The Critical Compass Podcast - September 30, 2026


The ONLY Way a Constitution Keeps You Free ｜ Bruce Pardy - Capitalism & Morality 2026

Topics
constitution paradox
CBC Filmed an Empty Room. Independents Got 20 Million Views. ｜ Jason Lavigne How to Beat Regime Media ｜ Derek Fildebrandt, Jason Lavigne, & The Critical Compass

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

102.33

Word count

1,906

Sentence count

82


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00 how do you design a constitution that guarantees the freedom of the people
00:00:15 this is the paradox of the state
00:00:21 you can't be free with it and you cannot be free without it
00:00:32 and if a constitution is going to work
00:00:36 it has to resolve that paradox
00:00:44 this is article two of the constitution of china
00:00:51 Now, what does this tell us?
00:00:58 It tells us that it does not matter what the document says.
00:01:09 This is section two of our charter.
00:01:17 Now, maybe not to quite the same extent,
00:01:21 But this also tells us that it does not matter what the document says.
00:01:36 This is from the Constitution Act 1867.
00:01:42 It gives the federal government the mandate to pass laws for the peace, order, and good government of Canada.
00:01:58 Now, what is the problem?
00:02:02 The problem is that this is the premise of our model of Constitution.
00:02:11 Here's the premise. The federal government and the province together has this mandate, which is to pass laws for the general good.
00:02:27 And what is the effect of that mandate?
00:02:30 That mandate means that the province and the federal government together have unlimited jurisdiction over everything, everything, which is why we tried to do this.
00:02:50 You give unlimited jurisdiction to the government, the state, the legislature, and then you try to restrict them, and it hasn't worked.
00:03:04 Now, here is the favorite passage from the American Declaration of Independence, the favorite passage of classical liberals and libertarians and anarchists.
00:03:18 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.
00:03:33 It's a beautiful philosophical position.
00:03:38 But in fact, and in law, it is wrong.
00:03:46 Completely wrong.
00:03:48 Here's why.
00:03:52 There's the right.
00:03:53 They wrote it down.
00:03:54 They decided to grant one of those rights that are apparently unalienable.
00:04:01 And then what happened?
00:04:03 The court alienated it.
00:04:08 The reason for writing it down in the first place was that the federal government and the province could alienate
00:04:18 that right in their legislation. Rights legally are not unalienable. If they are not granted,
00:04:29 they do not exist because the state has full authority to do as it thinks best in the common
00:04:41 good that means rolling over your individual rights if they ever existed so i agree with
00:04:52 the philosophical position this is the way we ought to think about it but this saying so over
00:05:00 and over again does nothing to change the actual constitutional legal situation
00:05:08 and here's what you get before you put in rights here's what you get this is a statement just for
00:05:16 example from the ontario high court back in 1908 the legislature within its jurisdiction meaning
00:05:24 is it federal or provincial but the legislature can do everything that is not naturally impossible
00:05:34 and is restrained by no rule, human or divine.
00:05:41 If the plaintiff had rights, the legislature had the power to take them away.
00:05:51 The rights are alienable.
00:05:54 So let me ask you a question.
00:05:57 When are you free?
00:06:01 What does that mean?
00:06:02 my answer would be this you are free when you are not subject to the force of other people
00:06:14 that means you are not being coerced you are not subject to their violence
00:06:20 and when i say other people i mean all the other people your neighbors and the people who work
00:06:29 for the state. And if you are subject to their force, of course, that means you are not free.
00:06:40 Which leads us to the paradox of the state that I started off with.
00:06:46 The state exists to protect liberty, to protect you from the violence of your fellow men.
00:06:53 And yet, it becomes liberty's biggest threat.
00:06:59 you can't be free with it and you can't be free without it now i hope it's obvious in this room
00:07:11 why the first is the case you can see it everywhere in all areas of life today the
00:07:18 role of the state has become overbearing overwhelming and intrusive but let's just
00:07:26 talk about the second one for a moment. Why can't you be free without it? With all due respect to
00:07:35 the anarcho-capitalists in the room, anarchy means that you are potentially subject to the
00:07:46 violence of other people. Now, you can contract and cooperate, but remember this. Remember what
00:07:54 anarchy means anarchy means there are no laws are no laws there is no one with the authority
00:08:07 to enforce anything other than in your little private arrangements and here are all and this
00:08:14 is just a very short list of a very long list here are all the variations of anarchy anarchy thinking
00:08:22 There are anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-communists and green anarchists and anarcho-feminists
00:08:31 and Christian anarchists and anarcho-pacifists and many more.
00:08:37 And they're all forgetting something. You don't get to choose what happens in your anarchy.
00:08:46 anarchy is anarchy there are no rules there are no premises there is no
00:08:55 property unless you figure out how to do it and there is nothing nothing that all
00:09:04 members of any society agree about you cannot proceed with this project with
00:09:12 expectation that we'll all understand what's going on and we agree about the objectives that's not
00:09:19 the way it works that's why you need a state and why you need a constitution that resolves its
00:09:27 paradox here are seven ways to try to write a constitution that will fail
00:09:37 Fail to resolve the paradox of the state.
00:09:45 You can exhort people and leaders to honor the Constitution, to honor your rights, to
00:09:52 accept and recognize your freedom of speech and so on.
00:09:57 That's a waste of time.
00:10:00 If your constitution depends upon the honor of the people with power, your constitution
00:10:11 does not work.
00:10:15 If you could do that, why have a constitution at all?
00:10:19 You could just rely upon the honor of the people who rule over you.
00:10:24 You can try to elect different people who might honor the constitution.
00:10:28 know we all know that's a waste of time you can put in more rights this happened during and after
00:10:35 covid our experience during during covid was what happened our rights didn't work
00:10:45 oh well let's put in some more then there's no reason why those additional rights will
00:10:51 work any better than the ones that are already written down rights don't work the way we think
00:10:58 they are alienable put in more checks and balances put in more exhortations and sentiments write
00:11:07 down what you want in the document go back to the document of china the constitution of china
00:11:12 it doesn't matter what the document says if the people in power can figure out a way around
00:11:21 you can try and improve the wording sure that would help but it's not a panacea it's not a
00:11:30 solution it's not because of the wording that we run into trouble
00:11:36 or you can have citizen referendums like in switzerland let's put all the questions to the
00:11:45 people instead of having people ruling over us the people should decide just like article two
00:11:51 of the constitution of china the power should belong to the people well okay except watch out
00:11:59 what you've done because you have now subjected your freedom to the mob if you have a referendum
00:12:11 on every major policy question just imagine what will happen during covet for example if you had
00:12:19 this system in place, you subject to the people the question, should everybody in the country
00:12:26 be required to get a vaccine? If 60% of the people say yes, the law now is you will get a vaccine
00:12:39 or you will go to prison. There are no rights. You can't go off to a court to object. That's
00:12:48 the system that you've adopted democracy and freedom are two completely different things
00:12:59 so what do we do how do you resolve the paradox of the state in a constitution
00:13:08 so that you get a constitution that guarantees the freedom of the people
00:13:14 that no government can dishonor even if it wants to.
00:13:21 How do you do that?
00:13:24 I'm going to just mention very briefly four features,
00:13:28 and I've suggested a whole number of them.
00:13:32 I won't go through all of them.
00:13:33 These are just the first four, maybe the most important four,
00:13:36 but we'll leave that question up in the air.
00:13:40 Here's four features of a constitution that might resolve the paradox of the state.
00:13:51 To protect your freedom, but not to threaten it.
00:13:56 Number one, if freedom means that you are not subject to the force of other people,
00:14:04 then that's the first rule.
00:14:06 no one can use force against other people including the state now how you enforce the
00:14:14 rule well for any law is must be enforced with the force of the state so that's a rule that
00:14:22 the state can enforce and that's all that's the first one second one you flip the default
00:14:32 But that default that I mentioned, the premise that the state has the mandate to do everything in the public good, you've flipped that default.
00:14:43 The state has the power to do nothing except.
00:14:51 Except what?
00:14:53 The original default says the power to do everything except rights.
00:14:58 This one says the power to do nothing except, what are the exceptions?
00:15:04 Well, very short list.
00:15:07 I would suggest keep the peace, enforce the rule against force, resolve disputes in courts,
00:15:14 protect the country, have a military, have borders, and very little else.
00:15:21 number three it's all very well to have these rules written down but they can be ignored
00:15:28 we saw that unless you also manage to avoid having a ruling class a professional ruling class
00:15:39 what's the best way to avoid the tyranny of a professional ruling class not to have one
00:15:46 So we set things up so that people are serving the state minimally, briefly, and then they get out.
00:15:55 Maximum lifetime service for public servants.
00:15:59 Pick a number.
00:16:00 I've picked eight years.
00:16:01 You can only serve the state in any capacity cumulatively.
00:16:06 Politician, judge, ambassador, bureaucrat, receptionist, consultant, supplier.
00:16:13 Eight years total.
00:16:14 get in do the job get out there are no empires there is no deep state there are no powerful
00:16:21 people there is nobody to lobby and finally this is going to sound counterintuitive
00:16:28 because precedent after all is a feature of our common law system supposed to provide us
00:16:35 with certainty predictability the equal application of the law but we have precedent now
00:16:43 and we don't have any of those things and instead what we have is a star chamber supreme court
00:16:52 of canada who takes the power of precedent takes the constitution and dictates to the country
00:16:59 what they want the constitution to mean you have to disempower the highest courts
00:17:09 from having the power to dictate what the words of the Constitution mean.
00:17:15 You take precedent away.
00:17:18 And if you do that, every court in every case
00:17:21 goes back to the words of the Constitution themselves.
00:17:26 Now, there's no guarantee that that judge will interpret those words
00:17:30 in the way that you want.
00:17:33 But it least means that the words are interpreted afresh
00:17:37 every single time and no small cabal of judges who are appointed to 75 get to dictate the
00:17:46 constitutional meaning of a country so that's just a taste those are the first four bits
00:17:51 the project is to try to figure out how to resolve this problem and i think there is
00:17:59 a way to do it thank you
00:18:07 Transcription by CastingWords