Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Fascism is alive and well in Justin Trudeau's Canada

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. A feature interview today with Bruce Party, the law professor who fights

00:00:04.800 for freedom every day. You don't have a lot of those left. I'm always amazed that he hasn't

00:00:09.980 been sacked by his university for being too freedom-y. We'll have a great chat with him

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00:02:25.240 Tonight, a feature interview with Bruce Pardy, one of the few remaining freedom-oriented law

00:02:32.500 professors in Canada. It's December 27th, and this is the Ezra LeVance Show.

00:02:37.040 You've got it for freedom!

00:02:40.000 Shame on you, you sensorism bug!

00:02:43.060 You know, I enjoyed my time as a university student. Maybe that's why I spent seven years

00:02:55.260 in university, but I didn't take enough of the classics of humanities, of history,

00:03:00.820 of philosophy. I took more commerce and law, which really are trade schools, let's be honest.

00:03:06.460 I'm not sure if I would do well in university these days because so much of it is infused 1.00

00:03:11.780 with politics. You know, I always loved Shakespeare ever since high school.

00:03:16.100 I don't think I could survive a Shakespeare course at a university because it would be

00:03:20.220 unlocking feminist narratives or transgender narratives, and oh, they would find them.

00:03:26.180 They would torture that text until they would find them. I just don't think I would survive there.

00:03:30.700 I would probably try and get my professional degree and then scram as soon as possible.

00:03:36.920 And I think it's because the culture of the University of Change. Of course, culture is just

00:03:41.580 the plural form of people. What's culture other than a group of people and how they act and how

00:03:46.580 they talk and how they think and what they value. And I think there's a change in the culture of

00:03:51.700 academics themselves. Obviously, not all of them, but every year more old school professors retire

00:03:58.320 and every year new professors are hired, promoted, and granted tenure. And I think the idea of a

00:04:05.420 professor who loves a rollicking debate and teaches how to think rather than what to think, I just get

00:04:10.680 the feeling that they are an endangered species. And I don't mean to call our next guest that because

00:04:16.020 I certainly don't want to summon any demons that would take him out. But I really do think if I were

00:04:24.780 a university student, I would choose my courses and maybe even my university based on could I find some

00:04:31.240 professors that I respect, even if I disagree with them? Is there a professor who's intellectually

00:04:36.000 honest and rigorous, who can handle an argy-bargy back and forth? I had a little bit of that when I

00:04:42.680 went to law school some 30 years ago. I don't know if I would find that now. You probably know who I'm

00:04:48.040 talking about because I can count the number of critical thinking, debate-oriented professors

00:04:51.840 on one hand's fingers. What a pleasure to be joined by Bruce Pardy, professor of law

00:04:57.700 and all-around good guy. Also, he's an expert with the McDonnell-Laurier Institute and with other

00:05:04.040 think tanks because he does a lot of thinking. Professor, great to see you again.

00:05:09.080 Oh, sure. Almost good to see you. Thanks for having me on.

00:05:11.460 You know, let me just ask, how is school going? You're teaching again, right?

00:05:16.480 Yes. Yes. And it's going great.

00:05:19.100 How are the kids? I'm calling them kids. Everyone younger than 40 is a kid to me. How are the students?

00:05:23.400 They're great. They're good. I have two groups in the fall term, and they're both terrific. One's a

00:05:32.400 first-year group, and one was an upper-year seminar course. And, you know, they're good. They have

00:05:40.320 open minds, and they're inclined to speak when given the chance.

00:05:47.520 Have they selected your class because of you, because of how you address things, or is it almost

00:05:53.980 random? I mean, I would think that students with a particular point of view might seek you out. Is

00:05:58.780 that happening? Well, they don't have a choice in first year. So, they may have either won the

00:06:05.960 lottery or lost it. I'm not sure which they think. You can choose your seminar courses every year on

00:06:13.280 your own. So, some of them may have self-selected. Who knows? I can't tell you for sure, but I enjoyed

00:06:23.700 the group. So, forgive me. I just have one last question, and I'll move on to your ideas. But I am

00:06:28.580 sort of daydreaming about what it would be like to be in college these days. I remember

00:06:32.420 about 30 years ago, I attended a class that would absolutely be banned in 2024. It was

00:06:39.120 the retired professor. He's retired now, Tom Flanagan, who was a professor at the University

00:06:44.120 of Calgary. And he taught a course called Biopolitics, where he sought to understand,

00:06:50.840 are there any links between biology and politics? He would try and answer questions like,

00:06:57.400 why are there more men in politics, especially at high levels, than women? Why are there more men 1.00

00:07:03.180 in certain professions than women? Why are so many women in nursing and education and so many men in 0.97

00:07:08.600 carpentry and deep sea fishing? So, he would try and find a biological route. You would never be

00:07:13.440 allowed to teach that. I don't think that would be called racist and sexist and things like that.

00:07:17.740 There were some students, professor, who chose that class to spar with Dr. Tom Flanagan, to argue

00:07:24.540 with them. And it actually made the class wonderful. I mean, I was an ally of Dr. Tom's, but I love that

00:07:31.300 there were feminists who showed up every day, and they really teased out, coaxed out the debate. Is there 1.00

00:07:37.340 any of that going on? And this is my last question about your teaching. Just forgive me. I'm just so

00:07:41.660 excited that you're back in the classroom. Do you have any students who say, I'm going to take on

00:07:46.100 Bruce Party? I'm going to out-debate him. Does that happen?

00:07:50.100 It happens. It happens on occasion. Sure. And I enjoy that too. I would like my students to do that,

00:07:59.000 and occasionally they do. And that's very much encouraged in my classrooms. I can't speak for

00:08:06.060 the other classrooms. I'm not in there. But that's always been my idea as well of what a good

00:08:13.780 university environment is. So, yeah. All right. I'll move on to heavier matters. But

00:08:19.920 I was just reminiscing about my own college experience long ago in the 20th century.

00:08:25.600 I want to talk about one of the mediums that professors like yourself have at your disposal

00:08:30.340 in 2024 that were not around when I was in school, ways that you can express yourself even beyond

00:08:36.600 the dozens or hundreds who might be in your school. One of them is a platform called Substack.

00:08:42.060 It's really the updated version of what would have been called blogging 20 years ago. It's a very

00:08:47.740 popular platform, and it actually allows people to make a little bit of money. There's a subscription,

00:08:53.120 or there's a free model. And Professor, you've started a new substack called First Principles

00:08:58.500 with Bruce Pardy, and you have a post on there called Our Constitutional Mistake.

00:09:06.660 All we have ever done is move power around. I'll just read the first sentence or two,

00:09:12.820 and then I'd love you to take it away. We made a mistake, you said. Kings once ruled England with

00:09:18.780 absolute power. Their word was the law. Centuries of struggle and reform gradually overcame their

00:09:23.320 tyranny. We adopted this idea called the rule of law. We established checks, balances, limits,

00:09:27.860 restraints, and individual rights. For a while, it worked. The law in Canada, as in other countries

00:09:33.960 that inherited British common law, provided a system of justice as good as anything that civilization had

00:09:40.040 ever produced. But. But now the rule of law is fading. That's a lot of stuff, you know, they say

00:09:47.440 always ignore everything before the word but. Like when people say, I'm for free speech, but. Ignore

00:09:52.820 everything before the word but. You just said we got the best system in the world, but. What do you mean?

00:09:57.900 Yeah, the but the but is it's it's fading. And so we've been operating on this assumption that the

00:10:07.040 rule of law works because people, especially those people who are in charge, believe in the rule of

00:10:16.360 law. But the rule of law means that governments are restrained. And one of the one of the ways we do

00:10:22.120 that is to have checks and balances, you know, different branches of the state do different things,

00:10:26.600 and then they compete against each other. And, you know, that can work and it has worked in the past,

00:10:32.720 but it's not working so well now. And I don't mean that they all they always agree. They have their

00:10:37.340 their quabbles, quibbles, quibbles and fights, quarrels. But but for the most part, the people who rule us now

00:10:46.100 share a belief in in the the role, the proper role of the state and the proper role of the state is to manage,

00:10:53.300 to manage society, to manage the people, to proper ends. And the checks and balances are not checking

00:11:00.160 and balancing each other anymore. So, for example, if if we if you look at what we're complaining about

00:11:09.620 at different moments in time, we will complain about a statute that the legislature has passed

00:11:15.280 because the statute does something egregious. But in a different moment, we complain about

00:11:21.160 what the courts do. The courts make a decision that is not in accordance with what we believe

00:11:25.340 the Constitution says, for example. Or then we on a different occasion, we complain about what some

00:11:32.100 bureaucrat has done, because after all, bureaucrats are not elected and not not a court. OK, well,

00:11:37.260 now we've criticized what each of the three branches has done, the legislature, the judiciary and the

00:11:43.360 executive. And our complaint is that they are they are pushing us around. And that is true in in each

00:11:51.700 of those three cases. So all we've done in the very beginning, starting with the king, you know,

00:11:57.360 this evolution of the rule of law began a long time ago, maybe with the Magna Carta.

00:12:03.080 And the original problem was the king because the king had absolute power. And so eventually we got

00:12:11.560 around to the idea that maybe we shouldn't have one guy with all the power as we took power away

00:12:16.960 from the king and gave it to legislatures. And that sounds better, right? Because legislatures

00:12:21.720 are elected or mostly sometimes now. Fine. Except that legislatures over time proved that they could be

00:12:30.540 tyrants, too. They passed legislation that we don't like. So the Americans came along first 1.00

00:12:35.460 and said, we have a solution to that. We're going to create a Bill of Rights.

00:12:40.620 Now, what does the Bill of Rights do? All it does is take power away from the legislature,

00:12:46.940 the Congress in this in the case of the federal government in the U.S., and give it to the courts

00:12:52.140 to say when the Congress has gone too far. OK, moving power around. And then we have a last

00:13:00.100 step, which is that the courts and the legislature now move power back to the king. But the king's

00:13:06.580 not there anymore. Instead of the king, we have an administrative state. So these three branches,

00:13:13.860 these three groups of people, the legislature, the courts and the executive branch, all of those

00:13:21.300 bureaucrats and the people who rule over them, are now managing society. And they all agree about that.

00:13:31.380 And so the mistake that we made, our constitutional mistake, was we didn't go far enough. All we've

00:13:38.100 ever done is move power around from place to place to place instead of taking it away and saying,

00:13:46.980 no, no, no, no, you can't rule over me without my consent. We have never gotten to that place.

00:13:56.100 You know, when you were describing the administrative state, we hear, you know,

00:14:00.660 Eisenhower used to phrase the military industrial complex. You also hear the national security apparatus.

00:14:09.620 I think these are all different facets of what is sometimes called the deep state.

00:14:15.780 People you can't get rid of. You can't vote them out. They'll outlast you.

00:14:21.700 There used to be a British comedy called Yes Minister that was about all these politicians

00:14:27.060 who were a little bit buffoonish and how the permanent staff was going to manipulate them and

00:14:32.420 coax them to do this or that. It's a beautiful show. It's a beautiful show and it illustrates

00:14:39.780 the point really, really well. So go on. I'm sorry to interrupt.

00:14:44.180 Well, let me just play a clip of it, just to show people what I'm talking about. And they would have

00:14:48.420 this code language. If a minister had a big idea, they'd say, oh, minister, that's very bold,

00:14:54.020 which is as in you're going to get, it's just a clip to show what I'm talking about.

00:14:57.700 I suppose the origin of this criticism is this rumor about another big scandal in the city.

00:15:02.340 How did you guess?

00:15:05.300 Oh, Humphrey, I've decided to respond to all this criticism about a scandal in the city.

00:15:10.420 The press is demanding action. What are you proposing to do?

00:15:14.500 I shall appoint someone. And when did you take this momentous decision?

00:15:20.340 Today, when I read the papers. But when did you first think of it?

00:15:23.540 Today, when I read the papers. And for how long may I ask,

00:15:26.740 did you weigh the pros and cons of this decision?

00:15:29.380 Not long. I decided to be decisive.

00:15:31.700 The prime minister, if I may say, I think you worry too much about what the papers say.

00:15:35.140 Only a civil servant could have made that remark, Bernard.

00:15:37.940 The thing is, Bruce, the government was so much smaller, they couldn't intrude on you.

00:15:42.660 I remember when I was in university, my favorite course was actually Latin American history,

00:15:46.660 and we studied the conquistadors. And the conquistadors, when they went to the New

00:15:50.580 World and brought back all their gold, you know what their tax was?

00:15:53.940 They called it the royal fifth. As long as they gave a fifth of anything to the king,

00:15:59.860 they were good to go. Now are we at the royal two-fifths? In Canada, it's more than the royal half.

00:16:06.580 And so the thing is, if you had this quarrel between politicians and judges and the deep state,

00:16:12.980 well, if they're only haggling over one-fifth of the world, that gives us four-fifths to be free in.

00:16:21.060 But add in AI, add in the big tech panopticon, always spying on you, always controlling everything 24-7,

00:16:31.380 I think that the state has gotten bigger economically, but then it's bolted on this tool

00:16:38.580 where it is continuous shaping of your world. And a lot of that is either government-designed

00:16:44.500 or government-partnered, like big tech and big government.

00:16:48.660 Maybe that's the problem, is that suddenly it's not just that we give 50% of our money to the

00:16:53.140 government, it's that we give 99% of our lives to the government in some form through tech. What do you think?

00:16:59.220 Oh, yeah. No, I've called this the coming state singularity, that moment when state and society

00:17:09.540 become indistinguishable. The state has taken over the job of shaping society to such an extent

00:17:17.620 that it's starting to be difficult to know where it begins and ends. And that includes taking commerce

00:17:25.700 and markets and companies and so on under its wing and cooperation. I mean, that's, if you like,

00:17:31.460 that's the definition of corporatism and indeed of fascism, where even the private entities in a

00:17:37.780 society are all on the same page and believing in the same ideas and rowing in the same direction.

00:17:44.100 That's not a free society. But you're referring to a question and a problem that

00:17:51.620 may start to come to the surface in the United States shortly and is in the background here,

00:18:03.060 which is, you know, as we all know, in the United States, they've turned a page, right? They have a

00:18:07.860 new government coming on with a different kind of mandate altogether, which is going to be fantastic

00:18:13.620 to watch. But there's going to be tension there as well between two kinds of forces on the same team.

00:18:20.020 One of them, I think, is going to be a reform branch that wants to slash and cut and abolish parts of

00:18:32.900 the government, the Dodge people, the Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musks.

00:18:39.140 And there's another branch, though. The other branch is the people who actually would probably embrace

00:18:46.900 the administrative state as long as it can be changed so as to promote the right virtues and

00:18:54.740 values. That is, if you take the bad people out and put the good people in, we want to maintain

00:19:00.100 the mechanism of government to manage the people. We just want to manage them in a different way.

00:19:04.180 Who would that be? So Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk are the big cutters in the Department of Government

00:19:13.620 excess or whatever it stands for, Department of Government Efficiency.

00:19:18.420 Who are these people in the Trump world who you think lust for the power? They just want to have

00:19:24.340 their team wielding it. Who are they? J.D. Vance, for one. J.D. Vance is a, I would describe him as

00:19:38.180 a common good conservative, meaning that he, amongst others, believe in the idea of government

00:19:49.380 being a guiding light. They believe in institutions. They believe in authority as long as it's wise

00:19:56.340 authority. They believe in telling people what to do. Now, preferably voluntarily, they don't want to

00:20:04.580 make people do things. But if push comes to shove and people choose badly, then there must be

00:20:09.940 somebody with wisdom and authority and expertise there to guide people in the right way.

00:20:16.180 You know, I'm pretty liberty oriented, pretty small government oriented. But let me tell you,

00:20:22.820 I had an experience a couple of months ago. I went to San Francisco's Tenderloin District.

00:20:27.700 Our friend from Australia, Avi Amini, had just landed in San Francisco and he took an RV

00:20:32.260 for a month across America doing stories about the election. And I went to greet him when he landed

00:20:37.460 in San Francisco, which was really Kamala Harris central. That's where she grew up in politics and 0.98

00:20:42.580 got her start. She really is the personification of all the policies of that city. It's just,

00:20:48.260 it's just a wreck. And we went to the fentanyl capital. It was terrifying. Although I got to tell you,

00:20:55.460 Bruce, Vancouver's East Hastings Street is worse. I was there with this Aussie and this Ontarian 1.00

00:21:06.420 in San Francisco. They were shocked by what they saw. And I kept saying, guys, it is literally worse

00:21:11.220 in Vancouver. But here's my point. Let me just tell you 30 seconds of this. There was a guy I met,

00:21:18.500 young black guy sitting there, stoned out of his mind. And I said, does anyone help you? I said to him, 0.90

00:21:26.580 would you like it if someone came and just took you away even if you didn't want that? Do you need some

00:21:35.540 powerful person to save you from yourself and your drug dealer? And I asked that question of a number of

00:21:44.500 people. And what do you think he said, Bruce? He said, yes, please. Here, take a look at that

00:21:49.700 clip from the Tenderloin District. As of right now, I hang out on the street,

00:21:53.060 I'm trying to get a job. I just go to jail, actually. Where do you sleep? Really? I just stay

00:21:59.940 up all night. As of right now, it's time to get my stuff stolen. The moment you fall asleep out here,

00:22:05.540 your stuff goes missing right away. What substances are you on? Are you trying to get off them?

00:22:09.300 Yeah, I'm on fentanyl. I have some boxing for it that I try to weed myself off of it with.

00:22:15.380 How long you been on fentanyl? About two and a half, three years. You're not going to stop until

00:22:19.620 you're ready yourself. What if someone came in and took you off the street here and put you somewhere,

00:22:25.140 even if you didn't want to go there until you were clean? Would that work or is that just not going to

00:22:30.500 work? So that's libertarianism. There's a guy, my body, my choice. That guy in particular wasn't

00:22:39.140 harming anyone else. I mean, he was, I wouldn't really walk near him if I had young children or

00:22:45.060 something, but he wasn't violent, at least then. Although I think if he needed a fix,

00:22:48.740 he would do literally anything to get the dough. But what do you say when you say you want liberty?

00:22:55.220 Let's empty the insane asylums. Let's empty the drug rehab clinics. You want your pure liberty. 0.76

00:23:03.220 You got it. Lower East Side, Vancouver, Tenderloin District, San Francisco. And boy,

00:23:09.620 I hope you're strong enough to resist the addiction because it'll get you. What do you

00:23:13.460 make of that? And I'm just playing devil's advocate. What would you say to that young kid

00:23:17.300 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,

00:23:25.940 right? Because he was able to articulate what he really wanted. So you wouldn't actually be acting

00:23:30.820 against his wishes or without his consent, really. I mean, maybe there might be moments when he said,

00:23:39.140 no, I changed my mind. But in those instances, and you made this distinction yourself in your

00:23:44.740 description, in those instances where somebody is causing other people harm or threatening them with

00:23:50.660 harm, then that's not what we're talking about. You don't have the liberty to do that.

00:23:54.980 But if you are dealing just with yourself and you are otherwise competent, and that may be an open

00:24:03.220 question with some of these people that you're referring to, but if you are competent and you are

00:24:09.300 dealing only with yourself, then it's very difficult to figure out what the justification is

00:24:15.700 for making somebody do something differently. Now, in practical terms, you can see the argument

00:24:22.740 with respect to someone who's addicted to drugs. But you can take that idea and say, well, yes,

00:24:28.660 you're free, but you're not free to act against your own self-interest. If you apply that across the

00:24:33.860 board, then now you got real trouble. Because there are a lot of people who are going to say, well,

00:24:39.620 yes, but you really shouldn't be spending your money for that, because that's not in your

00:24:43.860 self-interest. Or you shouldn't be carrying on like that in your social life, because

00:24:47.860 that's not in your self-interest. It's the invitation to those people who know better than

00:24:52.660 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,

00:25:16.660 though. But this is one thing. The example that you brought up is very important.

00:25:20.980 Because this is the typical example that is brought forward. You know, the person who wants to use

00:25:26.900 heroin is not free. Okay. Yes, they are. Of course they are. Because freedom means not being coerced

00:25:38.420 by other people or the state. If you're not being coerced by other people or the state, then you are

00:25:44.980 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 1.00

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, 0.99

00:28:19.460 everything has changed. The high trust society that, of course, a young girl would play outside 0.84

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 0.96

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. 1.00

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 1.00

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.

00:33:46.180 Oh sure.

00:33:46.740 In the opposite way that you imagine it to be.

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 1.00

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 0.63

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 0.77

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. 1.00

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.

00:43:47.860 Defeat Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act.

00:43:53.700 Repeal Bill C-18, the Online News Act.

00:43:58.020 Repeal Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act.

00:44:01.700 Repeal the gender amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act in the old Bill C-16.

00:44:07.540 And so on.

00:44:08.980 If you want to protect free speech,

00:44:11.460 stop limiting speech.

00:44:16.580 Powerful, philosophical, and deadly accurate.

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.

00:45:14.660 It's like, no, no, you don't have the idea.

00:45:16.580 That's not what free speech means.

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.

00:46:05.860 And I think we're bloody close to that.

00:46:07.620 I don't disagree.

00:46:09.620 I do not disagree.

00:46:10.740 And it's because, in part, because people don't have the right idea about what free speech means.

00:46:17.860 We've lost the idea of free speech.

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.

00:47:02.820 Sure.

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.

00:47:33.980 You have a new YouTube channel, I understand.

00:47:37.000 I do, yes.

00:47:37.500 And what's that channel?

00:47:39.260 We'll just put a link to it under this.

00:47:41.140 Yeah, it's called, I'm calling it First Principles.

00:47:45.760 Well, that's a good place to start.

00:47:47.340 I will send you the link.

00:47:48.560 Thank you.

00:47:49.060 All right.

00:47:49.400 We'll put it under this video for people to click there.

00:47:52.480 It's great to catch up with you.

00:47:53.920 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and I hope that freedom advances in 2025, and I think it will, actually.

00:48:00.320 Me too, Ezra.

00:48:01.520 Keep up the good work.

00:48:02.320 Thank you.

00:48:02.820 Thanks, my friend.

00:48:03.420 There you have it.

00:48:04.160 Professor Bruce Party, fighting for freedom every day.

00:48:07.220 That's our show for the 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.

00:48:14.820 Thank you.

00:48:15.660 Thank you.

00:48:16.260 Thank you.

00:48:18.260 Thank you.

00:48:19.720 Thank you.

00:48:20.060 Thank you.

00:48:20.860 Thank you.

00:48:23.200 We'll be right back.

Rebel News Podcast - December 28, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Fascism is alive and well in Justin Trudeau's Canada

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