, yeah. All right. I'll move on to heavier matters. But
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I was just reminiscing about my own college experience long ago in the 20th century.
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I want to talk about one of the mediums that professors like yourself have at your disposal
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in 2024 that were not around when I was in school, ways that you can express yourself even beyond
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the dozens or hundreds who might be in your school. One of them is a platform called Substack.
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It's really the updated version of what would have been called blogging 20 years ago. It's a very
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popular platform, and it actually allows people to make a little bit of money. There's a subscription,
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or there's a free model. And Professor, you've started a new substack called First Principles
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with Bruce Pardy, and you have a post on there called Our Constitutional Mistake.
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All we have ever done is move power around. I'll just read the first sentence or two,
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and then I'd love you to take it away. We made a mistake, you said. Kings once ruled England with
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absolute power. Their word was the law. Centuries of struggle and reform gradually overcame their
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tyranny. We adopted this idea called the rule of law. We established checks, balances, limits,
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restraints, and individual rights. For a while, it worked. The law in Canada, as in other countries
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that inherited British common law, provided a system of justice as good as anything that civilization had
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ever produced. But. But now the rule of law is fading. That's a lot of stuff, you know, they say
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always ignore everything before the word but. Like when people say, I'm for free speech, but. Ignore
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everything before the word but. You just said we got the best system in the world, but. What do you mean?
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Yeah, the but the but is it's it's fading. And so we've been operating on this assumption that the
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rule of law works because people, especially those people who are in charge, believe in the rule of
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law. But the rule of law means that governments are restrained. And one of the one of the ways we do
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that is to have checks and balances, you know, different branches of the state do different things,
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and then they compete against each other. And, you know, that can work and it has worked in the past,
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but it's not working so well now. And I don't mean that they all they always agree. They have their
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their quabbles, quibbles, quibbles and fights, quarrels. But but for the most part, the people who rule us now
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share a belief in in the the role, the proper role of the state and the proper role of the state is to manage,
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to manage society, to manage the people, to proper ends. And the checks and balances are not checking
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and balancing each other anymore. So, for example, if if we if you look at what we're complaining about
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at different moments in time, we will complain about a statute that the legislature has passed
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because the statute does something egregious. But in a different moment, we complain about
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what the courts do. The courts make a decision that is not in accordance with what we believe
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the Constitution says, for example. Or then we on a different occasion, we complain about what some
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bureaucrat has done, because after all, bureaucrats are not elected and not not a court. OK, well,
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now we've criticized what each of the three branches has done, the legislature, the judiciary and the
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executive. And our complaint is that they are they are pushing us around. And that is true in in each
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of those three cases. So all we've done in the very beginning, starting with the king, you know,
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this evolution of the rule of law began a long time ago, maybe with the Magna Carta.
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And the original problem was the king because the king had absolute power. And so eventually we got
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around to the idea that maybe we shouldn't have one guy with all the power as we took power away
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from the king and gave it to legislatures. And that sounds better, right? Because legislatures
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are elected or mostly sometimes now. Fine. Except that legislatures over time proved that they could be
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tyrants, too. They passed legislation that we don't like. So the Americans came along first
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and said, we have a solution to that. We're going to create a Bill of Rights.
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Now, what does the Bill of Rights do? All it does is take power away from the legislature,
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the Congress in this in the case of the federal government in the U.S., and give it to the courts
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to say when the Congress has gone too far. OK, moving power around. And then we have a last
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step, which is that the courts and the legislature now move power back to the king. But the king's
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not there anymore. Instead of the king, we have an administrative state. So these three branches,
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these three groups of people, the legislature, the courts and the executive branch, all of those
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bureaucrats and the people who rule over them, are now managing society. And they all agree about that.
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And so the mistake that we made, our constitutional mistake, was we didn't go far enough. All we've
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ever done is move power around from place to place to place instead of taking it away and saying,
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no, no, no, no, you can't rule over me without my consent. We have never gotten to that place.
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You know, when you were describing the administrative state, we hear, you know,
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Eisenhower used to phrase the military industrial complex. You also hear the national security apparatus.
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I think these are all different facets of what is sometimes called the deep state.
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People you can't get rid of. You can't vote them out. They'll outlast you.
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There used to be a British comedy called Yes Minister that was about all these politicians
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who were a little bit buffoonish and how the permanent staff was going to manipulate them and
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coax them to do this or that. It's a beautiful show. It's a beautiful show and it illustrates
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the point really, really well. So go on. I'm sorry to interrupt.
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Well, let me just play a clip of it, just to show people what I'm talking about. And they would have
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this code language. If a minister had a big idea, they'd say, oh, minister, that's very bold,
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which is as in you're going to get, it's just a clip to show what I'm talking about.
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I suppose the origin of this criticism is this rumor about another big scandal in the city.
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Oh, Humphrey, I've decided to respond to all this criticism about a scandal in the city.
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The press is demanding action. What are you proposing to do?
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I shall appoint someone. And when did you take this momentous decision?
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Today, when I read the papers. But when did you first think of it?
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Today, when I read the papers. And for how long may I ask,
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did you weigh the pros and cons of this decision?
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The prime minister, if I may say, I think you worry too much about what the papers say.
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Only a civil servant could have made that remark, Bernard.
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The thing is, Bruce, the government was so much smaller, they couldn't intrude on you.
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I remember when I was in university, my favorite course was actually Latin American history,
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and we studied the conquistadors. And the conquistadors, when they went to the New
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World and brought back all their gold, you know what their tax was?
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They called it the royal fifth. As long as they gave a fifth of anything to the king,
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they were good to go. Now are we at the royal two-fifths? In Canada, it's more than the royal half.
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And so the thing is, if you had this quarrel between politicians and judges and the deep state,
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well, if they're only haggling over one-fifth of the world, that gives us four-fifths to be free in.
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But add in AI, add in the big tech panopticon, always spying on you, always controlling everything 24-7,
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I think that the state has gotten bigger economically, but then it's bolted on this tool
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where it is continuous shaping of your world. And a lot of that is either government-designed
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or government-partnered, like big tech and big government.
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Maybe that's the problem, is that suddenly it's not just that we give 50% of our money to the
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government, it's that we give 99% of our lives to the government in some form through tech. What do you think?
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Oh, yeah. No, I've called this the coming state singularity, that moment when state and society
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become indistinguishable. The state has taken over the job of shaping society to such an extent
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that it's starting to be difficult to know where it begins and ends. And that includes taking commerce
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and markets and companies and so on under its wing and cooperation. I mean, that's, if you like,
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that's the definition of corporatism and indeed of fascism, where even the private entities in a
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society are all on the same page and believing in the same ideas and rowing in the same direction.
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That's not a free society. But you're referring to a question and a problem that
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may start to come to the surface in the United States shortly and is in the background here,
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which is, you know, as we all know, in the United States, they've turned a page, right? They have a
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new government coming on with a different kind of mandate altogether, which is going to be fantastic
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to watch. But there's going to be tension there as well between two kinds of forces on the same team.
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One of them, I think, is going to be a reform branch that wants to slash and cut and abolish parts of
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the government, the Dodge people, the Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musks.
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And there's another branch, though. The other branch is the people who actually would probably embrace
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the administrative state as long as it can be changed so as to promote the right virtues and
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values. That is, if you take the bad people out and put the good people in, we want to maintain
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the mechanism of government to manage the people. We just want to manage them in a different way.
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Who would that be? So Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk are the big cutters in the Department of Government
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excess or whatever it stands for, Department of Government Efficiency.
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Who are these people in the Trump world who you think lust for the power? They just want to have
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their team wielding it. Who are they? J.D. Vance, for one. J.D. Vance is a, I would describe him as
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a common good conservative, meaning that he, amongst others, believe in the idea of government
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being a guiding light. They believe in institutions. They believe in authority as long as it's wise
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authority. They believe in telling people what to do. Now, preferably voluntarily, they don't want to
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make people do things. But if push comes to shove and people choose badly, then there must be
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somebody with wisdom and authority and expertise there to guide people in the right way.
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You know, I'm pretty liberty oriented, pretty small government oriented. But let me tell you,
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I had an experience a couple of months ago. I went to San Francisco's Tenderloin District.
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Our friend from Australia, Avi Amini, had just landed in San Francisco and he took an RV
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for a month across America doing stories about the election. And I went to greet him when he landed
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in San Francisco, which was really Kamala Harris central. That's where she grew up in politics and
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got her start. She really is the personification of all the policies of that city. It's just,
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it's just a wreck. And we went to the fentanyl capital. It was terrifying. Although I got to tell you,
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Bruce, Vancouver's East Hastings Street is worse. I was there with this Aussie and this Ontarian
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in San Francisco. They were shocked by what they saw. And I kept saying, guys, it is literally worse
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in Vancouver. But here's my point. Let me just tell you 30 seconds of this. There was a guy I met,
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young black guy sitting there, stoned out of his mind. And I said, does anyone help you? I said to him,
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would you like it if someone came and just took you away even if you didn't want that? Do you need some
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powerful person to save you from yourself and your drug dealer? And I asked that question of a number of
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people. And what do you think he said, Bruce? He said, yes, please. Here, take a look at that
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clip from the Tenderloin District. As of right now, I hang out on the street,
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I'm trying to get a job. I just go to jail, actually. Where do you sleep? Really? I just stay
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up all night. As of right now, it's time to get my stuff stolen. The moment you fall asleep out here,
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your stuff goes missing right away. What substances are you on? Are you trying to get off them?
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Yeah, I'm on fentanyl. I have some boxing for it that I try to weed myself off of it with.
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How long you been on fentanyl? About two and a half, three years. You're not going to stop until
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you're ready yourself. What if someone came in and took you off the street here and put you somewhere,
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even if you didn't want to go there until you were clean? Would that work or is that just not going to
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work? So that's libertarianism. There's a guy, my body, my choice. That guy in particular wasn't
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harming anyone else. I mean, he was, I wouldn't really walk near him if I had young children or
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something, but he wasn't violent, at least then. Although I think if he needed a fix,
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he would do literally anything to get the dough. But what do you say when you say you want liberty?
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Let's empty the insane asylums. Let's empty the drug rehab clinics. You want your pure liberty.
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You got it. Lower East Side, Vancouver, Tenderloin District, San Francisco. And boy,
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I hope you're strong enough to resist the addiction because it'll get you. What do you
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make of that? And I'm just playing devil's advocate. What would you say to that young kid
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who basically said, please, someone save me from myself?
00:23:21.300
Right. Right. Well, so, but that's an interesting conversation that you had with him,
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right? Because he was able to articulate what he really wanted. So you wouldn't actually be acting
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against his wishes or without his consent, really. I mean, maybe there might be moments when he said,
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no, I changed my mind. But in those instances, and you made this distinction yourself in your
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description, in those instances where somebody is causing other people harm or threatening them with
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harm, then that's not what we're talking about. You don't have the liberty to do that.
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But if you are dealing just with yourself and you are otherwise competent, and that may be an open
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question with some of these people that you're referring to, but if you are competent and you are
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dealing only with yourself, then it's very difficult to figure out what the justification is
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for making somebody do something differently. Now, in practical terms, you can see the argument
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with respect to someone who's addicted to drugs. But you can take that idea and say, well, yes,
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you're free, but you're not free to act against your own self-interest. If you apply that across the
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board, then now you got real trouble. Because there are a lot of people who are going to say, well,
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yes, but you really shouldn't be spending your money for that, because that's not in your
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self-interest. Or you shouldn't be carrying on like that in your social life, because
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that's not in your self-interest. It's the invitation to those people who know better than
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you do about your own life. You could have a COVID vaxxer who's saying, I need to vaxx you
00:24:57.460
because you know not what you do. That's exactly right. That's a very good example of what I'm
00:25:02.900
talking about. Once you cross that threshold into saying that somebody else has a better idea than
00:25:09.220
you do about your life, now you're into a problem space. So, you know, sometimes it's difficult,
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though. But this is one thing. The example that you brought up is very important.
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Because this is the typical example that is brought forward. You know, the person who wants to use
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heroin is not free. Okay. Yes, they are. Of course they are. Because freedom means not being coerced
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by other people or the state. If you're not being coerced by other people or the state, then you are
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free. Okay, well, what about banning? Okay, but what about banning drugs? I mean, Justin Trudeau,
00:25:52.500
when I think of what he's most passionate about, yes, drug legalization was really core. I mean,
00:25:59.300
he was a user himself. And he thought, oh, this will give me young voters. And I would say
00:26:04.180
censorship is his second passion. Yeah. His not just rolling out marijuana legalization,
00:26:12.020
but decriminalization of hard drugs. That has altered the math tremendously in Canada. Yes.
00:26:18.500
Yes. Yes. But I don't think we're asking the right question. Well, should, should,
00:26:22.740
is that a violation of liberty to ban hard drugs? Oh, wait, sure it is. Sure it is. Sure it is.
00:26:27.780
I mean, if you're going to be literal about it, every prohibition that prevents you from doing
00:26:33.620
something on your own is a violation of your liberty. But I think we're missing the bigger question,
00:26:41.060
which is why is it that if and when something is made to be legal again, why people would go and do
00:26:48.340
it anyway? I mean, if you're, if you're sitting in a room of people that you know, you know, in your
00:26:53.060
living room, I mean, is it, is it the case that if suddenly hard drugs were made to be legal, that
00:26:58.980
those people would go and use them? No, they wouldn't, they wouldn't dream of it. So why is it that some
00:27:05.140
people in our society are deciding to make that what appears to be a very unwise choice? That's
00:27:11.380
the, that's the more important question for me. Hmm. Well, and that's a more complex social and
00:27:17.300
cultural and religious question. I want to ask you about another challenge to freedom. Yes.
00:27:27.700
Yes. Mass immigration of people who come to Canada with different values. I look at
00:27:37.620
what I love the best about Canada and other countries. Like I've been to Ireland a couple
00:27:42.180
times in the last year. I see Ireland being transformed in front of my eyes. It's astonishing.
00:27:48.180
I'll give you this anecdote. I was in the little village of Dundrum, population 200,
00:27:52.820
and the government took over the local hotel, bought it out, and has moved 280 military age
00:28:03.460
migrant men in there. So the, the Irish population of Dundrum that's been there for centuries is now a
00:28:10.260
minority in Dundrum. And all sorts of mayhem will now follow when you have 240 single men. I mean,
00:28:19.460
everything has changed. The high trust society that, of course, a young girl would play outside
00:28:24.660
and walk home. Of course, you don't need to lock your car doors, of course, your, sorry,
00:28:29.620
your car or your house. Everything's changed because you don't have that high trust society.
00:28:35.380
In Canada, we see it. All of a sudden, food banks are overwhelmed, not with Canadian homeless,
00:28:42.660
but with so-called foreign students who just realize that we're suckers. And they don't have to pay
00:28:47.460
for groceries. They can get free food. And you see some food banks saying, well,
00:28:51.300
if you're an international student, we have to ban you because you don't share our code.
00:28:56.340
And at what point, and how do you, again, the libertarian point of view would say,
00:29:02.740
let them in, you know, who are you to, I think the libertarians tend to open borders.
00:29:08.660
Well, as many of them do, many of them do, but not all of them. I don't,
00:29:11.940
I don't, I don't, I don't think open borders are a good idea. So, so this is one of the divisions
00:29:17.780
within the libertarian camp, if you like. My, my take on this is that, that the,
00:29:29.140
the citizens of a country own the country. I mean, I think we should think about it that way.
00:29:34.340
And part of having a country is having borders. If you don't have borders, you don't have a country,
00:29:38.020
you just have a space. And so the, the idea that people should be able to come and go
00:29:44.020
as they please. I mean, maybe in an ideal future world where all countries are built like that
00:29:49.780
and all countries are essentially free, well then maybe, okay. Right. Because you should be able to
00:29:54.420
live where you want, but that's not the world we live in. If you want to maintain a free country
00:30:00.740
with, with, with the values that accompany that, then you better have borders. Because if you have open
00:30:06.900
borders, people are going to come from the countries that don't work that way. And they're going to,
00:30:10.420
they're going to overwhelm the country that used to exist. So I, I agree with you there.
00:30:16.100
You know, I, I really go far on free speech. I abide anti-Semitism, even I'm Jewish. I hate anti-Semitism,
00:30:24.740
but I know that, you know, freedom of speech is something you have to give your opponents if you
00:30:29.300
want it for yourself. I think you should marginalize it and denormalize it. But what happens
00:30:35.300
when you have such a vast inflow of people who grew up in an endemically anti-Semitic country?
00:30:41.700
And we never vet these people for a fit. And so now I'm, I'm literally in a Jewish neighborhood
00:30:46.980
in Toronto myself where every single Sunday, uh, dozens of pro-Hamas protesters in loudspeakers shout
00:30:56.100
atrocious anti-Semitic threats, really calling for genocide. I just, and I'm thinking, okay,
00:31:02.980
I want to, you know, maybe we can tackle this using real laws, mischief, nuisance, trespass,
00:31:09.300
uttering threats. Um, I'm not a big fan of hate crimes. They're on the books too. None of these
00:31:14.580
things are being pursued because of politics, because they're now a vast voter block. And there
00:31:22.500
are literally Jews who have been in Canada for generations who were saying, you know,
00:31:27.780
how's it going to be in 10 more years? How's it going to be in 10 more years after that? Maybe like
00:31:34.260
the Jews of France, they got to leave. I wouldn't want to be a Jew in Manchester, UK. I wouldn't want
00:31:40.180
to be a Jew in Birmingham if there's any left. And what's the future for Jews in Montreal? Um, and I,
00:31:46.820
I'm just speaking from a personal point of view because I love freedom of speech and I love to be able
00:31:52.500
to say I'm very principled on that, that I want it even for my opponents. But at a certain point,
00:31:56.820
there's so many people who do not share our basic underlying foundations that one of us has to leave
00:32:03.620
the country. Yeah, it's a difficult problem. Uh, part of the problem is though that we are,
00:32:14.900
we are getting into the era that some people have argued of, of uneven application of laws.
00:32:22.740
That is, and you alluded to this in your comments, that once the thing becomes a political matter,
00:32:30.500
then the law is not being neutral anymore. So if there are people who are actually making threats,
00:32:35.700
like making a threat is one thing that free speech does not include. You can't go up to somebody and
00:32:40.180
threaten imminent violence or you can't threaten genocide. Like that's not supposed to be in the
00:32:47.300
bucket of free speech. So you, if you actually have that happening, that might suggest that the
00:32:52.740
law is not being applied the way we would like to imagine it. And if you have laws that are not being
00:32:58.100
applied evenly, regardless of the political orientations or the identities of the speakers,
00:33:04.020
that's not, that's not good enough either. And those things I think are part and parcel of the
00:33:08.420
way our legal system is evolving, uh, that it's all tied up with, you know, our laws about equity and
00:33:15.540
hate speech and, and, and, and, and so on the, the, the, the, the, the social justice, you know,
00:33:20.900
tied, which has changed our basic understandings about how the law is supposed to work.
00:33:26.900
So I hear you. I don't think though, my inclination is not to throw away free speech. I think that free
00:33:32.900
speech idea is important for, for the protection of all those people that you might be concerned
00:33:39.220
about because once free speech gets weaponized, it will likely come back to bite you and be applied.
00:33:49.300
I'm, I'm subjective to complaints before the BC human rights tribunal right now. I mean,
00:33:54.340
whatever law you give the government thinking it'll be applied against your opponents,
00:33:58.020
it will be used against you. Exactly so. And even if you're enjoying a moment where your
00:34:03.140
guy has the whip in the hand, imagine your opponent having that same power because that'll be how it
00:34:08.820
ends up. You know, that's the irony. The official Jews of Canada, as I call them, lobbied for these
00:34:14.420
hate speech laws that really aren't being used against anti-Semites who abound. They're being used
00:34:22.020
against conservatives sometimes. I suppose you could say even the truckers in a way we do,
00:34:27.620
we're denormalized by the hate finders. I don't know. Right. So, but exactly so. But see,
00:34:32.820
this is a difficult concept. I think it's a, I think it's a wrong concept. So if you, if you imagine
00:34:38.660
that you live in a free society, like, what does that mean? What are you free to do? Well,
00:34:45.060
you're certainly free to think for yourself. And if you're free to think, then you're free to think
00:34:50.020
bad thoughts. And some of those bad thoughts might be that you hate other people. In other words,
00:34:55.060
if you are a free person in a free country, you are allowed to hate other people. And if you live
00:34:59.780
in a free country with free speech, then you're allowed to say that you hate other people. And
00:35:04.100
people don't like to think that way because we don't want people acting that way. Well, I understand
00:35:08.820
that. And I don't want to encourage it. It's unfortunate when it happens. But if you are consistent
00:35:14.500
with the principle that you believe in liberty, then you have to allow for the possibility that some
00:35:18.980
people are going to hate other people and they're going to say so. So I don't really like the idea
00:35:22.900
of hate speech. I do believe though, in the idea that people are not allowed to coerce other people
00:35:29.220
or threaten them with violence. And that's the line for me. If you are actually threatening violence,
00:35:35.140
that's not okay. That's, that's, that's the proper line to draw and still be able to say that
00:35:40.820
you live in a free country. You know, it was Doug Christie, a lawyer for many people prosecuted
00:35:47.780
under different hate speech laws in the eighties. I heard him once say that hatred comes from a
00:35:53.140
feeling of grievance. And unless you address that underlying grievance, you're not going to
00:35:58.020
stop the hatred. In fact, if you shut people up, you'll only fortify their grievance. It'll not
00:36:03.300
only do they have the grievance, but they're not allowed to air it and seek a remedy to it.
00:36:07.540
Not only that, not only that, you'll also not understand what people are really thinking. I
00:36:12.580
mean, don't you want to really understand what they're thinking under, you know, inside their
00:36:16.420
brains? It's, it's, it's much, I don't know. I'm not sure if it is, but it might be safer to know
00:36:24.420
where people are coming from because they're saying so out loud, rather than hiding inside. I would
00:36:29.300
rather, uh, I would rather interact with them on the surface in accordance with what they're saying
00:36:38.100
than trying to figure out in the dark where people lie.
00:36:42.260
You know, when I was growing up in the pre-internet era, I often thought if only I could
00:36:47.860
get my big idea to the world, I would change things. And that, I mean, and so I tried in my own
00:36:53.780
way. I had newspaper columns. I, you know, even when I was a student, I was trying to get, because
00:36:58.740
I really believe my ideas would, if people just heard, if I could just get an audience, I would,
00:37:04.260
and there's a vanity there. And conspiracy theorists, hate mongers, people with a grievance,
00:37:11.620
they're all hoping that they can convince the world that there's an injustice going on.
00:37:15.780
They're the most unreasonable people. They're unreasonable because they say something is
00:37:20.660
wrong. I know the truth. I have the secret truth, whether they're a conspiracy theorist or just a
00:37:26.580
dissident or a contrarian, and they're all seeking the chance to persuade. Now, some are tyrants who
00:37:32.420
don't want to persuade. They just want to conquer. And what I find is if you let those people run their
00:37:37.780
course, if you give them Twitter where they can say the craziest thing they want, if you let them run
00:37:43.540
in an election so that they will have the judgment of their peers, if you give them a trial of a jury,
00:37:49.220
and if it's a real jury of their peers, and they're convicted by the jury, I find that if you let people
00:37:54.660
go to term and test and prove their theory, and if they're rejected by the world, if no one cares
00:38:01.540
about their idea, if no, the tweet didn't go viral, no, your jury did convict you, you had your chance
00:38:07.700
in the election, and you got 0.1%. A lot of people will say, at least I had a fair system.
00:38:14.500
And I've seen it, and I won't mention who, but I've seen a jury trial where the accused criminals,
00:38:21.300
because it was a jury, not an Ottawa judge, because they saw that jury be impaneled and said,
00:38:27.620
yes, those are my peers. They accepted their criminal conviction because they no longer could
00:38:36.020
labor under the, perhaps a delusion that they were just being persecuted by some political
00:38:41.780
prosecutor and political judge. It was their peers who said, no, you did something wrong.
00:38:46.900
And I think that's what happens when you let people go to term with kooky ideas, is they test it,
00:38:53.140
and, oh, if I could only tell the world. Well, you did tell the world, and no one picked up your
00:38:56.980
idea, so maybe your idea wasn't that great. I've seen it, and I feel that myself. Certain things that
00:39:02.980
I believe in so passionately do not go viral. Well, maybe I'm wrong. I'll focus on something else.
00:39:08.420
There is something about letting people test their theory against the world, rather than saying,
00:39:13.380
no, you cannot run the experiment. No doubt. No doubt at all. And the reverse also happens,
00:39:21.700
which is that if you are censored, if you're prevented from expressing this idea, this crazy
00:39:27.860
idea that you have, then suddenly you are the victim. And instead of being the perpetrator of the
00:39:35.460
bad ideas that you want to express, you're the one that the state is persecuting. And so the dynamic
00:39:44.100
becomes opposite to what it ought to be. Very strange days we're in.
00:39:49.940
I want to wrap up by playing a clip of you testifying before Parliament, which I'm really
00:39:55.540
glad is happening. There's lots of committees out there, the Justice Committee, the Heritage
00:40:01.300
Committee, all of them dealing with aspects of liberty. And there's just absolute crackpots who
00:40:06.980
are invited to attend sometimes. I saw Rachel Gilmore give, I just want to play the first few seconds of her
00:40:14.420
testimony. Bruce, she talks about how she, for those who don't remember, she's sort of a TikTok star
00:40:21.620
who was fired from Global for just saying astonishing things. And she's a real cancel culture
00:40:26.740
type herself. Anyways, I'm not sure if it was the NDP or the Liberals who got her an invitation to testify
00:40:31.620
about Russian disinformation. And she just starts off by talking about how she has big feelings about
00:40:38.740
things. And I'll just, I'll just show it to you. This is who the Liberals and the NDP invite to testify
00:40:44.820
as experts while they're making the law. Here, take a look at Rachel Gilmore.
00:40:49.460
Rachel Gilmore Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me. And this is obviously a very important topic,
00:40:54.740
and I have some big feelings about it. So to kick things off, I'm sure you all remember the Freedom Convoy.
00:41:02.180
Yeah? Well, as part of my coverage at the time, I joined several telegram channels and groups where
00:41:09.300
organizers and supporters gathered to exchange everything from planning details to fringe
00:41:14.660
conspiracy theories. And you might not have realized this, but it was actually just days after the convoy,
00:41:20.820
actually, you guys probably do know this, just days after the convoy that Russia invaded Ukraine. So
00:41:27.700
it was really interesting, an interesting time to be monitoring all of those telegram channels,
00:41:33.860
because all of a sudden, the ones that have been posting about the convoy and COVID,
00:41:39.380
groups with tens of thousands of members primed to distrust experts, government media and institutions,
00:41:45.460
shifted to posting about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
00:41:49.620
Oh, she's astonishing. So I'm glad that to balance out some of the absolute
00:41:53.940
kookiness. And hey, let the gal have her moment. I mean, I think that was the best day of her life.
00:41:59.940
I'm glad that some actual thoughtful experts are allowed as a counterweight. Let me throw to a
00:42:06.660
clip of you testifying in your capacity as McDonnell-Laurie, a Institute senior fellow.
00:42:13.060
Oh, I was just doing it just to correct that. I was doing it just on my own. I mean,
00:42:18.500
I am an MLI fellow, but I'm not representing their views.
00:42:21.620
Okay, got it. I saw they republished it. So obviously, they take pride in what you said.
00:42:28.500
Let's take a look at that testimony. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what it meant. Let's take a look.
00:42:32.500
Your committee is studying how the government should protect free speech.
00:42:39.940
Free speech. This seems to me to be quite a strange question for you to be studying.
00:42:49.460
Because the answer seems obvious. And also, because for years, the federal government has been doing the opposite.
00:43:03.540
Free speech is a right we hold against government.
00:43:14.340
Free speech means the right to be free from government limits on speech.
00:43:22.660
If governments did nothing, we would have free speech.
00:43:29.300
Governments protect free speech by getting out of the way.
00:43:40.100
Therefore, if you want to protect free speech, stop limiting speech.
00:44:01.700
Repeal the gender amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act in the old Bill C-16.
00:44:19.940
How was that responded to, if at all, by, I would, well, tell me just quickly if you got any response from any of the parties.
00:44:27.620
Because even conservatives, you know, they're risk-averse politicians too.
00:44:31.780
Did anyone react to your submissions, which were much longer than that?
00:44:36.500
Yes, I thought the conservative members of the committee were very good.
00:44:42.820
They asked some good questions, and they seemed to be on a good page.
00:44:49.220
There was no real substantive response from the others.
00:44:53.540
And most of the other witnesses, and I referred to that along the way.
00:44:58.820
This is really the point that I was trying to make.
00:45:01.300
Most of the other witnesses came asking for the government to do something like subsidize this or prevent that or stop them from saying that about us and, you know, give us this opportunity.
00:45:18.180
Free speech means the right to stop the government from interfering.
00:45:23.220
And there was no real engagement even with that idea from the rest of the room.
00:45:28.900
Yeah, I mean, the whole idea of debating, opposing, think of it, Her Majesty's loyal opposition.
00:45:36.580
We take the country's biggest complainer, we give them an official title and all sorts of legal immunity to do nothing but attack the government.
00:45:43.940
Soon that won't be allowed because that implies there are two points of view.
00:45:47.780
And the whole concept of narrative control is that there's not multiple points of view.
00:45:51.860
There's one point of view that's subsidized by the government, and every other point of view is banned by the government.
00:45:58.900
I mean, I think we're getting to the point in Canada where there's only going to be two kinds of journalists, those paid by the government and those prosecuted by the government.
00:46:10.740
And it's because, in part, because people don't have the right idea about what free speech means.
00:46:19.620
If you have a government talking with a straight face about the idea that they're calling disinformation, that means they have no idea what they're talking about.
00:46:30.540
And they're twisting things so as to create the impression that we need them to come in and interfere so that we have free speech.
00:46:39.460
Free speech has nothing to do with speaking the truth.
00:46:43.380
You're allowed to say something that's not true, and you're allowed to say something that makes no sense.
00:46:49.380
And you're allowed to do that because you're free, not because you're serving some higher purpose.
00:46:54.580
I mean, people say, well, free speech is important so that we have a route to the truth through a marketplace of ideas that compete with it.
00:47:03.420
I mean, yeah, that's one reason to have it, but it's not the reason to have it.
00:47:07.860
But the reason to have free speech is because you are free, and that means the government cannot interfere.
00:47:13.960
If you don't have that idea, then you don't have the idea of free speech.
00:47:17.920
Well, I have enjoyed talking with you, and I'm jealous of your university students who get to engage with you and debate with you on a regular basis.
00:47:26.940
I'm really glad you're teaching, and I'm glad you're representing freedom in other forms, whether it's journalistically on your sub stack.
00:47:41.140
Yeah, it's called, I'm calling it First Principles.
00:47:49.400
We'll put it under this video for people to click there.
00:47:53.920
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and I hope that freedom advances in 2025, and I think it will, actually.
00:48:04.160
Professor Bruce Party, fighting for freedom every day.
00:48:08.660
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, you keep fighting for freedom, too.