The Critical Compass Podcast - April 15, 2026


Does Alberta Need a Monarchy？ ｜ Matthew Rowley


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 10 minutes

Words per minute

170.01851

Word count

12,030

Sentence count

586

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

18

sentences flagged

Hate speech

25

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dr. Matthew Rowley joins us to talk about the monarchy and its role in Canada. Dr. Rowley has a long list of credentials that is more complicated than we can manage to cover in this episode.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 good government? Not, well, I managed to get voted in again. Not, well, the polls say I'm happy. But
00:00:06.280 is it actually quantifiably good what you are doing? And if not, you're failing as a government.
00:00:12.840 The common good can be distorted. And if it's up to the state to define and or enforce the common
00:00:19.860 good, then essentially you are opening the doors for that to be weaponized.
00:00:25.200 in destroying the radical changes made by trudeau really all we have to do is that we have to just
00:00:31.980 go back to a very recent time we're talking about the 1960s not the 1700s or 1200s and say hey how
00:00:40.400 was canada back then oh it worked really well
00:00:44.020 hello everyone welcome back to the critical compass my name is mike and this is james
00:01:04.480 and we are here with our distinguished guest uh dr matthew rowley and uh he is um i'm gonna let
00:01:11.920 him introduce himself because he has a long list of credentials that is more complicated than I'm
00:01:17.820 able to say. But I just wanted to say, first of all, that we are recording this on St. Patrick's
00:01:23.240 Day. Matthew, you know that I'm a Catholic, and so I just had to celebrate. I'm just going to crack
00:01:28.620 this open right now. I support that. Good. And I want our guests to know, too, that you see me
00:01:35.480 drinking a lot in these episodes, but I'm not actually that big of a drinker. I just save it
00:01:39.300 for fun occasions like this. So Dr. Rowley, please introduce yourself to our guests and let's
00:01:44.100 get going. Sounds good. I like the Guinness because I do believe one should be able to chew
00:01:48.640 one's beer. Anyway, I'm Dr. Matthew Rowley. I'm principal of Milvian Strategies and president of
00:01:55.740 TLI Canada, which is a missionary training organization. We go and we teach overseas.
00:02:01.020 So I'm a professor of theology, church history, and many other things. And my specialty is
00:02:06.740 political theology, especially Canadian Constitution and the foundation of the church
00:02:11.260 state settlement in Canada.
00:02:13.380 Most importantly, I'm the husband of Joanna and the father of 10 kids.
00:02:17.720 10 children.
00:02:18.760 Amazing.
00:02:19.700 You're a busy man, sir.
00:02:21.140 And we appreciate that about you.
00:02:22.660 And our mutual acquaintance, Eva Chippyuk, actually put us in contact and we appreciate
00:02:28.580 her too.
00:02:29.320 And you guys had a really good podcast a few months ago.
00:02:33.160 Actually, maybe it's going on about a year ago almost.
00:02:35.780 Yeah, it was quite a while ago.
00:02:36.640 Yeah, on Dialogue Over Division. I would recommend that if anybody has not checked that out.
00:02:41.900 Yeah, amazing show. And, you know, you guys talked about a number of things about the Canadian Constitution, about, you know, what conservatism means, what liberalism means, really, in our context.
00:02:53.800 Our listeners tend to be fairly focused at the moment anyway on the issues surrounding Alberta independence.
00:03:02.260 And we know that you are a vocal supporter of Alberta independence.
00:03:06.960 You're also a vocal supporter of the monarchy.
00:03:09.920 And we find that fascinating, actually.
00:03:12.260 And maybe if we could start off with a heavy topic like that.
00:03:15.460 As a supporter of Alberta independence and as a supporter of the monarchy, tell us how you square those two things.
00:03:21.240 Like, how do you think that that might look, you know, in the coming months here as we approach a referendum?
00:03:27.000 When it comes to the monarchy, when it comes to independence, it's actually one of the things that I want us to focus on in the independence movement.
00:03:33.440 We should be aiming our guns in the right direction, which is Ottawa.
00:03:37.800 Ottawa is the problem.
00:03:39.660 Confederation is the problem.
00:03:41.620 But before Confederation, we were still part of the British Empire.
00:03:45.400 All the various colonies were still crowned colonies and everything was okay.
00:03:50.480 And even after Confederation, with the British North America Act, Canada worked pretty well. Yes, it wasn't perfect, but nothing is. And the monarchy is part of that. It actually separates us away from republics. I'm actually not a fan of republicanism and republics, because they tend to be a system that places a written constitution in primacy, which then gives the courts supremacy.
00:04:16.700 and instead of worrying about whether a law is good or just, the only question is, is it
00:04:24.300 constitutional? And that's a really lousy question sometimes. As we've seen lately, our Supreme Court
00:04:30.260 has come to such wonderful conclusions as minimum sentences for rapists are unconstitutional and
00:04:37.300 somehow cruel and unusual punishment. It doesn't matter if it's a good idea, it just matters if
00:04:41.720 they think it's constitutional. And our monarchy actually protects and preserves us from going down
00:04:47.880 that right. Traditionally, in the West, the understanding of law is law comes from God
00:04:55.100 through the king and to the people. And in that, we have a protection because there is always an
00:05:00.780 accountability structure. And the great principle of Magna Carta is that everybody, including the
00:05:06.840 king is under that law. In constitutional republics and republicanism, you actually
00:05:14.520 lose that kind of accountability. They talk about accountability, but really all you have
00:05:19.000 is every four years maybe a chance to knock the bums out. But that's not real accountability. As 1.00
00:05:24.400 soon as they're voted out, they go and become a board member and make millions of dollars writing
00:05:28.360 their memoirs. There's no real consequence for what they do. Whereas when you have a monarchical
00:05:34.500 structure, a monarchical system, that king or that queen has to leave something behind for the
00:05:40.260 generations who follow. So it does matter how they rule and whether they are seen to be
00:05:45.720 actually a good king or not. I love to point out that King Richard hardly ever actually lived or
00:05:54.460 spent any time in England, Richard II, and yet he was known as Good King Richard. Why? Because he
00:06:01.200 did the two things a king should do, and it's still true about government. First, he kept the
00:06:05.980 country safe. He fought the country's enemies. In fact, he died fighting the country's enemies.
00:06:11.380 And second, his justice ruled in the land, and the king's justice was holding down crime and
00:06:17.740 evil people, and so people were able to do what they needed to do. And that's the tradition that
00:06:23.620 we have in the British constitutional system, one where the monarch is a backstop to protect us
00:06:32.100 against the out-of-control power of a prime minister or a president who decided to use their
00:06:39.520 popular majority to do anything they pleased. At the end of the day, we always have that crown up
00:06:45.680 there with reserve powers able to backstop our entire political system and ensure that hopefully
00:06:52.580 we don't go down the tubes.
00:06:54.920 So that's just a few of the reasons
00:06:56.420 I like monarchy,
00:06:57.940 but feel free to probe a little bit.
00:07:01.420 James, please.
00:07:03.400 It, um, I guess
00:07:05.540 with the intention of, like,
00:07:08.760 keeping kings accountable
00:07:09.900 within that structure,
00:07:11.780 what explains the ones that were
00:07:14.060 essentially abused their power?
00:07:17.820 Um, what in that existing structure
00:07:20.040 was missing
00:07:21.700 and like how do you see like do you think there's enough within the Magna Carta to actually hold
00:07:31.200 accountable or does there need to be an additional layer or something woven in to actually facilitate
00:07:38.700 that accountability? Well you know the story of how Magna Carta came about right? So after good
00:07:44.220 king john or good king richard rather came bad king john and king john was acting as though he
00:07:51.200 were above the law he was manipulating the rules of the kingdom he was doing things that he shouldn't
00:07:56.960 do especially he was doing something called bills of attainder where he basically said to a noble
00:08:02.420 you're not noble anymore and i get all your land have a nice day and magna carta was the response
00:08:08.440 where the barons, what we would call in political theology and political theory,
00:08:14.340 the lesser magistrates, basically brought the king to the field of Runamide,
00:08:19.160 held him down at a table and said, here's the deal. 0.98
00:08:21.620 We either kill you or you sign this. Have a nice day. 1.00
00:08:24.340 Because just because you are the king doesn't mean you are unaccountable.
00:08:28.340 And that's the great tradition that we have in British royal history,
00:08:33.260 that anytime a king decided that they weren't going to do what they were supposed to do,
00:08:38.340 constitutionally, at best, they had a rebellion. At worst, they lost their head, as in the case of
00:08:45.300 King Charles I. Again, in the Glorious Revolution, we had a case where the king said, I'm going to
00:08:51.280 make all of Britain Catholic, which some of us might have liked more than others. And Britain 0.61
00:08:57.100 said no, at the time, England. And they booted out the king and he had to, they considered him
00:09:04.120 to have abdicated at the point when he fled London for his life. And they brought in a new king,
00:09:09.420 William, who was then able to continue the Protestant succession. But always we've had 0.73
00:09:15.260 this tradition that just because you are a king, it does not make you untouchable. And in fact,
00:09:21.240 in the monarchical system, there's something very important that we've been missing since we've
00:09:25.320 moved to this kind of democratic or constitutional thing that Trudeau did. And that is every right
00:09:31.580 comes with a responsibility. A king might be the king, but he is responsible therefore to carry
00:09:38.640 out the tasks of ruling properly and well. He actually makes an oath in his coronation that
00:09:45.020 he will do so. In the same way, prime ministers, members of parliament, police officers, priests,
00:09:52.820 everyone in the society in that type of a world has rights and privileges in a place,
00:09:58.400 but each and every right and privilege comes with a responsibility to care for those that
00:10:03.380 you are to look after. That is lacking in our current society. Anybody in Parliament,
00:10:09.040 all they have to do is see, can they get away with it? Not, is it right or is it carrying out
00:10:15.220 their responsibilities? We call them the right honourable and the honourable, but unfortunately,
00:10:20.920 very few of our current parliamentarians you could look at and say with a straight face that
00:10:25.400 they are an honorable person. And that's actually because we've moved away since Pierre Trudeau and
00:10:30.840 the modern constitution with the charter of rights and freedoms, we've moved away from a
00:10:35.080 monarchical system from the true British legacy of the Westminster system.
00:10:40.980 Yeah. Um, you know, we're, we are sort of familiar with this idea, at least in the modern context
00:10:46.900 from you're, you're probably familiar with Curtis Yarvin. Yeah. And, and he's talked about that
00:10:51.920 before where he says you know like and many thinkers have talked about this but the idea of
00:10:56.560 a of a monarchy is that you um you know if you lose if you sufficiently lose the support of the
00:11:03.340 public in addition to that you also lose your head as you say you know you don't you don't just lose
00:11:08.420 your job um the in this current system that we're in you have people that run uh you know on in in
00:11:16.300 essentially in four-year cycles you know what will pre what will please the voters in this four-year
00:11:20.180 cycle, but in a monarchical system, you do, in theory, have a leader who is at least concerned
00:11:28.320 about the longevity of the country for his lifetime, but hopefully for the lifetime of
00:11:32.520 his successors, right? I suppose even more than the idea of how do you put up safeguards against
00:11:43.620 bad kings in as much as you can, I suppose I would be mostly curious about how you think
00:11:49.800 being in the system we have been entrenched in for so long, how would you even begin to pitch
00:11:57.120 the idea to the public of, hey, you know what, you've enjoyed your, so to speak, democratic
00:12:03.920 voting rights for so long. Now we're going to switch back to this system that for so many
00:12:09.220 decades now has been talked about in terms of being barbaric or being old-fashioned or things
00:12:16.200 like this. What is your idea there? Well, we are currently a constitutional monarchy. We're just a
00:12:22.480 really bad one in Canada. So it's not taking away someone's voting rights or somehow stopping them
00:12:28.260 from being who they are. This is the Canadian tradition. What's happened is actually the
00:12:33.840 Americanization of our system, and that's what we need to remove. It has nothing really to do with
00:12:39.000 parliament or the crown. It's the court and the powers that the court took unto itself with the
00:12:45.620 introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, where they all of a sudden took supremacy
00:12:49.780 over the Crown in Parliament, which has been the traditional way of the British or the Canadian
00:12:55.700 tradition. So what needs to change is not in any way people's ability to vote. That's always been
00:13:02.860 an important part. If you go back and read Edmund Burke, it was one of the great pillars of our
00:13:07.640 system. You had the Commons, the Lords, and the Crown. And in Canada, the Commons, the Senate,
00:13:13.000 and the crown. And those three provide a healthy balance for one another. But unlike the American
00:13:20.340 system, they're not three opposed forces that are eternally in combat and conflict working
00:13:27.120 against each other. They're actually all working for the same end. So in destroying the radical
00:13:34.360 changes made by Trudeau, really all we have to do is that. We have to just go back to a very recent
00:13:40.240 time we're talking about the 1960s not the 1700s or 1200s and say hey how was canada back then
00:13:47.920 oh it worked really well now there are things that do need to be altered it's why i believe
00:13:52.680 independence is better is the imbalance that we experience in the confederation can't be changed
00:13:58.760 from within confederation because quebec and ontario and understandably i'd be the same if i
00:14:04.420 had all the power i wouldn't want to give it up right they they don't like to share the representation
00:14:09.480 the Maritimes certainly don't want to give up their outsized piece of control that they have
00:14:14.520 in Confederation. So to separate away from them is not to do anything drastic. And that's one of
00:14:21.340 the reasons why I disagree with Bruce and even with the fellows of the APP. I don't believe that
00:14:26.500 what we need to do is tear everything down and rebuild it in our own image. I think we, I'm a
00:14:33.120 true conservative. I think we need to go back and say, hey, where did it get off track and start
00:14:38.340 from there again a radical says let's burn it down and build something new a conservative says
00:14:44.340 what we have is too good to destroy let's repair it james sorry to piggyback questions here but
00:14:51.300 just so then just to be clear um matthew uh because you told me not to call you dr rowley
00:14:56.540 um the uh you're not advocating then for a return to a system of a uh of a king with a court and
00:15:04.460 earls and lords and things like this like you're you're returning returning to a system in recent
00:15:09.240 memory and in living memory for many people where there's just more of a reverence for the crown and
00:15:14.300 an appreciation for the how the system was supposed to run in its at its inception yeah basically the
00:15:21.920 crown means that i'm allowed to be utterly and completely disloyal to mark carney and still be
00:15:28.420 a loyal uh subject of the king and citizen of canada and this is a very important piece when i
00:15:34.340 pledged my allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen. I pledged my allegiance to a living, breathing
00:15:39.220 person who could respond to my allegiance. I wasn't pledging my allegiance to a piece of cloth
00:15:43.900 and the republic for which it stands, which are both nebulous ideas that you can never
00:15:48.420 have any relationship with. And what we have is valuable for that. But what we have is a
00:15:54.920 developed thousand-year system of constitutional monarchy. An unwritten constitution was the
00:16:01.800 British tradition. We have the British North America Act that with slight modifications
00:16:06.200 has been a very effective constitution. For a hundred years, it was quite good enough on its
00:16:13.180 own and was able to help Canada to do what it needed to do and function very effectively.
00:16:18.620 So I'm not advocating, unlike some like Bruce, for a complete tearing down and rebuilding. I always
00:16:25.200 say we don't have to change anything. We just have to get rid of Ottawa. We can leave most
00:16:30.920 everything that you experience in a day, exactly the same. You'd hardly even notice things are
00:16:36.140 different, except your taxes would be lower and we can actually fix the criminal code so that
00:16:40.480 rapists go to jail and stay there. It's not dramatic. So one thing I'm wondering is that
00:16:50.180 part of your criticisms of the American system, the American constitution is where it ended up
00:16:58.240 with courts taking supremacy over things.
00:17:03.800 And I think one of the issues
00:17:06.900 where people are hesitant
00:17:09.120 to roll back Alberta
00:17:11.880 to a, not exactly,
00:17:14.740 but to what existed before,
00:17:17.620 essentially they're saying that,
00:17:19.480 like, sure, Canada worked,
00:17:21.060 but that system eroded
00:17:23.420 into what we have today.
00:17:25.900 And I think people are curious about the checks and balances that prevent a system from becoming corrupt in the way that we see it right now.
00:17:34.820 If you take this iron law that essentially any system, if left to its own doing, will become corrupt over time, just rolling it back to a Westminster or a kind of what Canada was, I think people are a little bit hesitant on that.
00:17:55.160 It's a harder sell right now because I feel like people are attributing this corruption to the Westminster itself.
00:18:04.920 Do you have any thoughts on that?
00:18:07.660 Yeah, they are.
00:18:08.160 And the funny thing is the Westminster system is a basic way that a government functions writ large.
00:18:17.040 It's not the particular details of Canada.
00:18:20.100 The Westminster system, you know, you have two opposed sides in the House facing each other with a speaker in the center.
00:18:28.580 And they are, one side is the government, the other side is the loyal opposition.
00:18:33.600 The American House has this hilarious farce where everyone's sitting in this little semicircle and they're all supposed to be together.
00:18:42.280 And of course, they fight tooth and nail because you cannot have a system that's not oppositional,
00:18:47.560 especially one like America where it was designed not to work. The people who built the federal
00:18:51.960 government didn't want the federal government to work. And if you go look at its history,
00:18:55.400 the only reason it does work is certain presidents decided that they didn't want to follow the
00:18:59.680 constitution. They had to modify their own system to make a functioning state. And one can question
00:19:06.360 whether it functions very well when you look at the details of the last 250 years. So to replace
00:19:12.780 our system with that is to take one problem and make it two, in my opinion. In fact, when you look
00:19:20.000 at the history of revolutions, of the burning down what came before and replacing them with
00:19:26.160 something brand new that people cooked up in a back room through a constitutional convention or
00:19:31.040 some such thing, generally they get worse. The French Revolution sound really good right up 0.97
00:19:37.280 until they started cutting off tens of thousands of heads and then it all went downhill. The 0.95
00:19:41.920 Bolshevik revolution promised people that they would have a new tomorrow and everything would 0.83
00:19:47.140 be different. And they were exactly correct. They neglected to mention that it would be worse than 1.00
00:19:52.640 anything they had under the czars. So the idea that if we radically change things, if we burn
00:19:58.460 down a system that has a thousand year track record and try to replace it with something
00:20:03.980 that people cooked up over even a year.
00:20:08.520 We're going to do it wrong.
00:20:10.600 I love to point out to people,
00:20:12.320 they always love to talk about the American amendments.
00:20:15.020 You know, oh, I wish we had a second amendment
00:20:17.200 where, you know, we could have our guns protected.
00:20:20.920 You know what an amendment is though, right?
00:20:25.660 It had to change things.
00:20:27.780 It's because when they did it the first time,
00:20:29.860 they failed and they had to go back
00:20:31.260 and add all this stuff in.
00:20:32.580 And this is the problem with constitutions that are written overnight or over a year even, with people just coming up with their best ideas. Generally, it's a reactive system. We see something we don't like, so we're going to write into the constitution a solution to that particular problem.
00:20:53.940 But then that particular solution becomes the new problem, and you end up chasing your tail, where the British system basically developed over literally a thousand years. And as problems came up, they solved it through convention, through laws in parliament, through subtle changes that addressed the issue or the situation without having to go back and change some sort of a founding document.
00:21:19.540 And in political theology, Oliver O'Donovan calls this few laws and much judgment. It's the idea
00:21:28.940 that a constitution should be simple, should be basic, and there should be real human interaction
00:21:35.320 and good judgment involved in deciding how that constitution is supposed to function.
00:21:40.740 It leaves responsibility with people so that they can't fob it off. The government's favorite
00:21:46.140 tactic these days is to say, we're going to test this in the courts. And what that means is they
00:21:51.540 don't have the guts to stand behind it. So they do something and then throw it to the court and
00:21:55.680 say, oh, we'll let them be the fall guy. We'll let them be the bad guy. And the courts make
00:22:00.260 the weirdest decisions. You should be able to know kind of ahead of time what the courts will
00:22:05.960 rule on based on, you know, the past and the body of law and all the rest of that. But instead,
00:22:11.460 Sometimes they rule and you go, first of all, was that written with a crayon? And secondly, were you high when you made that decision? That's not supposed to be the way our system works. We have a tradition of sober second thought. Our tagline for America, you know, is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But if you watched Eva's podcast, you know what Canada's tagline is, right?
00:22:36.200 Oh man, I'm so embarrassed I don't, but I know it ends with good governance.
00:22:38.940 There you go. Peace, order, and good governance. That's boring. That's not some dramatic utopian, hey, we're going to try and change everything and make it perfect. No, no, no. All we want is peace. All we want is nobody burning crap down. And we don't want Muslims praying in the streets in Montreal while saying death to the Jews. We don't want people blocking traffic and causing problems for everyone. We want to be able to go to sleep at night knowing someone's not going to break in and steal our stuff.
00:23:06.880 We don't want to leave our keys by the door so that the criminals have an easy time stealing
00:23:11.280 our car. We want order. And guess what? We want a government where the standard is good.
00:23:17.620 Good government. Not, well, I managed to get voted in again. Not, well, the polls say I'm happy. But
00:23:23.620 is it actually quantifiably good what you are doing? And if not, you're failing as a government.
00:23:29.980 And that was the principle in Canada for a long time. This great principle that we have of
00:23:34.620 responsible government the idea that government should be on its own accountable that when it
00:23:41.440 makes mistakes it owns up to them and the one responsible for that mistake has to resign has
00:23:46.760 to lose their job for what they did and that's been lost since pierre trudeau's day so i think
00:23:54.380 what you're describing is a fairly um you know to me it sounds reasonable anyway a reasonable like
00:24:00.820 true conservative like a true small c conservative take um you know they say that it should be the
00:24:07.680 goal of any i can't remember how the quote goes should be the goal of any revolutionary to make
00:24:12.360 a society worth conserving something like this you know that's right um but i do wonder though in
00:24:19.120 and i i want to be careful to not you know for anyone maybe watching this who is not a fan of
00:24:26.120 us and who would use anything against us. I don't want this to necessarily be a racial take, but
00:24:30.860 I wonder in the last, you know, 10 years specifically, but maybe you could look even
00:24:38.060 to the last 30 years particularly, I wonder if the demographic shifts, the very intentional
00:24:44.200 demographic shifts in this country to what many are feeling as the disillusion of the once very
00:24:53.220 high trust Western society we had into something resembling more of a of a globalized low trust
00:24:59.500 society. I wonder if that puts up some roadblocks in in this conversation where, you know, you talk
00:25:08.780 about, you know, very, very rightly, you know, the Bolshevik Revolution, the French Revolution,
00:25:13.060 in which you had groups of relatively homogenous people trying very grand ideological shifts that
00:25:20.620 just didn't work i wonder in our society now which is so uh uh mixed in in in demographics
00:25:28.380 i wonder if there can be such a um such a high level um i don't exactly know how to say what
00:25:37.300 i'm saying i think i think you know what i mean like can we all coalesce behind this movement
00:25:42.140 properly as it stands so so when we look at the history of canada everybody except the indigenous
00:25:47.980 people were immigrants at one point. And they came from wildly different backgrounds, especially in
00:25:53.260 Alberta. We had the people that back then were the downtrodden and the people that looked 0.98
00:25:59.880 sideways at, you know, Poles, Ukrainians, I don't know about those people. And the big difference 1.00
00:26:06.140 was Canada back then said, anybody is welcome here. But if you come here, you have to be part
00:26:11.420 of our culture. You have to be one of us. And so my great grandfather arrived in 1926 from the
00:26:17.200 Ukraine. And he still would speak Ukrainian at the Ukrainian club with his friends who were
00:26:22.480 Ukrainian. But he would give you hell if you spoke Ukrainian where there was anybody present who 0.99
00:26:28.720 wouldn't understand. He made a point of going to the United Church, even though he was Ukrainian
00:26:33.560 Orthodox, because he was in Canada, he went to a Canadian church. Everything that he did,
00:26:38.840 he purposed, he had left his country and he had come to this country, so he was part of it.
00:26:43.920 And that goes across racial lines. You look at people from all sorts of backgrounds, from all corners of the world. They came here because they liked what they saw here and they wanted to be part of it. Lately, and again, since Trudeau and this idea of multiculturalism, we're a multicultural state, we've lost any sort of basic cohesion as a country.
00:27:04.680 Everyone has been told, you do you, I'll do me, and even if it makes no sense and we don't connect in any way, that'll be fine. That's not fine because guess what? The rule of order, the order and the peace order and good government, the rule of law, collapses if somebody comes from a place where order is not a priority or a value and they don't choose to leave that behind and enter into what we have.
00:27:29.920 and this has always been the way there has been no bar and to me Alberta is the best place for
00:27:36.560 this where there's no bar to becoming an Albertan if you become one of us you're welcome from
00:27:41.900 anywhere that has always been the tradition but now we're saying you just keep going with what
00:27:47.600 you're going you know if you've got politics at home feel free to have a rumble in the street
00:27:51.500 about them here you know if you want to have your your movement and your battle over some political
00:27:57.360 issue in your country, go ahead. If your religion is going to be in any way attacked, then you have
00:28:06.060 the right to be so hurt. But at the same time, you're allowed to block streets. I mean, I would
00:28:10.180 love to know what would happen if I tried to block a road in downtown Calgary and pray
00:28:14.100 as a Christian minister. It would take about five seconds before somebody had me bundled into a
00:28:19.160 police car. So we see this breakdown that has nothing to do with someone's race or even someone's
00:28:26.660 religion. It has to do with the willingness to participate in what's going on here. And if
00:28:32.700 you're not willing to do that, you can't have a cohesive society. The British Empire, the Greek 1.00
00:28:38.960 Empire, the Roman Empire, the Persian Empire, we have lots of examples of multi-racial, multi-religious
00:28:46.260 empires, nations as it were, where people work together despite wildly different backgrounds.
00:28:53.100 but there was one uniting law and system that governed everybody and when that was in operation
00:29:01.360 it worked quite well when it fell apart that's when you had empires crumble or you had people
00:29:06.400 collapse into anarchy because now everybody it was the every man for himself type system or if
00:29:12.500 you remember the book of judges it's it's uh there was no king in israel and everyone did what was
00:29:17.160 right in their own eyes and a whole lot of crazy things happen when everybody decides to do what's
00:29:22.660 right in their own eyes. So I think there's a couple things to unpack there. And I think I've
00:29:30.240 heard this described a few times of essentially Canada was formed. It was a mix of you had
00:29:38.060 different people, different countries, but they were primarily Christian. And even though there 0.99
00:29:44.580 some there's a little bit of mixing is like you had this mixing pot of cultures you had a shared
00:29:52.740 value structure that helped glue things together and i guess in that case a common good could be
00:30:00.020 agreed upon because you had a common backdrop of beliefs and we know that our values and our
00:30:06.500 beliefs inform our actions and that kind of disseminates into the rest of society so since
00:30:13.540 Since we've seen a dramatic shift and now we have some belief structures with some people that are incompatible with others.
00:30:22.100 And if we're returning to something where we try to define a common good, and this is what Bruce Party has mentioned quite a bit, is he's articulated that the common good can be distorted.
00:30:37.460 And if it's up to the state to define and or enforce the common good, then essentially you are opening the doors for that to be weaponized against you.
00:30:49.160 In the same way that right now we can say that in Canada, well, we're trying to, well, the federal government's trying to preserve peace and order and trying to make everybody happy by invoking hate speech legislation, which is ensuring that nobody is harmed through the harmful words of others.
00:31:09.560 And it's defining what hate is. And now at a state level, you are infringing on these other rights, which is I think these are the problems that when you have the more libertarian, which these more libertarian frameworks, which sometimes in practice needs to be weighed out with the kind of with how people really work in the world.
00:31:33.960 But when you're going from a first principle standpoint, this is where some of these questions, I think, have value in bringing up because you can see how logically these things can erode into these bigger problems.
00:31:50.000 And I think the hate speech legislation is one of those things where it starts to supersede these other rights like freedom of speech because it's trying to define harm in this nebulous way.
00:32:03.200 Yeah, and what we've done is we've made the government the center of the universe. It's one of the things that does happen when you take God out of a society. You need a new God, and that God will be the government. And the government will be omniscient, omnipotent. It'll have all the attributes of godhood. But it's a really crappy God, because let's be honest, it's made up of bureaucrats and politicians. Great job. The best kind of people.
00:32:27.300 I always say that a bureaucrat is that person when you were a kid in class who said, teacher, teacher, you forgot the test.
00:32:34.080 That person grows up to be a bureaucrat.
00:32:36.200 My apologies to all the bureaucrats who are listening.
00:32:38.300 I know there are many good ones.
00:32:39.480 But what we do is we make the government into something it's not meant to be.
00:32:45.280 In former days, you didn't need hate speech legislation.
00:32:48.560 Why?
00:32:49.080 Because if you went to somebody and you called them a bad name, they punched you in the nose.
00:32:53.100 and you figured out pretty quickly as a community that you had things that you could do and things
00:33:00.480 you couldn't do things you could say and couldn't say and it wasn't because there was a law it was
00:33:04.440 because the general community had a way that they do things and we've replaced that now with this
00:33:10.980 idea of communities right instead of your community being whoever happens to be in your
00:33:15.560 geographic locale you know your crazy uncle and and that strange person down the road who
00:33:21.040 cooks things in the backyard and you kind of wonder what they're cooking but they're all part
00:33:24.940 of the community now it's you know the left-handed paper hangers community and it's the the warhammer
00:33:30.440 40k community and it's and you've isolated all these groups who then only talk to each other
00:33:36.920 and anybody who says anything differently offends them hurts them harms them hates them
00:33:42.380 and we used to be more resilient than that because we had real community we didn't need
00:33:47.760 the government to enforce community because we did it ourselves. But then the government stepped
00:33:54.300 in with its wonderful charter of rights and freedoms, which the entire purpose was to remove
00:33:59.700 rights and freedoms because we already had all those rights. But the government said, look,
00:34:03.820 I'm giving them to you now, and then I'm going to adjudicate them in the courts and tell you whether
00:34:08.360 that counts as your right or not right. And that's when we started seeing these crazy prosecutions
00:34:16.000 for human rights, the wonderful kangaroo courts of the human rights tribunals, these crazy rulings
00:34:22.780 like the right to life means you have the right to kill yourself, etc., etc. We see a world where
00:34:30.760 what we would say common sense doesn't factor in because the government is allowed to make
00:34:36.740 whatever rules it wants. And that's because we as people have accepted a modern enlightenment idea
00:34:43.820 of the state as God, as the center of all things. And again, the Burkean conservative idea is
00:34:51.160 actually a very pre-enlightenment idea where the country is made up of a series of relationships.
00:34:56.840 We are people, not some nebulous thing called a state, where we are actually a group of people
00:35:03.360 who all work together, live together, and have to get along. And that means everything comes down
00:35:08.360 to our personal relationships in day-to-day dealing and in our relationship to the government.
00:35:14.420 Now it's not just about what can I get away with, but we're supposed to actually be a person of
00:35:18.560 honor because otherwise the community is going to go after you. And not in a witch hunt, but just
00:35:23.780 letting you know loud and clear that that's not the way things are done.
00:35:28.100 That also gives room for the odd libertarian. It's a safe place where someone can be weird
00:35:34.000 and wacky and different. And in the past of Canada and the British tradition, we have a lot
00:35:39.360 of eccentric characters, odd people. I was just watching a video of Noel Coward the other day,
00:35:45.520 and he wrote his own ticket his whole way through life. And he was eccentric, he was odd,
00:35:51.860 he was different. And it was okay, because there was a place in our society for that type of person.
00:35:57.180 The things that he said, many people couldn't get away with, but he did because, oh, that's Noel 0.99
00:36:01.880 coward. So we had a society that was resilient and able to function with those things. And again,
00:36:08.020 since Trudeau decided to revolutionize society, and no joke, he took everything about the way
00:36:14.200 Canada worked and turned it on its ear. Since that happened, we've seen the rise of all of
00:36:20.580 this insanity that's gotten to the point now where someone just got fined $750,000 for daring
00:36:27.740 to speak a truth that is known to a five-year-old. So we won't fix that problem by extreme
00:36:36.760 libertarianism, right? Because then we just have everybody running around with, you know,
00:36:42.060 guns shooting each other because, well, I feel like it, you know, well, I don't think it's
00:36:45.820 harming you, so I'm going to do whatever I want to to you because as long as I do no harm, 0.80
00:36:50.640 you know, Hitler had that kind of logic. Well, I'm just trying to help the German people,
00:36:53.720 So let's go and murder a bunch of Jews. 1.00
00:36:56.140 Do no harm, depending on whose eyes, is not good enough. 1.00
00:36:59.660 You have to have a community standard.
00:37:01.360 And that's why ultimately you always have government if you want order in society.
00:37:06.040 But it must be controlled, it must be limited, and it must know that it is not the center of society.
00:37:14.500 Yeah, you know, you may be familiar with a modern-day philosopher named Peter Boghossian.
00:37:21.680 And, um, he has this, yeah, he has this notion called, uh, we've talked about it on the show
00:37:25.540 before. We have about six, I have about six things that I just reference over every podcast. And this
00:37:30.740 is, uh, this is one of them, uh, substitution hypothesis, where as a society, uh, becomes less
00:37:36.840 religious, it starts to fill that gap with what you name it, you know, gender ideology or veganism,
00:37:43.980 or, you know, some, some form of, uh, uh, group, uh, belonging group membership that, that replaces
00:37:50.600 is what a religion used to hold and you know it used to be kind of a uh like a shocking idea you
00:37:56.820 know at least you know in the early in the 50s and 60s in the U.S. and Canada that you couldn't
00:38:01.500 for some reason that you couldn't get along with your neighbor if you were a you know your neighbor
00:38:06.120 went to a Protestant church and you went to a Catholic church like this was just things that
00:38:10.180 didn't necessarily separate people in the same way that like you say you know a slight difference in
00:38:15.540 uh, in opinion can now everyone gets so mortally offended by it. Uh, you know,
00:38:19.920 people worked in their communities and lived amongst each other and accepted these differences
00:38:23.580 because, you know, there was a greater binding, uh, tradition behind them. Um, yeah, I guess I
00:38:30.680 wonder, you know, in your opinion, when we, when we zoom out and we look into this, this current,
00:38:36.280 uh, situation we're in, you know, we're collecting signatures for a, for a petition on Alberta
00:38:40.720 independence. Um, most people would, that we've talked to anyway, say that, you know what, the
00:38:47.020 next step has to be a constitutional convention. As you mentioned earlier in this discussion, you,
00:38:52.700 you think maybe it's, it's, it's a better plan to actually return to something that more resembles
00:38:57.480 the country before it was, uh, you know, essentially put to the courts, like what,
00:39:01.680 uh, what, uh, Pierre Trudeau did. Um, let's put ourselves there. Let's put ourselves in,
00:39:07.300 you know, late October or early November of this year. We've just had a clear and convincing
00:39:12.720 majority. The referendum results are with the federal government. We're negotiating the terms
00:39:19.180 of our civil divorce. What does Dr. Matthew Rowley do? Like, what is your public statement
00:39:26.940 at the time to rally people behind this idea of we need to return to what Canada was in the 60s
00:39:35.080 and earlier, rather than what seems to be the prevailing notion now, which is more of a, from
00:39:41.000 our experience, more of a Bruce Pardian, if you will, libertarian, NAP style, entire rewriting
00:39:49.020 of the Constitution. What's your sales pitch, essentially? Look throughout your life. When
00:39:55.760 you've made a drastic change out of hate or frustration, how well has it worked? When we do
00:40:03.560 anything quickly it's not necessarily good you know you get fed up with your car and so you take
00:40:10.080 a hammer to it because it wasn't working right and then the next day you'd go oh gee why did i do
00:40:14.640 that you know when when you get frustrated with something and you throw it across the room and
00:40:19.340 break it and then well now it's broken uh essentially if we are first of all we have to
00:40:25.480 realize the alberta government day one is in charge not the alberta prosperity project not
00:40:32.280 Dr. Matthew Rowley, nobody else, the Alberta government will be responsible for deciding
00:40:37.460 what to do. We can say all we want to, well, this has to happen and this has to happen
00:40:41.260 and this has to happen. At the end of the day, none of it is true. We will have to hopefully
00:40:47.020 have a voice. We'll be able to say, I think this should happen. And if the Alberta government
00:40:52.900 is wise, they will listen to their constituents. But we have to be careful with what we promise
00:40:58.420 first before that time and then what we advocate for afterwards and my big thing would be any
00:41:04.980 change you make make it slowly anything you alter alter it with care because if you cut down a tree
00:41:12.760 and then decide actually you like that tree where it was you can't just lift it back up and put it
00:41:18.260 back on the stump and it's going to carry on like it did before and in the same way a thousand year
00:41:24.140 old system, if you decide to burn it out and replace it with something else, as has been done
00:41:30.000 all over the world, you can see the result all over the world. When radical changes happen,
00:41:36.880 it usually involves instability in business, in the economy, in the lives of people. It usually
00:41:45.180 involves a breakdown of services. There's 101 things about government that right now we don't
00:41:51.320 even notice. You know, government picks up your garbage in most places, right? We're talking
00:41:57.340 about a system that has allowed the government to grow to a place where it does infect every
00:42:03.800 aspect of your life. Now, I might not like that and you might not like that, but that is the
00:42:08.020 reality. So before we go making drastic changes, and especially before we go trying to undo
00:42:15.440 potential ills or to right past wrongs through dramatic fixes, we should be careful about what
00:42:22.660 we do. Just one example is this idea of term limits. Everyone's really excited about term
00:42:27.320 limits. We're going to show them. Nobody will be able to be a professional politician.
00:42:32.640 My response to that is, wouldn't you love to have a term limit on surgeons and doctors? You know
00:42:39.180 what? You can be a surgeon for eight years, can practice really well, get really good. But you
00:42:44.260 you know what, after that, it's time to get a new surgeon. Let's get a fresh pair of hands. In fact,
00:42:48.980 let's get someone who doesn't even know anything about surgery because they're going to be able
00:42:53.380 to do something useful. They're going to change it up. We would never even dream of doing that,
00:42:58.540 right? You want the best guy who's been practicing the longest. In government, it's not about length
00:43:04.000 of tenure. It's about amount of corruption. One of the best premiers we ever had was Ernest Manning,
00:43:09.860 and he was premier for 25 years. And he did a darn good job for 25 years. Now, should we have
00:43:17.760 looked at him and said, oh, nope, sorry, as much as you're doing a great job, let's get rid of you
00:43:21.540 after eight. That's just one of those examples of we are fed up with bad politicians, but the
00:43:27.480 solution is not to get rid of the good ones after a certain amount of time. The solution is to get
00:43:31.860 rid of the bad ones and don't wait until, well, they've been in for eight years. No, don't let
00:43:36.300 them get in in the first place. And we have that ability actually with a system of responsible
00:43:41.480 government, which we used to have. Shame caused them to resign, where now no amount of shame can
00:43:49.220 ever unseat a politician. At the end of the day, usually, and you'll probably find this if you have
00:43:55.080 kids, you can't make enough rules to make them be good. You actually have to teach them how to be
00:44:01.540 good. And it's the same with government and with politicians. It's the same with our entire
00:44:06.460 society. We can't make enough rules to make society good. In fact, as a Christian, that's
00:44:12.660 one of the things that I argue. The heart is evil, it says, and wicked above all things.
00:44:18.140 And if we think that we can make the exterior good and somehow that's going to change our hearts,
00:44:23.260 we have the entirety of human history to show us that we're wrong. But if we recognize that
00:44:29.160 you must change hearts and therefore make something new, then you're on the right path.
00:44:33.780 So my real pitch is let's not change anything. Let's just get rid of Ottawa and then start
00:44:41.420 cleaning up the mess. The criminal code, Canada Health Act, Indian Act, all of these federal laws
00:44:49.320 and federal impositions that have done so much damage. Let's fix those things and then see where
00:44:54.940 we are maybe then we say hey we want to change this or we want to change that but let's do some
00:45:00.480 change see how it sits go slow go steady and then we're not going to get to a point where one day we 0.94
00:45:07.580 go oh man we got rid of the czar because he really sucked and now we've got the communists and they're 0.90
00:45:12.340 killing us interesting so i can see where you're coming from but i i might push back on this idea 0.94
00:45:21.180 that it's for a lot of people that it's purely out of purely a reactive or like a hate like an
00:45:27.920 anger lashing out kind of a situation where um the movement's not new it's like we're it's 120
00:45:36.600 years old you have observations and you have kind of these these lessons learned over a long period
00:45:44.840 of time, different thinkers analyzing in different ways. Also, I think when it comes to how some of
00:45:53.140 these ideas for a new structure, it comes from looking at, well, here's what's common in all
00:46:03.680 these different countries, all these different systems. We're seeing some of the breakdowns
00:46:09.040 because of this or that, or you are essentially observing and diagnosing based on more of a
00:46:18.080 critical analysis through first principles. I think that's how you'd get to some of this.
00:46:23.200 And just to push back on the term limits is it's assuming that you need the level of management
00:46:34.440 required that that needs a surgeon level of skill to run a government versus a system that
00:46:43.040 puts more of the responsibilities on like individuals families communities and building
00:46:48.760 from the ground up rather than top down so i i think this is where some of these ideas
00:46:53.880 they are starting to challenge some of these fundamental pillars of do we need a managerial
00:47:02.120 state to manage people? Or do you set up a framework that limits certain things? Like you
00:47:10.480 can't go around, you can't just shoot random people. You can't infringe on other people's
00:47:14.460 rights. And you need somebody to adjudicate like these fundamental laws. But do you need somebody
00:47:21.480 micromanaging the way that you live? And I think these are some of the conversations that are
00:47:27.100 underpinning some of these suggestions when it comes to revising the system.
00:47:32.120 Yeah, and certainly I'm all for, like I say, gentle revising. Like I say, since Trudeau screwed the whole thing up, certainly we have some things that we have to fix. The micromanaging, all that, the authoritarianism, the idea that government is the answer to all things.
00:47:46.500 historically though show me a society that doesn't have politicians that doesn't have leaders that
00:47:55.440 doesn't have a professional class of those who guide the country they might not be named the
00:48:03.140 same thing but at the end of the day there is always people who end up in leadership and who
00:48:08.120 do the job of government it is complex government is just as much as any other complex organism
00:48:15.620 difficult to understand and difficult to master. And the ones that are good at it are really good.
00:48:21.860 You might see the picture of Winston Churchill that I have there. He spent the majority of his
00:48:26.740 life in parliament. And one could argue that he was a far better parliamentarian at the end than
00:48:31.960 he was at the beginning. He learned a lot of things. He had some bumps in the road. He made
00:48:36.240 some mistakes, as any of us do in our careers. The idea that we should get rid of that and that
00:48:41.780 government's not that complicated. Usually I hear that from people who've never had any sort
00:48:47.160 of connection with government. It's somewhat like I've had many people say to me over the years,
00:48:52.760 I don't need a piece of paper. I've got all the learning that I need. You might notice I have a
00:48:59.020 couple of pieces of paper there. You know how many people who have those pieces of paper say that it
00:49:03.580 is just a piece of paper? None of them. Why? They know what it took to get it. They know what it
00:49:09.920 involved, they know how many books they read. In the same way, someone who lives on the edge of
00:49:16.820 government and has only negative or at best neutral interaction with government might look at it and
00:49:23.620 say, ah, anybody can do that. You know, we're all lovely armchair quarterbacks. It's one of our
00:49:28.140 abilities in democracy that we can all play government from our home table, sitting there
00:49:34.180 arguing with our friends. Government is a complex organism and it does take a lot to do it well.
00:49:39.660 And to do it well is important because government does have a couple of key functions.
00:49:45.960 So yeah, we can remove all the functions that government shouldn't be involved in.
00:49:50.000 Why in the heck should government be telling you what you can and can't say? 0.93
00:49:54.200 That's ludicrous. 0.89
00:49:55.940 And that's one of those basic principles that's always been true.
00:49:58.500 Even back in the ancient days of England, right?
00:50:01.540 The rights of an Englishman were that he could speak his mind even to the king.
00:50:05.240 It was one of the great privileges that we have in our tradition.
00:50:09.660 uh, and it's very rare in the world and it's a very good idea, but that doesn't mean that we
00:50:15.840 don't need government or it wouldn't have existed. You know, there would have been some society
00:50:20.840 somewhere that appeared that was government free and we would have all said, wow, that's amazing.
00:50:25.880 But the reality is get 15 people together and start a team building exercise. Have you ever
00:50:31.360 done one of those yeah essentially you'll get you'll get some kind of leadership emerging
00:50:40.300 naturally you need some kind of uh you need some kind of organization and maybe it's not that it's
00:50:45.880 a lack of zero direction or zero organization but it's again you're you mentioned government
00:50:53.140 being so complex that like it's hard to wrap your mind around it or from the outside you can't
00:50:58.860 understand the web, the complex web that the government is. But you can also say that about
00:51:06.060 things that get needlessly bloated and dysfunctional. It's dysfunctional and
00:51:15.640 intertwined in a way that is hard to even define the problem. You can look at organic systems of
00:51:22.860 like, okay, well, you've got multi-organ failure and it's, well, maybe there's a root cause in
00:51:28.900 some places, but you, now you have multiple symptoms and you've got feedback loops happening
00:51:35.840 as well. And I think you don't have to be that person with the organ failure to be able to
00:51:41.620 observe and start looking at like, here's where like this system is essential. That's not essential.
00:51:49.500 and you can start making some determination from that.
00:51:54.040 And it's not to say that we just get some high school dropout
00:51:58.520 to give this prescriptive document.
00:52:04.640 Ralph Klein is okay.
00:52:06.720 You will get a good dropout once in a while.
00:52:09.900 Yeah, what I found,
00:52:11.720 I was reading someone's constitutional document a while ago
00:52:15.380 and they were very, very proud of how well they'd written it
00:52:19.200 and all of the things they'd put in and all of the protections they'd put in.
00:52:23.520 And as someone who's studied, I think, over 190 constitutions from around the world,
00:52:29.680 I started kind of making notes.
00:52:32.560 And then I said, you know what, dude, there's just too much here.
00:52:37.860 It's just bad.
00:52:39.340 And it's the difference between knowing what you're looking at and not.
00:52:42.160 You know, I say it's one of the beauties of youth.
00:52:44.840 They don't know what they don't know.
00:52:46.660 And so they boldly go and they make the same mistake.
00:52:49.020 their father and their grandfather made but they're confident while they do it and so yeah we
00:52:55.060 need to look at government and say whoa our government is so out of hand it's insane and
00:53:01.040 Trudeau meant it that way Pierre Trudeau meant it that way he put the government into everybody's
00:53:06.040 business at every level that's not our historical way of doing things in Canada praise God we also
00:53:11.440 don't have a model where it's all laissez-faire we do believe that there are times Jim Dinning
00:53:18.600 said it really well. Government should be as hands-off as possible so that it earns the right
00:53:23.980 to reach in with its meaty claw and do something from time to time. And that's the way Alberta
00:53:29.580 generally has functioned. We do need to shrink multiple bureaucracies. We do need to get rid of 1.00
00:53:35.160 whole departments that shouldn't exist. And then we need to look and say, okay, what does government
00:53:40.940 need to do? You know what? We need somebody to keep order. Guess what? Police are for our benefit.
00:53:48.600 they do actually keep the order. We don't need the police to be going door to door and arresting
00:53:53.200 people for posting memes on the internet. They've got more important things to do, right? It's that
00:53:57.480 again, more judgment, fewer laws. It's not about how do I create a constitution or a series of
00:54:05.140 rules that will make it so that no human can ever do wrong. All we do is create opportunities for
00:54:10.220 loopholes with that. We make a simple constitution like government, do good. And then we evaluate
00:54:16.260 wait, government, did you do good? No, you didn't. And that's how we actually come to solutions.
00:54:21.380 The proliferation of laws is a sign of the death of a society. And I believe that is true. It's
00:54:28.800 not an original quote from me. I can't remember who off the top of my head, but it's very true.
00:54:33.280 Any dying society multiplies its laws. You go back and look at simple societies, the code of
00:54:40.340 Hammurabi that was written on one stone, the 10 commandments that are quite literally 10
00:54:44.420 commandments. Good societal law and good government doesn't take much. You don't have to
00:54:50.860 have a huge, gigantic thing. It still will be a complex structure that will require specialists,
00:54:56.920 but it doesn't have to be one quarter of the population of the nation, because that's insane.
00:55:06.180 And so it's that type of thing that in independence we can change. We can say,
00:55:10.820 We love government. Government is a force of good if it keeps itself within bounds. But the answer isn't to try to outrule it. The answer is to remind it of its position. You're not the center of the universe, government. You're just the ones that keep the army going, keep the police going, keep the courts running, maybe help here and there with certain things as we need.
00:55:37.940 but you don't get to be the source of all things for all people. And we don't owe our allegiance
00:55:44.820 to you. It's one of the reasons why I like the crown. The government dies. It's dissolved
00:55:50.100 regularly. The crown lives on. The government is not eternal. That in itself is an important
00:55:56.980 principle that we should remember. Two things. First, the quote, even though maybe we'll just
00:56:06.300 will attribute it to you in the comments, uh, was by Cicero, uh, the more laws, the less justice.
00:56:12.200 Yeah. Uh, second, are you familiar, sir, with, um, Andrew Wilson?
00:56:18.940 Don't know if I am. What's he written?
00:56:21.440 He's a, uh, he's actually a, uh, an Orthodox Christian. Um, he's a, like a, a debater,
00:56:28.620 really. He's like a professional debater essentially. And he does, um, a lot of garbage
00:56:33.700 that he probably shouldn't waste his time on, but he does a lot of actually fairly high level 0.98
00:56:37.180 theological and political debates. I'm curious as to your thoughts on this. So this is my
00:56:46.840 question and this is why I'm asking it. In an independent Alberta, to what degree would you
00:56:55.820 like to see Christian ethic represented in our laws and in our courts? And the reason I ask this
00:57:03.100 is because Andrew Wilson makes the argument as an Orthodox Christian that in as much as
00:57:11.240 any other ideology group is within their rights to lobby the public and sway public opinion to
00:57:20.280 their ideology, a Christian is just as justified in trying to sway people to a Christian ethic to
00:57:28.680 to rule their society. And so I'm curious as to your opinion as a, um, as a missionary professor,
00:57:35.840 uh, and, uh, you know, a very educated Christian man, what, uh, what is your opinion on that?
00:57:41.760 And, uh, what do you think is maybe what's your opinion on it? What would you like to see? And
00:57:46.340 what is, what is reasonable to expect? Uh, Western society, it's an uncomfortable
00:57:54.720 truth for some, was founded on Christian principles. And what we have done really since
00:58:01.700 the 19th century is we've said, we really love this beautiful house called Western society,
00:58:08.700 but we don't like that foundation called Christianity. It's so unkind. It's so exclusive.
00:58:16.020 It's got all these nasty things like, I don't know, love your neighbor and do good to those
00:58:20.920 who hate you. It's just an awful, awful philosophy that's done such harm. Religion has done such harm.
00:58:27.020 Hateful, really. 1.00
00:58:28.740 So let's pick up the house. Let's move it off the foundation and let's let it hover in the air. And
00:58:34.900 it will be just as beautiful as it always was without the foundation. Surprisingly, we've found
00:58:41.740 that Western society and Western civilization is crumbling because we've stripped away the
00:58:47.320 spiritual foundation. It's another uncomfortable truth. We are spiritual beings. We are not
00:58:53.340 merely mechanistic cogs in the giant government machine, but we are living spiritual beings who
00:58:59.800 have spiritual relationships with one another, and what we believe matters. There is a truth,
00:59:06.460 and if that truth is denied, it does cause problems. That was the understanding that
00:59:12.460 built Western civilization. The other beautiful thing with Western civilization is we did not
00:59:18.160 believe, unlike many other civilizations or cultures built around a religion, we didn't
00:59:23.420 believe that you had to force at gunpoint. Again, this is the British tradition. You didn't have to
00:59:28.840 force at gunpoint someone to believe what you believe. You could say, you know what, we're
00:59:34.800 following this basic set of principles. We're not going to go around on Sunday to check if you're
00:59:39.500 in church. But as a society, we have these standards. You know what? Life is valuable
00:59:44.680 because all life is made in the image of God. So don't kill people. Why? That's a basic
00:59:50.480 Christian principle, that people matter, that they're worth it, that no matter who you are,
00:59:56.180 how low, how unimportant according to the world, whether you're an orphan, whether you have some
01:00:02.480 sort of mental problem, whether you have a disability, you are still loved by God and
01:00:07.700 valued by God and made in the image of God. So we preserved humanity. People forget that prior
01:00:13.760 to Christianity really becoming a thing and Western civilization, women were considered
01:00:18.780 chattel. It's actually Christianity that caused people to go, oh wait, women are made in the image 1.00
01:00:24.200 of God. The Bible actually speaks of the creation of the woman as a unique and different individual
01:00:29.560 who was not just a carbon copy of the man and who was not somehow lesser. So therefore we should
01:00:35.300 value her. Christianity was the one that said, you know what? Making slaves is a bad idea.
01:00:41.600 Slavery has been throughout history, and it's only Western civilization that said,
01:00:45.360 maybe we shouldn't enslave people. On and on and on it goes. So I would love to return
01:00:51.580 to more of the classic principles that made our civilization, and an acknowledgement that,
01:00:58.380 guess what? You can't have the beautiful house without having the good foundation.
01:01:03.360 And that still leaves people room for difference and disagreement for believing different things, even as they acknowledge the, I just was reading John Cleese, one of the arch atheists of all time, a great guy. And he just yesterday on Twitter was saying, Britain's a Christian country with Christian foundations. And even he values those Christian principles that made the country what it was, even as a stark atheist who doesn't want to believe.
01:01:30.420 Yeah. So it's not that we want to enforce belief or somehow create some Christian ethnostate. That's insane. But we need to value our history and understand that we got here somehow. And if we strip it all away and then try to carry on as if nothing ever happened, all we end up with is the building collapsing around us. And we can pretend it's not and try to prop it up with odd random scraps of wood. But the thing is going to fall down if it has no foundation.
01:02:00.120 So, James, I just got to piggyback here for just one second, and then I'm going to let you have the final word with our guest. I wonder, though, I'd love that answer. I think it's very reasonable. And I think I tend to agree with pretty much all of it.
01:02:13.660 I wonder, though, if we might find ourselves in a bit of a paradox of intolerance where we have a we have such a large carrying capacity in this country of people who belong to religions that I'm speaking here specifically of Islam that fundamentally don't hold those principles of, you know, like it is a very it is a very unique kind of quirky Christian ethic that we can hold our personal beliefs.
01:02:43.660 And want to build a healthy society that is respectful of others' beliefs. But that's not how many other religions and parts of the world function. And I wonder if we might unknowingly find ourselves at a point where we, I don't know how to phrase this, where we might need to be more forceful about it, lest we be overrun by people who don't respect that and would, in fact, take any opportunity to enforce their particular beliefs. 0.57
01:03:13.660 worldview that is incompatible with Western ideals? There is a place where we do have to say
01:03:21.240 your worldview is incompatible with our way of doing society. A perfect example, I don't know
01:03:27.940 if you've ever heard of Westboro Baptist Church. Yes, yeah. It's a cult. It happened to have
01:03:33.120 Baptist Church in the name, but it had nothing to do really with Christ. But they would go around 0.99
01:03:37.080 with signs and say hateful, hateful, horrible things about homosexual people. And they were 0.99
01:03:43.800 doing it in the name of God. And they would go to soldiers' funerals and say, good, we're glad
01:03:49.680 that you died because you were defending an ungodly state and horrible things. It's important
01:03:56.380 that for a society to function, people who choose to utterly hate and want to destroy that society,
01:04:05.000 while they have the right to believe that personally, they do not have the right to
01:04:09.840 impose that type of a belief upon that society. And that's one of the contracts that we make as
01:04:16.200 a society. We say, hey, you do have the right to believe something different, but you don't have
01:04:21.960 the right to get special treatment for your belief that is antithetical to our national culture. 0.87
01:04:30.620 And that's a line, you know, Westboro Baptist is such a good example.
01:04:33.960 They weren't arrested and thrown in prison.
01:04:37.080 How did people deal with them? 0.99
01:04:39.280 My favorite was a group of bikers who came and when a soldier's funeral was happening
01:04:43.800 and these guys were busy shouting the hateful slogans, they drove their motorbikes in front
01:04:48.000 of them and then revved their engines so loud that all they could hear is the motorbikes revving.
01:04:53.520 Our society is resilient.
01:04:55.240 The thing that's causing the problem right now is that the government is actually making laws that stop society from righting itself in healthy ways, by challenging things, by having an argument, by saying, hey, hold on, we don't do that here. You know what, if you want to beat your wife, there are other countries in the world where maybe that's permissible and even legal. In this country, we don't believe beating your wife is good. And I don't care who you are or what background you are, you can claim that that's your religious beliefs.
01:05:24.520 No, I'm sorry. Here we don't beat our wives. I love the quote from the British governor in India when they were busy burning their widows. And they said, well, this is just our cultural beliefs. You have to respect it. And he said, I deeply respect your cultural beliefs. In England, our culture is that if people burn widows on a funeral pyre, we hang them. And so you can have your culture and I will have mine. 1.00
01:05:49.960 And it's that type of thing. We have to have a standard for our society. Within that, there's lots of room for healthy diversity, but that diversity cannot overtake the unity that we have in our society. And it's about setting that bar low, quite frankly, right? There are basic things that we all have to agree with, but guess what? You don't all have to wear the same clothes as me. You don't all have to like the same music as me. You don't have to go to the same church as I do.
01:06:17.320 You don't even have to like the same political system that I do.
01:06:20.700 But at the end of the day, here's how we function as a society. 0.99
01:06:24.080 You know, if you want to rape people, you go to jail. 0.99
01:06:26.720 And guess what? 0.99
01:06:27.700 There's a minimum sentence.
01:06:29.920 Well said.
01:06:31.240 I do have one low bar, and I think this is a good litmus test for society, and we'll end on this thought,
01:06:38.340 is that I want to live in a society where when 80 churches get burnt down,
01:06:43.960 we take a stand while not favoring other churches and like,
01:06:50.840 oh no, somebody protested at another church,
01:06:54.760 but these 80 burnt down and I can understand how they're feeling
01:06:58.040 a little bit hurt about this other thing.
01:07:00.500 It's like we should have these base level, some of these base level things.
01:07:07.260 we always have what do you do when 80 churches are burned you find the culprits you try them
01:07:13.540 in a court you convict them and you put them in jail or my my favorite thing would probably be
01:07:21.140 that you make them go and build them a new one we have the ability to have an ordered society in
01:07:28.540 fact we can look at most of the history of canada with diverse religions and racial backgrounds and
01:07:35.540 all of that, we're an incredibly welcoming and unified country with people who come from all
01:07:41.380 over the place and all kinds of backgrounds. What we had was a common understanding of a basic law.
01:07:47.440 The Dukobors, I don't know if you've heard of them, but in World War I, the Dukobors were a
01:07:52.240 pacifist sect. And their way of trying to be pacifist was they said, we're going to stop 1.00
01:07:58.800 the war effort. So they would bomb trains and do other crazy things like that as a means of
01:08:04.760 stopping the war. This train is being used for war. We're going to blow it up. 0.71
01:08:09.360 They got arrested. They got imprisoned for their acts of terrorism because that's what it was,
01:08:16.260 regardless of how they believed. And at the same time, the Dukkabors had a practice where 0.96
01:08:21.780 sometimes just to check to see whether their love of possessions was too great, they would 1.00
01:08:27.840 randomly burn down one of their houses and they would strip off their clothes and throw their
01:08:32.180 clothes on the fire. And guess what? Nobody arrested them for that. It's your house. If
01:08:36.620 you want to show that you don't care about your possessions, go nuts, burn your own house down. 1.00
01:08:40.780 I don't care. But at the moment where you go and you step out into society and you try to enforce 0.96
01:08:46.480 your idea upon them, that's where you cross that line. And that comes from a societal standard and
01:08:53.460 not just the government saying, hey, we have the right to tell you what you must believe.
01:08:57.980 sounds pretty libertarian to me i don't know what to say matthew
01:09:02.360 um that said dr rowley what uh what do you have coming up in your life and what can uh how can
01:09:11.060 people follow you if they wanted to uh learn more about your work and uh and your any speaking
01:09:15.560 engagements things like that uh you can find me on twitter at matthew rowley 1987 uh i'm working
01:09:22.620 with a group called renew alberta and we're trying to we're just preparing some videos and some other
01:09:27.440 things to talk through the issue of independence and try and understand more about that. And in
01:09:33.500 general, feel free to reach out and get in touch with me. You can go to milvianstrategies.ca and
01:09:39.220 there's a way to get in touch with me there. And yeah, welcome to talk to anybody. And especially
01:09:45.320 if you have any questions about independence or you're uncomfortable, fear is the enemy and
01:09:51.900 nostalgia is something that perverts or twists our view of the past. So we need to look back at
01:09:58.660 Canada with honest eyes, value the good things, maybe not value the things that have been done
01:10:04.860 to it. And let's see if maybe we can return Alberta to the way Canada used to be.
01:10:11.060 Exceptionally well said. Thank you very much, sir. We really appreciate you taking the time.
01:10:15.060 uh, invaluable insights. And, uh, and we, you know, we approach this episode with a certain
01:10:22.160 perspective. And I think actually, um, we're going to really have to reevaluate some things
01:10:26.520 that we, we sort of took for granted. And, um, and we always appreciate that we're always trying
01:10:30.760 to learn ourselves. Uh, you're, uh, you're obviously a very, um, educated man and, and you
01:10:36.300 have very convincing arguments and stuff that I didn't think I'd be convinced of. So thank you
01:10:40.640 for that. I really appreciate it. Glad to be with you guys. Great to have you on.
01:10:45.060 So.