The Critical Compass Podcast - UK Riots： Justified Response to Crime or Far-Right Extremism？｜ A Critical Compass Discussion

00:00:00.000 In the greater context, the more gaslighting there is, the more there's going to be a pushback from people to act or step up or act violently.

00:00:12.820 So right now in the UK, you have, well, guns are banned.

00:00:18.840 So all the violence is stabbings and the rates have gone up.

00:00:23.180 You even have, in these cases, the gaslighting comes from the politicians and or the media saying that, well, us opening the floodgates and having people who do not share our values is not a problem.

00:00:37.880 And what you're seeing with your own eyes is not happening.

00:00:40.620 And the more that kind of top-down gaslighting that, this narrative is going to cause people to act with more hate than if you just had a honest and open conversation about this.

00:00:54.440 The more it's left untreated and the more it's suppressed, it's going to happen.

00:01:04.100 You will always get a push-pull with these kind of things.

00:01:07.980 You cannot have this amount of pressure build up without some kind of a release.

00:01:12.140 And either that release is through constructive dialogue or it's through action and violence.

00:01:17.480 Hello and welcome back to The Critical Compass.

00:01:38.240 Thanks for joining us today.

00:01:39.500 Today we have, we're going to focus on a couple things today, but primarily on kind of what's happening in the UK right now as far as what some are labeling as a response to migrant crime of various types.

00:01:59.240 Well, when then what others are viewing as yet another uprising of, you know, far right, white extremism, you know, nice, lightweight stuff like that today, James.

00:02:10.500 Hey, what do you think?

00:02:12.360 Yeah, the UK riots are going on right now and there's no shortage of opinions on that.

00:02:17.440 Maybe you summed it up correctly of, well, you have people roaming the street with weapons and then you have the gaslighting of the news and politicians saying that, well, it's these far right extremists that are inciting this violence.

00:02:35.520 And they're not calling out the people pretty much like, if you're walking around with a knife, that should be like actionable for the police to actually go after those with the weapons.

00:02:49.280 And right now we're almost seeing speech is treated more harshly when it comes to policing than weapons or violence.

00:02:59.260 And this is very much tied to depending on what boxes you check off, depending on what shade your skin color is in UK right now.

00:03:09.660 It seems like there are preferential treatment given to some groups and others not so much.

00:03:17.280 Well, I think that what we're seeing is a response that to my eyes and maybe to my, you could say to my conspiratorial bent is sort of reminiscent of how I can't speak too much to the January 6th riots in the US.

00:03:41.220 I can speak more to what we both know about the Freedom Convoy in Canada.

00:03:46.260 This feels to me sort of at a fundamental level in a similar sort of way of you've got a coordinated response from a mainstream media or a kind of a journalistic talking point that everything you see happening in the streets right now is solely because of there are white racists in the UK.

00:04:13.460 And they are unhappy sharing their land with immigrants. 1.00

00:04:19.100 That's what the message is.

00:04:21.620 What I've got some examples of, I think we can probably get into this later, is some, it's sort of an interesting look into the history of what some of these judges who are laying down these really hefty sentences on these armchair rioters is the term actually. 0.61

00:04:42.340 I should find, I should find, I should find that link, I will put it in the description.

00:04:46.020 But yeah, as far as I know, and maybe you can kind of lay a little bit more of the background on this, but what really kicked this off, I believe, is what was effectively a triple homicide stabbing of some children at a, I think it was like a Taylor Swift, like, I don't know if it was a dance class or a singing class.

00:05:12.420 Something like that, something like that, it was like a Taylor Swift-themed party or whatever.

00:05:15.760 And this person isn't a, the person who did that wasn't an immigrant.

00:05:21.100 He was the, he is the child of immigrants.

00:05:25.000 But that, I think, was sort of the, what a lot of people who started this protest really viewed as kind of the last straw.

00:05:36.560 Do I kind of have the background close?

00:05:38.880 The, I think in that particular circumstance, you're more familiar with that part of it, but I've been following a lot of the kind of one-off, there's been like no shortage of stabbings and or attacks.

00:05:56.940 There's the, the notable example of like, well, there is a migrant going around stabbing the police.

00:06:07.440 In that situation, they were holding back the person trying to stop the migrant from stabbing.

00:06:14.660 And one of the police officers got stabbed in the neck.

00:06:16.980 You have that instant, you have no shortage of other violent events, which seem to be exasperated when you have a large influx of people who may, may not share the same values as the country that they're immigrating into. 1.00

00:06:34.120 In this case, UK, it's been, these numbers have been shifting quite a bit.

00:06:38.340 So, um, I, I think it can be a combination of events and then you obviously have one event that like, well, it just overspills at that point.

00:06:49.160 It's just too much for people to ignore.

00:06:53.420 Yeah, this is the, this is that, uh, article I was referring to here.

00:06:58.000 Uh, first armchair rioter jailed for 20 months over online post inciting, quote, inciting racial hatred in the UK.

00:07:05.200 Uh, yeah, so, um, comes the first person we jailed, uh, through following three, yeah, it was a, you know, okay, a Taylor Swift dance party in Southport.

00:07:15.200 So, yeah, this, this term, uh, has been being, uh, repeated online, uh, which is absolutely incredible to me that this is a, that we're, this is a real thing and we're not living in fake dystopia land.

00:07:31.020 But what are you, what are, what are you, what do you think of, what comes to your mind when you read a term like this and you see somebody getting jailed for almost two years, uh, for, for posts that he made online?

00:07:43.500 Well, that is not a, this feels like something that would happen in Russia, um, you know, that would be cracking down on like social media posts.

00:07:55.960 And from my understanding right now, the UK is, I think, leading in number of arrests for online discourse out of any other country they have the most.

00:08:08.220 And we still, and we still, somehow we still label the UK as a free democracy.

00:08:16.200 And if people can't speak their mind freely, is that still a democracy?

00:08:22.520 Uh, cause who defines what inciting racial hatred is?

00:08:27.700 Who defines what hate speech is?

00:08:30.380 Who defines, well, uh, we've seen it in other contexts of like, well, you.

00:08:38.220 A dead naming is now, is that inciting hatred?

00:08:41.900 That's hate speech because somebody's feelings is getting hurt at the end of it.

00:08:47.260 So who, who defines that?

00:08:50.900 And if something is ill-defined, it's going to be abused by whoever has a certain ideology or a certain idea behind it.

00:08:58.500 So.

00:08:58.780 Well, I'll tell you who, who, who defines that, James, and you're not going to like it because you're, uh, I fear that you're in violation.

00:09:12.600 Did I just violate it or are you talking about other podcasts?

00:09:15.700 Because.

00:09:15.940 You didn't think before you posted, James.

00:09:21.220 And so the UK gov is going to, uh, apparently I should find the post and I should put it beside it, but they're apparently going to try and extradite, uh, Americans who, uh, who either, I don't know if it's just, if they've talked about it and make fun of it or if they, uh, uh, I suppose contribute in some way to the, uh, incitement of, uh, of racial hatred.

00:09:44.300 So, yeah, this is a pretty, uh, this is a pretty clear, to me, it's a pretty clear example of these are the people exactly who define what is and what isn't hateful.

00:09:58.020 Well, they take it very seriously according to, well, wait, wait, I'm just, I'm just reading this more closely.

00:10:06.740 It, CPS takes online violence seriously.

00:10:11.660 So that, that's the.

00:10:13.080 Yeah, let's click on this.

00:10:13.760 Let's see.

00:10:14.300 You can be prosecuted for posting material online, which incites violence or hatred.

00:10:21.180 You can also be prosecuted for sharing this material.

00:10:25.640 Oh.

00:10:27.620 Sharing this material that they.

00:10:29.760 A repost.

00:10:31.840 A repost, that's right.

00:10:33.280 Yeah, this, this term, this, uh, online violence, this is a very interesting term and it's.

00:10:39.660 It's not something that, uh, it's not something that, to me, like, I don't think that we've agreed that this is even a thing.

00:10:47.360 Like, I don't think that we've, I don't know.

00:10:50.520 I mean, I, I suppose that, you know, the UK is, is not Canada or the US, specifically the US with their speech protections.

00:10:56.140 But this notion that words can be violence or that you can, like, so the, the reason that, that, that guy got 20 months was because some of his posts were, they said, were interpreted as encouraging people to, uh, I believe, uh, like set a hotel on fire or something that was housing, uh, migrants.

00:11:20.640 Now, I understand that in, there are certain provisions in, in free speech laws in, in many Western countries that don't have carve-outs for speech that incites violence.

00:11:34.560 But can you say that you, I suppose that when I hear something like that, I think more of it in the way of, like, if you're in a group of people physically somewhere, physically present somewhere,

00:11:48.060 and you've got, you know, a Molotov cocktail in your hand, or your buddy does, and you, and you whip your buddy up into a fervor and get him to throw it, and then that causes some, some damage. 0.96

00:11:59.880 Obviously, that's a, that's an incitement that, you know, you, you helped encourage your, your buddy to do something stupid like that.

00:12:06.080 However, when you're, when it's separated by a screen, or like a phone, or a computer, and who knows how many, you know, tens, or dozens, or, or hundreds of miles,

00:12:17.940 can you really say that you have the same ability, the same ability to affect somebody's actions via online violence?

00:12:26.600 What are your thoughts on that?

00:12:28.840 Um, I would say-

00:12:30.060 Am I making a distinction without a difference here?

00:12:31.460 Um, I think there might be, like, uh, another gradient to this, is like, if somebody had a group, and let's say, well, let's even look at Antifa,

00:12:43.880 they are organizing to disrupt, and actually, their online behavior transcends into a actionable, like, on-the-street violence,

00:12:55.360 because they are going in, they are disrupting, and many of them, um, there's been no shortage of attacks.

00:13:02.360 To people who had, uh, they were not deserving of the attacks from Antifa, and that was online discourse, but that was, you, in those cases, that is a organized group, and they're planning something.

00:13:16.900 So I think you'd have to make an exception there, versus somebody shouting into a megaphone, and, again, you can't really distinguish between, like, a serious call to action,

00:13:30.700 somebody just venting, or somebody being sarcastic, or satire.

00:13:36.940 Like, how do you differentiate between the tone?

00:13:39.340 Because if, unless you make a note of sarcasm, people-

00:13:43.600 I even did this today, when I jokingly said, somebody made a post about spinach, saying spinach was, uh, bad for you, and I jokingly supported that, by telling people that, well, we evolved eating spinach, and we have proof of it, because, um, we have cave paintings of our ancestors defending their spinach crops against bully mammoths.

00:14:08.000 And some people believed it, because I didn't put, like, I didn't say it was sarcastic.

00:14:13.380 And it's, so you, it's getting very difficult to discern between serious posts and sarcastic posts, or an actual call to violence.

00:14:25.300 And we also can't be responsible for, like, there are people who are mentally ill, and will take something sarcastic, and they'll interpret it in different ways.

00:14:38.360 So, how much responsibility do we have for every single interpretation of something that we may or may not say?

00:14:44.680 Yeah, yeah, that's a big one, I think, because it's, it comes down to a, uh, I think it really depends on how you view personal agency.

00:14:53.940 If you believe that you, if you believe, like, if you fundamentally believe that people are, uh, in control of their own actions, uh, and are responsible for their, for their own actions, can you ever, can you ever truly be said to have been influenced by somebody just saying something online?

00:15:14.140 Like, is there, is there ever really that exact one-to-one correlation of, well, this guy said on, on his Twitter feed that I should go, you know, harm some immigrants, and so I went and harmed some immigrants.

00:15:29.660 So, not only am I getting disciplined for it, but the guy who posted that and influenced me is getting disciplined for it too.

00:15:37.000 Well, I don't know, I don't know about that second step, because I feel like, I feel like if you're gonna do something, like, if you're gonna firebomb a hotel, I feel like that was already in you.

00:15:48.400 Like, you were already gonna do that.

00:15:50.360 You didn't need any, you didn't really need that final push.

00:15:52.980 That is something that you were capable of doing.

00:15:54.880 Well, there, there's another aspect to it is, um, I think the more in this, in the greater context, the more gaslighting there is, the more there's gonna be a pushback from people, um, to act or step up or act violently.

00:16:15.600 So, right now in the UK, you have, well, guns are banned, so all the violence is stabbings, and the rates have gone up.

00:16:26.540 You even have, um, somewhere like Sweden, which is, for their numbers of rape right now, they are one of the higher countries, um, I think per capita, and they've seen a demographic shift.

00:16:43.060 So, it is not, like, Swede, like, natural-born Swedes doing, doing that as people who do not.

00:16:52.280 Yeah, we have, and we have the, the, the data for that.

00:16:54.600 I believe, actually, you shared that with me the other day, so we can, we can link to that.

00:16:58.080 Yeah.

00:16:58.680 So, in these cases, the gaslighting comes from the politicians and, or the, like, the media saying that, well, us opening the floodgates and having people who do not share our values is not a problem.

00:17:13.060 And what you're seeing with your own eyes is not happening.

00:17:16.400 And the more that kind of top-down gaslighting, that distorted messaging, that this narrative, as long as it's perpetrated, this narrative is going to cause people to act with more hate than if you just had a honest and open conversation about this.

00:17:35.580 Yeah.

00:17:36.200 The more it goes, the more it's left untreated, and the more it's suppressed, it's, it's going to happen.

00:17:45.020 Um, the, these, you, you will always get a push-pull with these kind of things.

00:17:50.980 You cannot have this amount of pressure build up without some kind of a release.

00:17:54.860 Mm-hmm.

00:17:55.840 And either that release is through constructive dialogue or it's through action and violence.

00:18:00.900 Yeah, and you have a, um, you also have an institutional problem, uh, in the, in the justice systems in these countries where it feels like there, you have a two-tiered system where, uh, the people who are committing these crimes that prior to there being this floodgate opened, as you put it, uh, aren't being punished in the same ways that those crimes were being punished prior.

00:18:29.780 I don't have examples offhand, um, but anyone can look and see these.

00:18:36.260 There's plenty of examples that were posted, you know, on, on Twitter lately about, you know, however you want to, you know, give an example.

00:18:45.500 And there's a, there's a, there's a case of it, you know, like I, I, off the top of my head, I recall like a 17-year-old, uh, um, I think it was a Pakistani immigrant who wasn't, didn't really receive any sentence for,

00:18:59.780 raping a 12-year-old because, as this kid put it, he just didn't know that that was rape.

00:19:05.900 So, like, there's, you, you can, you can see these scenarios if, if anyone else did them.

00:19:14.320 If, if anyone else did these actions, behaved in this way, they would be punished much differently.

00:19:21.120 And, like you say, I think people see enough examples of this or read enough examples of it in the news and, and they, they build up a, uh, a model in their mind of, well, no, this isn't being taken seriously.

00:19:35.800 And if I don't do something about it, I, I can't, I can't trust my institutions to do anything about it.

00:19:42.340 So what is there left to do other than vigilante, a vigilante response?

00:19:48.500 Yeah.

00:19:49.200 And that's not just the UK.

00:19:51.200 We're seeing that in the United States.

00:19:52.980 Um, you can directly see, uh, areas will, like you have, uh, very democratic run cities that have the highest number of repeat effects.

00:20:05.800 And that's directly tied to like a catch and release system.

00:20:10.540 You have this also in Canada and very much this happens more in the cities where, again, maybe these are drug related crimes or these are fueled by drug.

00:20:22.680 And then somebody is breaking in.

00:20:24.000 And somebody is, they are on the streets causing problems and they're well known to the police and because of judges and the framework that they have, they're not really, they're not doing anything.

00:20:39.860 And I think people are noticing as well.

00:20:41.840 And it just adds up to just more chaos and less safety for the average person.

00:20:49.220 Um, obviously if these people are reoffending, there's no deterrence.

00:20:53.660 Um, so the UK, I think is just a few years ahead of Canada.

00:21:01.200 Uh, if these same patterns would continue.

00:21:06.420 Yeah.

00:21:07.040 Yeah.

00:21:07.380 And, uh, and we, and, and speaking of, of this kind of legal, but what could be, you know, legal capture, it could be viewed as I'm going to share this thread here and we don't have to go through all the points, but this is a very worrying thing that, so this, um, Pagliacci the hated, um, this, um, this person actually, her name's Anna Slats.

00:21:28.300 Uh, she's the, uh, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Redux Mag.

00:21:33.640 Uh, it's a journalistic, uh, it's an online publication, uh, just reading from their site with a focus on covering crime, child predators, and women's rights.

00:21:42.100 Uh, Anna's from Canada. 1.00

00:21:44.900 And, uh, she posted this thread that she compiled of, uh, so I'm just going to read it here.

00:21:51.040 Almost every judge I've identified as being involved in the rapid prosecution and incarceration of individuals who participated in the Southport riots has a history of letting convicted pedophiles walk free with no jail time.

00:22:03.680 So here's a short thread on two-tier justice.

00:22:06.860 Um, so, and I think it's important that we do name these people.

00:22:10.820 Uh, Judge Andrew Menary, Menary sentenced William Nelson Morgan, 69, to 32 months in prison for refusing to move out of the way of police officers.

00:22:21.040 Um, Menary previously led a pedophile who collected, I don't even know if I should just say these words, but we can just read them.

00:22:28.720 Uh, let him walk with no jail time because his lawyer said he had good character.

00:22:36.400 Yeah.

00:22:37.120 Um, the, well, so, wait, wait, 32 months, that's almost three years.

00:22:41.760 Yeah.

00:22:42.600 For, ah.

00:22:45.600 For refusing to move out of the way of police officers.

00:22:48.880 Yeah.

00:22:49.280 Um, here's Judge John Temporley sentenced Billy Thompson, 31, to 12 weeks in prison for emojis which incited racial violence.

00:23:01.920 Temporley previously led a pedophile who had been stashing child abuse images walk free because he had displayed remorse.

00:23:08.920 Interesting.

00:23:10.680 Do you think that that person, James, displayed more remorse, maybe, than the, uh, person who used emojis to incite racial violence?

00:23:17.560 Who do you think, who do you think's remorse is more, should be more valuable?

00:23:22.880 That's, that's rhetorical, of course.

00:23:24.880 Judge Francis Laird sends Charlie Bullock, 21, to 18 months in prison for throwing rocks at a line of police.

00:23:30.880 That, so, just go back here, 32 months in prison for refusing to move out of the way of police officers, and 18 months for throwing rocks at a line of police.

00:23:41.720 This seems like.

00:23:42.080 So you are, are better at, better to throw rocks at police than you are to move out of the way.

00:23:46.760 You may as well, if you're going to, just give her.

00:23:49.100 Actually, no, no, I know what happened.

00:23:51.080 He was standing off the side when he threw the rocks.

00:23:53.660 If he was standing in front of the police, that'd be an extra two years.

00:23:56.320 Yes, right.

00:23:57.500 That's right.

00:23:58.700 Yeah, I'm not going to read this out loud either, but we can see this highlighted portion.

00:24:05.480 No jail time.

00:24:08.180 No jail time.

00:24:09.620 Yeah, no jail time.

00:24:10.300 So.

00:24:10.840 For showing remorse.

00:24:12.980 Like, and these aren't just a couple isolated.

00:24:15.720 This is, this is a long list.

00:24:18.740 This is, this is a, this is a pattern.

00:24:21.520 So here's another one.

00:24:22.720 Judge Paul Sloan.

00:24:23.680 Sentenced Leanne Hodge in 43 to two and a half years for shouting racist abuse at a police officer.

00:24:31.180 So Sloan had previously let a pedophile caught with 10,000 images of schoolgirls walk free because he hadn't looked at the images frequently enough.

00:24:44.980 Judge Neil Rafferty denied bail to even those arrested with viewing the remote remote, the riots remotely.

00:24:51.060 Yeah, this is, this is another disgusting one.

00:25:00.240 Judge Mark Bury.

00:25:01.840 I mean, I don't know.

00:25:03.080 This is, there's just so many examples of these.

00:25:07.700 Just absolutely morally reprehensible actions that are not being punished.

00:25:12.740 This is, this is specifically more on the, like, on the sexual abuse side where you can find, you can, yeah, because this is what Redux focuses, focuses on.

00:25:24.320 You can find some people have made similar lists.

00:25:28.140 And if we find it, we'll add it to the show notes of, like, well, here's somebody who only got six months for stabbing, who stabbed somebody else, got six months.

00:25:39.760 And here's a longer term sentence for something for inciting violence or some hate speech.

00:25:46.100 So what we're seeing is, this is the inversion of this.

00:25:56.080 I don't think the, like, you don't accidentally get to this.

00:26:01.000 This is an inversion of what should happen in reality.

00:26:03.820 And I think no, no rational human looking at this just from a purely, purely, like, without any ideology, just from a purely moral sense, I don't think you would, you would reevaluate the moral weightings of these actions.

00:26:22.920 The only reason you're getting this is because of ideological beliefs that reframe the whole moral landscape, and it's distorted the whole moral landscape, and that's through this DEI lens.

00:26:40.640 Yeah, you have a, and you see it in Canada, too, just to bring it back home here, where, when you mentioned the catch and release policies that Canada has, well known for having, it, and I think this is actually explicit in the wording.

00:27:00.660 I'd have to find an example of it, but I do believe that they actually do word it in the way of, basically, the crimes that people from marginalized communities commit must be weighted differently than crimes of other communities.

00:27:18.660 You know, members of non-marginalized, which only means white in the Western world, right? 0.82

00:27:23.340 But, um, the, the crimes of marginalized, people from marginalized groups must be treated differently, because, I guess the implication is that they couldn't help themselves, like, they just, you know, they were, they weren't given a fair shake, and so they're, um, you know, they, they didn't know what they were doing, or they didn't, um, you know, they, they, they couldn't, couldn't have helped it, because, whatever reason.

00:27:51.760 Like, to me, that's such a, it's a very patronizing, very, uh, very infantilizing way of viewing human beings, because, because I don't, I don't believe that that's actually the case.

00:28:03.020 I, I, I, I can see, I can see an argument for why, you know, somebody who maybe always lived in poverty, uh, you know, behaves in a way psychologically that, uh, you know, maybe they, they can, they steal, you know, because they never had anything.

00:28:19.980 So, the only way they could ever get anything was, like, I understand that, but if you're a person who has a, as a criminal history of, uh, you know, of abuse, or, or, you know, very serious, you know, acts of violence, things like this, that, to me, that shouldn't matter, because the actions are happening anyway.

00:28:38.920 It, I don't, I don't think the next victim of this person particularly cares about that person's backstory if they, if they could have been, if it could have been prevented.

00:28:47.600 Exactly. Yeah. The, uh, there is something to be said about echoes of trauma or echoes of abuse through generations, through families, that, that is something that, like, you, by the same way you can say, like, oh, that person had really good parents, and some of the values came through because of that.

00:29:08.440 Yeah. Yeah, that good parenting, and the reverse, and the inverse is true as well.

00:29:13.260 They've used language to distort this, and it actually changes how we view people.

00:29:20.540 Um, so marginalized, that means that somebody else did that to them.

00:29:28.220 It takes away personal agency from the individuals.

00:29:32.340 It's saying, well, the system created you this way, and you don't have free will, and any hardship, or any difference in outcome, is the system's fault, and not your fault.

00:29:43.660 Yeah.

00:29:44.660 And it, it, it, with that kind of wording, or if you're saying, well, Canada's a racist country, and all the cards are stacked against you, like, that's a pretty hopeless situation.

00:29:54.840 Like, that, it doesn't empower individuals.

00:29:57.900 What it does is it powers, empowers a state to find solutions for them.

00:30:02.700 Same thing with homelessness, somebody's not a homeless person anymore, they are unhoused, because somebody unhoused them.

00:30:13.160 Or experiencing homelessness.

00:30:14.300 Yeah, they're experiencing homelessness, or somebody unhoused them.

00:30:17.660 And again, that takes away from personal, any sense of personal responsibility, or the hope of invoking change by yourself, without a large government to set the framework for you to change your life.

00:30:35.760 Yeah, if, uh, that's exactly right.

00:30:38.080 If somebody has, if somebody, if an institution, or a history of institutions have placed you in the margins, then, then by that framework, only they can remove you from those margins.

00:30:53.060 Yeah, it's a very, um, I was having this kind of an unrelated discussion, actually, with some family members the other day about, um, why the American Constitution is such a unique one in the world.

00:31:08.080 And, and, and, the, the, the term, and I can't remember, this isn't my idea, I can't remember who I heard it from.

00:31:14.240 They were talking about the, like, why the word inalienable, another big one, is so important in that, in that language in the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, I, I don't know.

00:31:26.780 But the, the term, the, the, uh, the notion of inalienable rights, which means, inalienable means even you can't deny yourself those rights.

00:31:35.800 Because, because they're instilled by God.

00:31:39.000 So, not even you can deny your own humanity.

00:31:41.460 And that's a very, or, or your, or the, the natural human rights that you were born with endowed by God.

00:31:48.540 Like, that's, that's a, those are very powerful words that not a lot of people view themselves as having.

00:31:55.060 A lot of people view the rights they have in their society as being, uh, bestowed upon them by a state, or by a government, or by some, some institution.

00:32:05.960 And if you view it like that, well then, they can also take those away from you.

00:32:10.420 So, there needs to be a recognition, I think, kind of across the Western world now, that there are certainly, like, it's not, it's not racist, or, or xenophobic, or, uh, like, it's none of these words to believe that you have the right to live in a peaceful and harmonious way.

00:32:32.340 Like, those, that is something that you should view as something that, simply by you existing on this planet, you are owed.

00:32:40.020 And, and not by a government, but by just the fact that you're here.

00:32:44.640 So, maybe this is a little bit too philosophical, but.

00:32:49.020 You have any thoughts on that?

00:32:50.940 I, I think, I think that's a perfect point to, to reinforce.

00:32:54.660 And I think you see that a little bit, um, it, it overlaps into this debate on immigration.

00:33:04.360 Um, I can't remember where I first heard this, but somebody was proposing that there's, there's almost a country, its culture, and its values are not just, it's not just the individuals living right now in the present.

00:33:24.660 It also reflects the future and the past.

00:33:27.980 So, it's everybody who lived and it was all their blood, sweat, and tears that went into creating the framework, creating the system that we have, creating the culture, and creating things that work.

00:33:41.260 And then, right now, we're living that, and we're all, obviously, we're handing it off to the future generation, to our children.

00:33:46.920 And that unfolds as well.

00:33:49.320 And we almost have this responsibility to honor the sacrifices and the way that things are set up to even get us to this point.

00:33:58.840 And, and I think there's a lot that, first of all, we, we have a lot of revisionist kind of policies of, well, we named a road after somebody and we think they're a bad person now.

00:34:10.980 And we retroactively deem them a bad person.

00:34:15.240 And by all their accounts, they were a, they were somebody who built the community.

00:34:20.480 They were an upstanding citizen and they are deemed a racist by somebody's definition now.

00:34:26.700 By our modern definition.

00:34:28.660 By our modern definitions, outside of the context of when they lived and what they were doing outside of that.

00:34:35.260 We, instead of talking about it and saying, well, this is where we are at now, we are renaming things and trying to bury history.

00:34:45.220 And we are, we almost treat history as, well, if you have this idea of like, well, Canada is a systemically racist place, then of course you would want to pretty much dismantle all of history.

00:35:03.080 You'd want to rewrite it and dismantle the system that is actively racist.

00:35:06.500 So this motivates people to both kind of attack any, and it's, it's not straight white males.

00:35:16.600 It's, they're kind of the crux, but it is any Western values that got us to this point.

00:35:23.140 And a lot of them would be hardworking white males or Christians or that are maybe at the, they're attacked more, they're more at the tip of the spear of these attacks of this dismantling, but it's not just them.

00:35:38.500 It's more, it is Western values that are being dismantled.

00:35:42.260 And then as they're being dismantled, well, there's this idea of this global citizen.

00:35:48.020 Well, what does it mean to be a global citizen?

00:35:50.340 And with that, they're trying to have these open borders that, well, your country doesn't belong to you anymore.

00:35:55.620 You have no right to it.

00:35:57.720 And with the dismantling opens the gates to just importing everybody here. 1.00

00:36:04.320 But yeah, we, the North America couldn't handle 3 billion people.

00:36:12.540 Like we couldn't, we couldn't save all the impoverished people in the world all at once.

00:36:17.160 Like we do not have the structure for that.

00:36:19.980 Yeah.

00:36:20.820 Is it our responsibility to open the doors and solve all the problems or are those problems best solved in the countries that like, if, if there's hunger and poverty in countries,

00:36:33.900 do we solve it by having people move away from that or do we create the systems?

00:36:39.280 Do we help empower people in those countries to create the systems to fix the problems?

00:36:44.260 Sounds like you want to spread some freedom there, James.

00:36:46.680 What do you think?

00:36:48.120 The, well, you don't do it top down.

00:36:50.140 You, uh, you give them the tools.

00:36:52.720 Well, this is a, this is another point of you'll, you'll hear people talk about, well, well, in Canada, well, we're getting it's doctors and engineers that are coming over.

00:37:03.500 Like, well, that's partially true, but is that necessarily the best thing as well?

00:37:09.340 Is it the best thing to have the most, is it the best thing to have the most talented people from these countries?

00:37:17.980 These are highly creative, highly skilled people, high functioning individuals that would normally put those skills into increasing the livelihoods of them around, like the people around them in the communities of wherever they're from.

00:37:34.540 If all that talent leaves these places, if there's no incentives, then you are lacking the creative talent and the creative individuals to solve some of these problems in those places.

00:37:46.420 So they are losing some of this capability to solve these problems for themselves.

00:37:51.760 So we are sapping their solution away from them.

00:37:56.720 Yeah.

00:37:57.020 And, and, and it, and it certainly is not like you say, it's not all doctors and lawyers and whoever come here.

00:38:03.060 Well, that, that is a thread.

00:38:05.000 I know that's a, that's a talking point, but even if it was, that's a whole other discussion, but our, uh, Canada's, uh, licensing and, and, uh, certification systems in our institutions is crazy.

00:38:17.460 Like it's, it's, it's one of the worst in the world from what I understand and just a small anecdote.

00:38:22.420 Um, my, uh, my mom used to work, um, in, uh, in oral pathology, which is a, a very, uh, specialized form of dentistry where, you know, an oral pathologist is essentially a doctor and a dentist.

00:38:37.480 Uh, and, and so there are, um, very few offices, uh, in the country for this specialty.

00:38:44.260 Uh, and they had people working in that department as lab techs who were, uh, licensed orthodontics or orthodontists in other countries.

00:38:56.440 So you, you have somebody who was working as an extremely high end specialty, uh, dentist in an, in another, and this is, uh, this person I'm thinking of is from, uh, I think from Venezuela, Colombia or Venezuela.

00:39:11.940 Uh, and, and they could only, this is an orthodontist who is now working as a lab tech in Canada.

00:39:18.700 They came to Canada to work as an orthodontist because that's what they were doing in their modern medical system country.

00:39:25.120 And they couldn't, it took years. 0.72

00:39:27.040 It took, I think, I think it took like six years for this person to recertify everything completely and start working in orthodontics again, which is, it's ridiculous. 0.96

00:39:34.860 Like it's, it's complete nonsense. 0.79

00:39:36.780 You even do the number on that.

00:39:38.380 I'm like, well, there's a certain amount of specialists that every, like the world needs a certain number of, like there's going to be a certain number of health problems and you will have a certain number of specialists.

00:39:49.420 And if some of them are coming to Canada and they're not even using their skills for that specialty, then that's worse than them just staying at home.

00:39:59.180 Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:40:01.840 And, and I want to take it back actually to a point you made about, uh, you know, um, Western countries, specifically North America, Canada, and the U S you know, how, how responsible are we for, for taking these people from across the world?

00:40:15.360 We have people talking out of both sides of their mouth when they say, you know, the, the same people who want you to believe that Canada and the U S are these, you know, irredeemable nations, uh, with histories of slavery and oppression and residential schools and, and just horrifying racism and bigotry.

00:40:37.100 We're that, but also we're the destination of choice for every single country in the world right now, who is experiencing some sort of refugee crisis.

00:40:47.860 So how do we, how do you square that?

00:40:50.340 How do you, how are you such a, uh, uh, a horrible, you know, uh, ethically bankrupt nation?

00:40:58.440 And yet we're so desirable that we need to take in all the millions of people annually who, who would kill to be here.

00:41:05.860 I just, I don't, I don't, I don't think that that worked.

00:41:09.460 Yeah.

00:41:10.020 You, you wouldn't have so many people wanting to come over if the conditions here for them were really that we're like worse than where they came from.

00:41:23.260 Um, it's also, you have to acknowledge implicitly that it's worse where they came from.

00:41:28.600 You have to acknowledge that if there, there is a reason why there are people, uh, dying in, in rafts, crossing the English channel to get to the UK.

00:41:38.060 Like there, there's a reason why they're doing that.

00:41:40.200 So one other point on this is, uh, you have this, this specific idea that, well, racism in North America and Canada and the U S is at its highest.

00:41:51.920 And they think it's just, well, it's a racist country and they distort the numbers and they treat it as a endemic that we need to fix.

00:42:01.480 And what we don't realize is that there is plenty of racism in countries just because somebody has, somebody could be two shades of Brown in the middle East and they have plenty of reason to hate each other. 0.71

00:42:14.820 Same thing in India, they have a caste system. 0.95

00:42:18.040 Yes.

00:42:18.480 There's no shortage of racial hatred for, well, even sometimes it's, it's just tribalism focused on some quality.

00:42:29.560 And sometimes these qualities matter and sometimes they don't, sometimes you can't even define these qualities.

00:42:35.000 A caste system is like, well, the same thing of like, well, you're upper class versus lower class.

00:42:40.060 Your, well, your family bloodline is better than somebody else's.

00:42:44.280 Therefore you should be treated a different way.

00:42:47.020 These things exist in these other countries and we're opening up the gates and to think that these same problems and these same patterns and these same systems and, or racial tensions wouldn't be brought over.

00:43:01.700 They're just, they're not erased when they come here, just because Canada is a welcoming place.

00:43:06.460 Well, if it's just a welcoming place, what you're doing is you're just opening the door for new forms of tribalism to take hold.

00:43:16.880 Because if you impose, let's say if we had immigration, we had strict cultural, if we say like, well, you got to adopt these cultural values and Canada is super strict on it.

00:43:27.800 So maybe you'd be filtering out and you wouldn't have some of the good things from other cultures.

00:43:33.500 Maybe that'd be lost, but you'd also be filtering out some of these like negative effects, this tribalism that'd be brought on.

00:43:41.360 We're already seeing it with like interracial group violence in Canada. 0.77

00:43:46.620 But like there, between protests, between the, there, there's no shortage of it and there'll be no shortage in the future is my, my feeling anyways.

00:43:58.460 Yeah, there, there definitely used to be a, um, a bit of a, I would say more of an emphasis, even in Canada of, um, of we, we really had a strong emphasis, I would say in the, and I can only use my personal experience for this one.

00:44:19.020 Um, cause I'm a first generation Canadian.

00:44:20.660 So when, what my parents told me anyway, that when they, when they were attempting to come, when their families were, were trying to get into Canada, it was a long process.

00:44:30.860 It took a long time, like many years, multiple years.

00:44:33.580 Um, you had to do, you had to, uh, you know, certainly pass a very difficult citizenship exam.

00:44:41.820 You had to know a lot about the country there, there were people at the time they, you know, kind of was a running commentary.

00:44:47.280 They said, you know, that, um, people would think that, uh, a newly, uh, a newly, um, made Canadian citizen often knew more about Canada's history than people who were born here.

00:44:57.960 You know, so it was, it was something that was very highly, um, prized was, was a, was the, the willingness to adopt Canadian values and to, to become a member of this new, like the, the recognition that the reason why you tried so hard to get here is because you know that you're going to have

00:45:17.260 better life here than from where you came.

00:45:19.720 So there was, there was a bit of a, um, there was more, I guess it's hard to ascribe these emotions to people you don't know, but it, it feels like there was maybe a little bit more gratitude from, from the people who were coming, but, you know, in the sixties and seventies and kind of the, that first sort of major, you know, wave of immigration to Canada than there is now.

00:45:42.080 Well, it was, it almost sounds like you're describing the process was more difficult.

00:45:46.260 It took more work on the individuals and there was a sense of accomplishment for learning and passing the test and getting through that.

00:45:55.160 And even I like have some friends who recently immigrated who are upset at how easy it's getting for people to immigrate because it almost devalues all the effort they went into and the steps.

00:46:13.680 Or if somebody comes in illegally and is granted like a permanent residence, like afterwards, instead of like deporting them, they say like, well, you came here, uh, it's still not the best, but we'll, we'll let you stay anyways.

00:46:30.180 That is insulting to people who worked hard and the many people who come to Canada, they love Canada, they do a great job and they, they fit right in and they, um, they help make Canada a better place.

00:46:43.040 So yeah, it is, it is difficult because we are a country built on immigration to a certain point.

00:46:54.660 Canada is maybe a little bit different than the UK of the UK is even, it's tough because well, well, and then you have Ireland and you have populations that were pretty homogenous.

00:47:07.760 So their problems are going to be, it's going to be amplified because of how homogenous the people were in Canada.

00:47:16.560 We've, uh, we've been, obviously we've had quite a mix of full, like you think about how many different countries in Europe and how many different cultures, even if Canada was primarily European for a certain amount of time, you still had a mix of European cultures.

00:47:33.260 Yeah.

00:47:33.780 Um, so it was never as homogenous as maybe Sweden or Ireland in that way.

00:47:40.640 Yeah.

00:47:40.840 Countries that those kinds like the Nordic countries specifically have a very long history of being very, um, actually somewhat isolationist in their, in their policies and, and their, you could see for a number of years prior to a very recent kind of shift in immigration policy, specifically in, uh, in like Sweden, like you say, uh, uh, the Netherlands also is suffering from this in a, in a, it's a different way, uh, you know, being very homogenous and very, you know, that, uh,

00:48:10.640 And the trouble is when you say this, at least for me, I always feel like I have to couch it in like, well, I don't mean white people are better, you know, obviously we're not saying that, but, you know, you could make the same argument for like, you know, a country like Japan, you know, Japan is a very, extremely homogenous society, very, very historically isolationist, like, for hundreds of years, you like, you couldn't even go to Japan, you know, Japan really only opened themselves up to the world, and, you know, I think maybe 0.56

00:48:40.640 less than 150 years ago. And they have, that's a similar thing that you can say of, you know, the Nordic countries where extremely low crime, very prosperous in different ways, a very, you know, a very efficient sort of wealthy, you know, high upward mobility society. And, you know, those aren't white people, they're Asian people, you know, so it doesn't have anything to do with the race so much as it has to do with if there are certain

00:49:10.620 things that I believe you can only properly accomplish as a nation, if you have a group of people willing to work towards similar ends, who have similar desires.

00:49:22.340 Yeah, it's like a homogenous in how tight knit their culture is, how well their values are shared. And then like, you need that for a high trust society. And I think Japan's one example of that. And we have many examples of low trust

00:49:40.620 societies. But one other point on Japan is like, I would never dream of, like, I would never go to Japan and be disrespectful in public and take pictures of a geisha. And like, that would, I know, culturally, that wouldn't fly with them. 0.83

00:50:00.340 Yeah. And there would be pushback.

00:50:02.520 Literally, you'd get kicked out.

00:50:05.220 Imagine me going there, and they get angry at me, and I'd call them racist. What if, what if the, like, what if they flip this, like, if the script resembled how we treat these situations in North America, or in, in the UK right now, you would say, well, somebody imposing, well, somebody going in and

00:50:27.660 doing something against some of these established cultural values of the place they're moving to, or visiting, somehow have more power, and they're shielded from criticism.

00:50:40.940 Yeah.

00:50:41.120 And you would never see that in anybody traveling to Japan. They don't, they don't operate that way. They don't let it slide.

00:50:48.040 Yeah. Yeah. The, the power of, the, the way that, and I don't know, like, I don't think it's only explained by, like, like, self-hatred, or, or self, like, uh, like, guilting, you know, like, white guilt, or whatever they, whatever you want to call it.

00:51:04.300 I don't think it's solely explained by that. I think that's a, that's a big part of it, but the, the power of labels in our culture is very strong.

00:51:12.500 You know, people, people have a very, and I, and I think that as well is sort of, is, is an example of, you know, like, there's such a, the, the words, like, you know, calling somebody a racist, or, or xenophobe, or, or, or a sexist, or something, it wouldn't have the power that it does in discourse if we, if we truly were that as a society.

00:51:35.880 Because then people wouldn't care if they were called that. It wouldn't matter to them. You could, you could freely admit to being such, and it wouldn't, it wouldn't impact you in any way.

00:51:44.200 But we are so strongly averse to those ideas that, that even the threat of being perceived as it is so distasteful to us.

00:51:53.820 Yeah, if you had an entire country of, like, truly sexist people, that would not be, that accusation would be like, it wouldn't be giving any new information.

00:52:07.760 It wouldn't be discerning between anybody. It would not be, you couldn't accuse anybody. You just assume everybody is that.

00:52:14.900 So the reason, yeah, we, we actually care about being called these labels. And I, I think now we're starting to see a pushback because it's being overused.

00:52:23.780 You're seeing people who, well, they'll say that, like, if you haven't been called a racist or a bigot or misogynistic for just saying, just having a conversation, then you're not discussing things of importance.

00:52:39.200 You're not asking the right questions because it gets thrown around so much. I think that's a, uh, it's a, uh, initiation that everybody has to go through is be called a bigot at least once.

00:52:52.940 It's a strange place to be in. Yeah. To know you're doing something right. You're being called those things. Uh, I'm going to share this. Actually, I think a good segue into this. This is a, um, a, uh, very interesting, uh,

00:53:09.200 double quick, quick video here of something Christopher Hitchens said back in 2009 versus what the current prime minister of the UK is saying. So this is, uh, this refers to, uh, what we were just talking about as far as terminology goes. Uh, and in this case, specifically, uh, Islamophobia. So this is a very, uh, I think timely, uh, quote that this, uh, that I hypocrite found. I'll play that right now.

00:53:33.380 Give it up or give it to your deadliest enemy and pay for the rope that will choke you. This is very urgent business. Ladies and gentlemen, I beseech you resist it while you still can. And before the right to complain is taken away from you, which will be the next thing you will be told.

00:53:53.380 You can't complain because you're Islamophobic. The term is already being introduced into the culture as if it was an accusation of race hatred, for example, or, or, or bigotry.

00:54:05.840 Whereas it's only the objection to the preachings of a very extreme and absolutist religion. Watch out for these symptoms. They're not the symptoms of surrender.

00:54:13.380 Very often ecumenically offered to you by men of God in other robes, Christian and Jewish and smarmy ecumenical. These are the, these are the ones who hold open the gates for the barbarians. 0.99

00:54:25.740 The barbarians never take a city until someone holds the gates open for them. And it's your own preachers who will do it for you and your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you. 0.99

00:54:35.540 Resist, resist it while you can. And if you wonder what will happen if you don't, look and see how a cricket team in Middlesex in England had to change its name by force last week because it was called, it had been for years, the Middlesex Crusaders.

00:54:50.940 Look and see how stories about little pigs can't be taught to children in English schools anymore, lest offense be taken by the religion of peace.

00:55:02.620 Resist it while you can.

00:55:05.540 One of the things that is coming up over and over again is Islamophobia.

00:55:10.000 And when you can see the stats, you can see the numbers rising, particularly since October the 7th, although we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that before October the 7th, this was all heading in the right direction.

00:55:20.880 It's been far too high for far too long. Clearly, we need to just say over and over again, Islamophobia is intolerable.

00:55:28.820 It can never, ever be justified. And we have to continue with a zero-tolerance approach.

00:55:36.180 And I think there's more we can do in government. There's certainly stuff online, which I think needs tackling much more robustly than it is at the moment.

00:55:43.580 What I'm hoping, Keir, is your experience as a prosecutor means you'll be thinking about the strategies we can use to make sure we take action against those who break the law.

00:55:51.200 So, thoughts there, James?

00:55:54.440 Well, I wish Hitchens was here today. He would have a lot to say about what's unfolding in the world now.

00:56:02.500 But the contrast between those two clips was quite impressive.

00:56:07.080 One was just, Hitchens very much focused on like, well, you have to use your free speech now because it's slowly being eroded.

00:56:18.980 The term Islamophobia is also, it's a weighted term and it's being used in a political way.

00:56:26.100 And then you contrast that to, well, today in the UK, they're saying, well, we need more top-down controls, specifically policing through digitally, like digitally monitoring policing speech to control Islamophobia.

00:56:46.360 And they said it was on the rise.

00:56:47.920 It also depends on how they're measuring.

00:56:51.460 So, do they just like go on Twitter X and look at a mention, they do a keyword search and be like, well, there's been more keywords of this keyword, therefore hates increased.

00:57:01.980 And that's the metric.

00:57:02.920 And then they have to impose some fix based on these, some random modeling that you can create these trends however you want.

00:57:12.280 Yeah, it's another example of, you know, you have Hitchens telling you, listen, these people are going to use words against you to stifle your speech.

00:57:30.000 And they're going to do it in a way that's meant to control you.

00:57:33.100 And then, literally, you have a man who is directing a government right now to jail people, to literally put, like, young kids in prison for things that they say online because it's deemed that term, that Hitchens, 15 years ago was saying, this is what's going to happen.

00:58:00.340 Man.

00:58:00.780 Man, he could see the patterns.

00:58:04.260 Yeah.

00:58:04.660 I, I wonder what the UK would be like today if he were still around because that's, he, I feel like, was a, I don't know if he, if he had a moderating effect on, on the culture there because he was so well respected and so, just so biting and so, like, he had a way of really getting to the truth of things in a way that you just couldn't deny.

00:58:25.940 He was just, he, he, his thought was just on such a higher level than everyone else around him that you just couldn't help but kind of be amazed by it.

00:58:34.100 And, uh, yeah, I wonder if it'd be any different today.

00:58:37.060 I, I think he would have got the Jordan Peterson treatment.

00:58:40.500 Very high potential.

00:58:43.100 Yeah, yeah, very high likelihood.

00:58:45.300 Yeah.

00:58:46.080 I think he, he could, uh, well, it didn't seem to hurt Peterson, you know, he, he, uh, I, uh, I met him one time at a, at a talk that he gave, um, in Alberta here.

00:58:56.620 And, uh, uh, and I told him that, uh, it was, uh, it was, I said that it's, it's a shame that people view you as controversial and, like, what you're saying is controversial.

00:59:09.960 And he said, you know, there are worse things.

00:59:14.320 And I was like, well, I guess that's true because, I mean, he's, yeah, he's managed to make it work for him.

00:59:19.720 But yeah, that's, uh, but the, the, the one observation there is the perceived, the fact that he's deemed controversial or that if you sample, and I have friends and family, like if I bring up that name, they have negative connotations or they'll only remember them from one little event.

00:59:41.720 Or you'll mention somebody like Joe Rogan and they're like, I don't know about him.

00:59:47.220 He's a little radical.

00:59:48.320 He took horse paste.

00:59:49.900 And then you're like, well, that's the most, that's a room temperature IQ.

00:59:54.920 He told other people to take horse paste.

00:59:57.400 Yeah.

00:59:59.240 These are room temperature takes, room temperature IQ takes.

01:00:03.700 And it doesn't matter if you're talking about Fahrenheit or Celsius.

01:00:08.740 Still, it still works.

01:00:10.540 But yeah, like, so you get these, um, even with these kind of juggernauts with a large platform, large reach, I think we're still showing the, the power of media over a inactive, not inactive.

01:00:31.620 Like a, people who don't actively participate and seek out information or seek out ideas contrary to what they believe.

01:00:42.840 So these NPCs just following their, their beliefs match up with what they're told for many things.

01:00:50.000 Um, and then we get cases of like, well, friends and family, maybe they're not as informed.

01:00:56.200 They don't listen to as much media.

01:00:58.420 They're just out of the picture.

01:01:00.400 So they're just getting ideas from like osmosis through, through whatever's mentioned.

01:01:06.700 There's still is this opportunity to like, well, talk about these things, or maybe you bring up immigration numbers.

01:01:14.420 Like you mentioned, like, well, is 10 million per year too much in Canada?

01:01:19.000 And then you like, get them to a point where they've admitted, yeah, maybe a hard cap at some point, maybe there is a sustainable number, or maybe there's a different way.

01:01:28.560 Like, rather than treating these things as blind truths and blind narratives of like, well, Canada requires immigration.

01:01:35.140 We just open up the floodgates and we never do a check and balance.

01:01:38.940 We never do a double check on like how much we should, we should do.

01:01:43.880 So I'm hoping we have more, more of these conversations.

01:01:48.740 Yeah.

01:01:49.160 And then, and to that point, you know, there's, and maybe we can wrap up on this, but to the, to the point of, you know, yeah, there, obviously we have to agree that there is a, there's a limit of, you know, amount of people we can welcome into any place at any time.

01:02:01.440 Because if for no other reason, then what is the life that those people that you're purporting to want to help, what is that going to be when they get there?

01:02:11.020 You know, I think we, this was months ago, but I believe we, we saw some statistics that it's been about a decade since the, the major Syrian refugee crisis into Canada.

01:02:23.220 And, and maybe you can recall better than I can, but I, I believe the number was like only, only 10% of those Syrian refugees who came in that initial wave are making above a poverty wage right now.

01:02:34.560 Like, so you've, you've got, you know, if you, if you want to use as a lot of these people who are very pro immigration want to use that you're doing this to help people and to, to better the lives of people.

01:02:50.120 Well, in order to do that, you have to acknowledge that there is an upper limit because past that point, you actually aren't helping people.

01:02:57.320 You're, you're just shuffling them from one place of the world to another.

01:03:00.820 Um, and if there's, if there's nothing there for them to move, to have, like I say, that upward mobility that other countries have, um, actually you're objectively making their lives worse.

01:03:12.020 Cause you know, you've uprooted them from their home with the promise of a better life and all that they have is either exactly what they had at home or worse because now they are not surrounded by their family and the places they grew up in and things.

01:03:26.780 And there's nothing for them to aspire to strive to because the infrastructure is not in place for it.

01:03:30.800 So yeah, there's, you know, there's, uh, there's, there's definitely a broader conversation to be had here other than either you're pro immigration because you love people or you're anti immigration because you hate people.

01:03:44.460 Well, there's one example I've been meaning to ask more people of like, well, let's say you have a, a family, you have three kids and well, there's a whole bunch of kids that need to be adopted.

01:03:56.740 What would, what would, what would adopting one kid do to your like family, to your schedule, to your, well, you need to pay for food and you need space for another bed.

01:04:08.400 And well, what about two, two adopted kids?

01:04:11.800 You have five kids now.

01:04:13.300 What if you have more adopted kids than you have your biological kids?

01:04:17.620 Like, what if you take them all in one year?

01:04:19.740 Like it gets progressively harder for that to be feasible.

01:04:26.000 And I think that's an example where people, it hits a little closer to home because then they're like, well, that's how I have to cook larger meals.

01:04:33.640 And like that welfare, that family welfare state that they've, that they have to rely on.

01:04:41.060 A lot of people find it very difficult even just to get all the meals, get their kids fed, keep the kids happy, keep them, get them to school on time.

01:04:50.500 And all of these things are difficult enough with the number of kids that they have right now in Canada.

01:04:54.680 We are struggling to just provide even reasonable health care to the citizens that we have right now.

01:05:04.260 Our roads are always under construction.

01:05:07.600 Like we have a water main break in Calgary.

01:05:12.700 So they're under water restrictions right now.

01:05:14.680 We have a lot of money that's required to just keep Canada functioning the way it is.

01:05:19.940 So we can't even divert less money to that without more things breaking, which would decrease the quality of life of the people coming here anyways.

01:05:34.040 Because they're not getting the quality of services that Canada is known for.

01:05:38.740 So it still doesn't make sense from that standpoint as well.

01:05:42.360 That's what I'm trying to reinforce.

01:05:45.240 Yeah, people don't like talking about those things because it makes it feel like transactional or like a business arrangement or something.

01:05:52.140 But the fact is that it kind of is a business arrangement because you do have to financially account for these things.

01:05:58.560 You can't just, you know, it's a little naive to think that you can just, well, we're just welcoming people.

01:06:05.880 We're just welcoming people into new Canadians, you know?

01:06:09.700 Well, okay, but how about all the other things?

01:06:12.060 There's a lot of things that go into living a good life and if you, you know, if you can't, if the pace of constructing that good life,

01:06:23.880 there's a lot of things that went into constructing what we have here and to allow, you know, two goofballs like you and me to sit in air-conditioned rooms and ruminate on this stuff online.

01:06:35.460 There's a lot of stuff that had to go right for us to get to this place.

01:06:38.720 And it's not an accident, so it takes a lot of administrating and people need to start thinking about it more, I think, in that way than just from the feel-good ways.

01:06:50.460 Yeah, I think that gives us plenty to think on, plenty to potentially relay in further discussions.

01:07:00.780 I think this is one we'll probably be returning to because it's not a problem that is on its way to being solved.

01:07:08.660 It is currently still getting worse before it's going to get better.

01:07:12.280 Fortunately, it feels like there's a few more conversations happening and there's a little bit more awareness.

01:07:21.080 So hopefully that's a step in the right direction.

01:07:25.100 Yep.

01:07:27.040 Sweet.

01:07:28.540 Awesome.

01:07:29.280 Thanks for those, James.

01:07:30.520 Yeah.

01:07:31.720 I love these discussions.

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01:07:55.460 Thanks, everyone, for listening.

01:07:56.720 And we'll see you again shortly.

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The Critical Compass Podcast - August 21, 2024

UK Riots： Justified Response to Crime or Far-Right Extremism？｜ A Critical Compass Discussion

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