Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - July 14, 2021

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 .

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Good morning, and welcome to Mountain Standard Time.

00:02:46.280 I'm your host, Nathan Gita, and of course, today I'll be joined by Dr. Grant Havers,

00:02:51.500 who's the chair of the Philosophy Department of the Trinity Western University, my alma mater.

00:02:56.480 And, of course, he'll be talking to us about conservatism in Canada

00:02:59.560 and the prospective results of the upcoming federal election

00:03:03.420 and what does it all look like.

00:03:05.680 Be sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on YouTube,

00:03:08.600 and take out a subscription online at The Western Standard,

00:03:11.400 especially if you wish to continue supporting the free voice of the West.

00:03:14.960 We don't take government money, neither should you.

00:03:17.860 As I have stated many times since I began broadcasting for The Western Standard,

00:03:22.360 There ought to be no divorce in understanding between you, yourselves, the viewers, and myself, the man on the TV.

00:03:30.120 I am not worthy of your unconditional affection, and I must tell the truth as much as possible.

00:03:35.020 When I get a piece of information, my job is to share it, not lord it over you, or use it to look important.

00:03:41.440 I have been in media for a few years now.

00:03:44.060 I've got some friends who work in politics, and they've worked there for about the same amount of time, if not longer.

00:03:49.660 Occasionally they tell me things, and sometimes those things turn out to be accurate.

00:03:52.960 As it stands, at least one trusted source has told me that he figures the Conservative Party might very well fall below 60 seats federally in the upcoming election, due to both vote splitting and people not voting.

00:04:05.620 In the event of such a fall from grace, it will either spell doom for the Tory party with a rebirth of sectional regional parties, or a final revitalization of the party from within, complete renewal from the ground up.

00:04:16.940 I'm hopeful of the latter, as I do believe in a single federal right-wing party, if only it would learn to stick to its principles, even in times of crisis.

00:04:25.620 But there is another theory for what could happen to conserves in this country, and it is best represented by the sovereignty that we have within our midst here at The Standard and a few other places, namely that the time has come to elect sectional or regional parties to better represent our interests.

00:04:43.020 This was a point raised by Stuart Parker last week, and I would like to dwell on it for a short while.

00:04:48.660 As I've stated before, I am ambivalent about sovereignty.

00:04:54.080 Essentially, I'm a Diefenbaker Federalist, waiting for the Pearson-Trudeau consensus that ruined this nation to come to an end.

00:05:01.240 But there might be an alternative way forward beyond my own insane idea of using the Church's boundaries for new provincial lines,

00:05:08.480 which would create more than 40 provinces with metropolitan areas entirely separate.

00:05:14.300 As an aside, if you're looking for a kind of crazy map of Canada that Nathan could probably endorse,

00:05:22.300 you would look at, just punch into Google, Catholic diocese map.

00:05:28.040 Maybe the other diocese maps would work too.

00:05:30.560 But the point is they cut up the provinces we already have.

00:05:33.120 And some of the borders actually go across provinces.

00:05:35.220 most pointedly, and in my opinion, most appropriately, Churchill-Hudson Bay, which includes

00:05:41.920 all of Nunavut, and of course, Churchill-Manitoba, which identifies much more strongly with the

00:05:48.920 rest of Northern Canada and not even with Thompson or the rest of Manitoba, even Northern

00:05:53.260 Manitoba. It feels quite isolated. And I feel like that's the kind of thing we need. We need to have

00:05:58.180 our provinces recut into sensible shapes and sizes and regions that actually represent the people

00:06:04.980 that are in them. And then those could be their own little

00:06:06.980 provincial governments. But that's a different

00:06:08.820 discussion for another time.

00:06:11.360 Maybe it is time for Canada

00:06:12.880 to finally become like Switzerland, though.

00:06:14.700 A group of cantankerous cantons that

00:06:16.720 come together in a loosely federated empire

00:06:18.880 capable of vetoing anything beyond

00:06:20.940 basic infrastructure. Someone might

00:06:22.960 say that sounds like a lot of redundant government, but

00:06:24.900 I say it's a way forward to freedom.

00:06:27.380 And whether you're going to do it with ten provinces

00:06:29.040 and three territories, or you're going to do it

00:06:31.080 with a huge amount

00:06:32.920 of provinces

00:06:34.880 that are newly created through the system I just proposed,

00:06:38.400 all I'm saying is that what we have right now isn't working.

00:06:43.240 And if that couldn't be more clear,

00:06:46.540 I think that the last couple of, well, probably decades for that matter,

00:06:50.640 but certainly the last couple of years have proven to us

00:06:53.840 that the federal government will run pretty roughshod over provinces

00:06:56.920 indiscriminately, save Quebec,

00:07:00.440 and doesn't really care what you think of it.

00:07:04.240 And our federal government doesn't represent us at a local level. It just has its agenda and it's interested in getting its way.

00:07:13.540 What's going on with the upcoming federal election when it comes to the Tories is it's dangerous. It's very dangerous because we need a right wing party in this country.

00:07:22.520 We need somebody to oppose that consensus of liberalism that's been ever growing and ever more manifested and ever stronger since since after Laurier and especially after after King, who kind of perfected the liberal dominance of this country and and since then has just never really waned.

00:07:45.460 It's always waxed. Very briefly, they fell to third place against Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

00:07:51.080 It looked like Canada might have a new way forward.

00:07:54.220 You had the NDP. Tom Mulcair was a great opposition leader.

00:07:58.160 I think he did a great job of articulating his positions against Stephen Harper.

00:08:02.620 Certainly much better than the various leaders, interim leaders of the, well, the leaders they tried to put forward in the Liberal Party.

00:08:09.800 probably the best leader they had for the interim

00:08:14.600 was Bob Ray

00:08:15.980 he was very articulate, he had been a parliamentarian a long time

00:08:19.520 he knew how to do his job and he was distinguished

00:08:22.660 he had been I believe the Premier of Ontario

00:08:25.180 and so there we were

00:08:29.500 we had this brief moment

00:08:33.820 where not only the Conservatives were dominant

00:08:35.480 but the Conservatives were capable of reducing the Liberals

00:08:39.540 to third place but we haven't returned to that moment since and i i don't there's various theories

00:08:44.160 for why but in the end all that matters is that we can't i mean we can't rely on the liberals to

00:08:52.840 trip themselves up and if we don't have a solid right-wing party with right-wing principles that

00:08:56.840 campaigns like conservatives not just like liberal light we are in big trouble i am being

00:09:01.860 reminded by my producer that it is time for our resistance coffee endorsement resistance coffee

00:09:06.860 noted the other day that it was a little bit late in the hour when i finally gave them their

00:09:11.360 endorsement and that was just because i had let that slip that's on me but we're back so resistance

00:09:18.500 coffee company is based in waver in saskatchewan of course they are a local roaster they bring

00:09:24.640 their beans and they roast them locally inside of waver and what's fun about the the resistance

00:09:29.980 coffee company is that they choose to use their if if they have a little bit on the side if they

00:09:36.720 have a little bit extra and people are talking about a specific cause that would further their

00:09:40.640 freedoms instead of curtail them so whatever's not woke these days and more about personal freedom

00:09:46.260 liberty and autonomy they help those causes so whenever you think of a coffee company that you

00:09:53.420 would like to support because we all love coffee we all love drinking coffee but the problem of

00:09:58.100 course is that a lot of coffee companies unfortunately are run by the same kind of

00:10:01.360 people who would take your freedoms away so that's not fun but luckily we have of course

00:10:06.520 the coffee company wayburn saskatchewan resistance coffee do be sure to grab as much of their coffee

00:10:12.960 as you can and use our promo code 10 off your first order use western standard for the promo

00:10:18.920 code all righty so back to where we're at with things so

00:10:24.820 the upcoming federal election what's going to happen i i mean i've been talking about this a

00:10:32.820 little bit for a few days now viva la resistance thanks john appreciate that uh john you're a gem

00:10:40.340 uh i've been talking about this a little bit and what's what it's coming down to of course is that

00:10:45.920 the tories are completely divided and they're all over the place and they can't seem to get

00:10:51.940 a solid footing on what they're going to fight the election on. 1.00

00:10:55.780 Now, back in the day, we used to say, it's the economy, stupid. 0.99

00:10:59.480 And that was actually a Democrat who came up with that one, who carried his home state 0.99

00:11:02.880 of Arkansas, which is now a solid red state. 1.00

00:11:08.220 But we said back in the day, right, it's, you know, it's the economy, stupid, right? 0.98

00:11:15.600 And I have to admit that in our own time, we've kind of gotten away from economic arguments. 0.97

00:11:20.480 everything becomes about social arguments and social issues and social justice issues and so

00:11:26.680 is it about you know is it about transgenderism or is it about parents and their children in the

00:11:31.560 school system or is it about whether just freedom or is it about the right to feel safe is it trigger

00:11:36.820 warnings and safe spaces it's it's all over the place there's cruelty to animals it's all over

00:11:41.660 the place and of course climate change so so in a way the last thing we talk about anymore

00:11:48.440 is economic issues, but in the end, those are still what determine every other issue, right?

00:11:53.480 I don't care how rich or poor you are, well, in the sense that if you, you know, it doesn't feel

00:11:59.460 good to be bullied, whether you're rich or poor, it doesn't feel good to have something bad happen

00:12:06.120 to you in a social sense. But in the end, you know, if you have enough economic leverage on

00:12:11.460 your own half, you got enough capital or enough opportunity, economically speaking, you can go

00:12:16.580 make your way in the world, right? You can't. And so that's what we've kind of based a lot of

00:12:22.400 especially English speaking government on is the idea that if you give people economic opportunity,

00:12:27.840 then they can really chart their own course in the world. And that's not a weak argument. That's

00:12:34.200 a great argument. But the problem becomes that if you're not going to articulate that argument ever

00:12:39.740 and keep it at the forefront, because you have to shape the narrative. So what's happened since

00:12:45.820 liberalism kind of took over and i don't mean the liberalism of yesteryear which was also very

00:12:50.800 economically based particularly particularly according those economic freedoms to people

00:12:54.960 who didn't have them minorities women the disenfranchised the recent immigrants uh the 0.97

00:13:01.760 the underclass so so you know second and third wave liberalism were were about those things and

00:13:07.700 i appreciate that i think that's right and just we need all groups of people regardless of class

00:13:13.900 create a background to have economic opportunity that's not a question discrimination based on

00:13:18.940 immutable characteristics that do not necessarily determine your outright character are not are not

00:13:24.560 fair bar none no argument from me but where we've gone wrong is we've kind of reversed it into of

00:13:32.360 course a new discrimination right all based on immutable characteristics where we don't let

00:13:36.660 certain groups of people study together anymore we don't let certain groups of people use the

00:13:40.540 same computer lab we put other groups of people into easier testing systems there's funding just

00:13:47.120 because of your particular skin color that's all that's all gone way overboard to the point where 1.00

00:13:52.080 of course we now denigrate whatever the majority population is or at least the most significant

00:13:56.320 minority the largest minority population is and that's and that's also a problem it's beyond a 1.00

00:14:01.380 problem that's that's evil it's wicked and it's evil and you have to shape the narrative so what

00:14:07.400 has happened is leftism, progressivism,

00:14:09.460 liberalism, however you want to call it, but it's not really

00:14:11.500 liberal anymore, because of course, the literal

00:14:13.600 translation of the word liberal

00:14:15.380 is free, right? Libra

00:14:17.260 is freedom, right?

00:14:19.680 In Latin,

00:14:21.340 I want to say. Econo is a

00:14:23.460 Greek word, meaning

00:14:24.880 oikos, I think, from 0.99

00:14:26.500 household. But

00:14:29.120 so, liberals

00:14:31.240 aren't liberals anymore, right? Or in the sense,

00:14:33.280 at least most people who think of themselves as a liberal,

00:14:35.480 they're actually a leftist, a progressive,

00:14:36.820 and a person who's kind of not always fascistically so,

00:14:42.980 but often using methods that are not democratic or free.

00:14:48.780 They are forceful and coercive.

00:14:51.620 And what's happened is conservatives have given away the argument.

00:14:54.840 They've given away our universities.

00:14:55.980 They've given away our schools.

00:14:56.940 They've given away a lot of workspace too, right?

00:15:00.060 Business used to be about business.

00:15:02.500 One thing that I will say,

00:15:04.000 I remember reading that blog some time ago.

00:15:06.820 And, um, it was a blog about what was, what it was actually about the young Pope, but then it referenced back to Mad Men. And then it referenced back to kind of why, like why sometimes artists get it better than the people practicing the faith, how this stuff works. Like the business of the Catholic church is the business of Catholic church, you know, as Calvin Coolidge might've put it. And the same thing when it comes to the question of Mad Men and that era, it's like business was about business.

00:15:30.000 it was not about team meetings and what's the next garbage cleanup thing we can do and look at

00:15:35.560 this motivational poster on the wall and isn't it just so wonderful to have this office space where

00:15:39.880 we're all coming together and doing these things and we're having solidarity together with these

00:15:43.720 things no it wasn't about those things yeah it's about making money it was about making money and

00:15:48.800 it's about doing business right that was what it was about and and it's actually been a bit of a

00:15:54.180 mind-boggling thing as I bump into people who genuinely think that work is about having fun

00:15:58.560 and I'm like I don't really know what you're talking about

00:16:00.520 like work is for work that doesn't mean

00:16:02.440 that you're not supposed to have a decent relationship with the people

00:16:04.500 around your work that's not my argument whatsoever

00:16:06.340 but it's just kind of mind boggling that

00:16:08.360 anybody thinks that work is beyond that

00:16:10.320 it's like

00:16:11.520 no it's not about

00:16:13.760 you know recycle day or united

00:16:16.460 way or any of this other nonsense

00:16:17.900 it's about it's about work

00:16:20.380 productivity you're not

00:16:22.320 producing you're not working you're not

00:16:24.340 I don't really know why you're here

00:16:26.360 doesn't mean like being like a

00:16:28.400 slave doesn't mean that you don't have your coffee breaks and you're entitled you're entitled to

00:16:31.200 your entitlements uh but it's but work is about work and so just as work has stopped being about

00:16:36.160 work just as politics has stopped being about anything political it's now about social personal

00:16:41.180 questions questions of privacy like i mean we used to say that the government had no business

00:16:46.700 knowing whether or not you were a homosexual or whatever now the government does nothing but

00:16:51.880 explain that only being you know non-normative in certain respects is the best thing you can be

00:16:58.380 that's essentially what's being telegraphed certainly so it's being telegraphed with

00:17:01.640 government money through non-profits all over the place with the posters on the wall

00:17:05.080 and and so the great irony is that we we we have just completely flipped everything on its head

00:17:14.420 which of course was always a sign of the diabolical if you ask you know saint thomas aquinas but

00:17:19.400 deeper than that it's a fundamental question it's like do you want things to work if you

00:17:23.340 were going to just be a materialist right do you want things to work are you going to be a pragmatist

00:17:27.420 and and do you want just things you want two and two to equal four you want to know when you cross

00:17:32.380 a bridge that it functions do you want to know when you go under for surgery you are going to

00:17:36.440 be opened up and and taken care of you care about competence you care about pragmatism you care about

00:17:42.020 functionality right and that is also being lost because it's funny because functionality used to

00:17:49.320 be again another big word of the left where it's like well it's dysfunctional to let the private

00:17:54.820 sector do this it's dysfunctional to leave this in the hands of families that might be abusive

00:17:58.740 it's dysfunctional to leave this in the hands of the church it can't be trusted its values can't

00:18:03.280 be checked that was their argument well we're we're here now we're here now where they dominate

00:18:10.480 their their big state tactics dominate everything and they shape the narrative tell me if you think

00:18:15.580 it's any more functional i don't i think we pay more money for worse results it doesn't mean there's

00:18:20.520 no place for a public sector but it does fundamentally mean in my humble opinion that

00:18:25.620 that ironically whether it was abusive before or not at least we were paying less for it maybe you

00:18:31.080 should have improved on the abuse not just up the cost and created about the same amount of problems

00:18:35.480 you know more children are apprehended today than were ever apprehended during the residential

00:18:40.380 schools the same is true of a whole host of other issues if you think that the records of the

00:18:44.800 residential schools are being kept under lock and key to avoid prosecution wait until you go to your

00:18:50.000 local school board wait until you go to every school board in canada that's how it is go to

00:18:55.060 the hospital go to the grievance go go talk to some shop stewards and give them a you know give

00:18:59.180 them a drink or two fate you know fuzz out their face give them a voice modulator and turn on the

00:19:03.740 camera and let them tell you the various things that they've had to kind of keep under the wraps

00:19:08.320 people are sinners we're human beings we're fallen creatures that's how it is

00:19:12.260 and at a certain level in a more i would say conservative time but certainly in a time of

00:19:17.660 more limited government. People understood that, and they understood there was no way in heaven or

00:19:23.480 hell for government to be our perfecting cause, our perfecting instrument. That was never going

00:19:30.020 to happen. Government's job was to keep the lights on, to keep the roads paved, etc.

00:19:37.260 But the problem is, the problem is that everything has become about not the thing that matters.

00:19:44.940 canada cannot survive with the debt load it's carrying from covet it can't i will never make

00:19:52.580 enough money to pay that back i am part of a generation of ever ever shrinking opportunities

00:19:59.640 unless we do something drastic when it comes to our red tape and start a lot of infrastructure

00:20:04.660 real quick and the generation after mine there are people my age who have children right my

00:20:09.420 brother's one of them he's a year younger than me he's got kids what do you think those kids are

00:20:12.840 going to do for a living where is the money going to come from to pay back the debt and and that's

00:20:20.160 a reality that's a reality my my nephew who is not even five years old owes the government what

00:20:27.820 30 40 50 000 he hasn't even earned a penny yet he's being subsidized he's got a child benefit

00:20:34.720 that's going to his parents he doesn't he doesn't earn an income yet and he's already 50 000 in debt

00:20:40.740 or whatever it is, thanks to the trillion we're at

00:20:43.320 or whatever we're at, it's nonsense.

00:20:45.520 Like this can't go on, like that can't go on,

00:20:47.980 especially if there's shrinking opportunities

00:20:49.380 and we aren't thinking about

00:20:50.800 how we're going to build an economy that is equitable,

00:20:53.720 that ensures that everybody has a family living wage

00:20:56.460 so that they can continue to keep

00:20:58.980 the economic system running.

00:21:00.740 The economy is an entirely man-made object.

00:21:02.900 You think that we would be able to figure it out.

00:21:05.000 It's not rocket science.

00:21:06.540 You can't have cheap money, creates booms and busts.

00:21:09.240 You can't have people who can foreign speculate and come in and just buy up all the property that other people are entitled to because they were born here.

00:21:17.920 They took care of it.

00:21:18.540 They mowed the lawns.

00:21:19.560 They did all the work on it, but they can't afford the property in their own backyard.

00:21:23.740 That's not okay.

00:21:26.040 You know, you have to build a better country than that.

00:21:28.800 And that's the only thing, again, when I talk about sovereignty, that's kind of where I stand with it,

00:21:33.800 is that it's like I would get more on side with sovereignty

00:21:37.340 if I knew that's what its ultimate goal was,

00:21:40.220 which was building a better country,

00:21:43.280 not just cutting out a piece of the country we're currently in

00:21:46.520 and having the same amount of problems.

00:21:48.500 I don't think that's the way forward.

00:21:50.560 But if you're telling me that there could be a better way forward

00:21:52.520 and a new social contract, I could be amenable to that.

00:21:56.500 And again, though I am a son of privilege

00:21:59.820 and I wasn't raised around a lot of the status First Nations issues

00:22:03.040 and non-status and Métis and all the other issues

00:22:05.100 that can come up through that, Inuit.

00:22:08.140 I guess what I'm

00:22:09.200 trying to say there, a lot of issues

00:22:11.060 that face First Nations people, especially on reserve 0.66

00:22:13.180 and in poverty and in squalor and all sorts of

00:22:15.140 stuff. I still think

00:22:17.200 that in a sense, their group

00:22:18.700 mentality around

00:22:20.920 belonging and ownership

00:22:22.780 has some validity, especially

00:22:24.980 if it at least is the last counter

00:22:26.900 to some foreign

00:22:29.000 power having complete dominance

00:22:30.940 over us and that took me a long time to understand i used to be bar more libertarian and free market

00:22:35.380 on this but as i kind of watched over and over again as as foreign foreign interests influenced

00:22:41.720 our world negatively while they just were laughing all the way to their next scrooge mcduck

00:22:46.280 money bolt they like they don't care so some semblance of common good the common wealth which

00:22:54.380 is a part of our british heritage needs to be accrued it has to happen or else we're

00:23:00.840 in deep trouble. And that links us all the way back to the question of Toryism.

00:23:07.860 Toryism always had

00:23:10.740 a question of how do we protect

00:23:14.800 the common good, the common wheel. We say common wealth

00:23:18.820 now, but common wheel, very medieval term, the idea of there being

00:23:23.040 this kind of common existence altogether.

00:23:27.480 And we all live that. And in a certain sense, the last

00:23:30.680 ones who are kind of defending that to a point don't agree with them on a lot of their principles

00:23:35.500 is of course the uh the greens not not the greens in particular but i mean anybody who's

00:23:43.200 very very environmentally minded because a lot of their arguments are common based the idea of

00:23:50.340 the commons we all breathe the same air we all drink the same water we should probably try and

00:23:54.780 preserve that for future generations we need to do something about you know these issues i again

00:24:00.240 don't agree with their methodology and i don't agree with their assessment that that that climate

00:24:04.880 change is man caused um i don't agree with that at least not in its entirety i have a lot of

00:24:10.760 caveats around that but i do agree and the reason i have people of that ilk on on the show is that i

00:24:16.640 like to hear somebody articulate the idea of the common the commonwealth and and common good

00:24:24.780 because we conservatives have a really hard time doing that anymore which is ironic because that

00:24:29.480 used to be the thing that was about

00:24:31.440 conservatives. It was the liberals who were chomping

00:24:33.500 at the bit to rip up everything,

00:24:35.620 to put people in enclosures, to take up

00:24:37.560 all the land and make it more efficient

00:24:39.060 and just exploit everybody

00:24:41.440 and exploit. It's called Manchester

00:24:43.600 liberalism, right? It was ripping ship, right?

00:24:45.520 This is basic, basic

00:24:46.940 Tory history.

00:24:50.280 And what happened was,

00:24:51.960 of course, Tories

00:24:52.880 had

00:24:55.540 to

00:24:56.160 kind of come back to the people in particular

00:25:00.420 and create a different kind of philosophy of like, no, well, there's king, there's country, there's

00:25:04.380 throne, there's altar, there's the serf or the freeholder on the land

00:25:08.540 and his overlord. But they are

00:25:11.800 bound together. The worker upon the land and

00:25:16.360 his lord over him, they can't survive apart. That can't happen.

00:25:20.200 But we've lost our ability in conservatism to articulate this

00:25:24.320 question of the Commonwealth. And until we can, I don't think we're going to have a narrative

00:25:29.060 that can properly counter those on the left. And I think this is exactly the problem with what's

00:25:34.400 going on with Toryism generally. I think Stephen Harper had moments where he was able to kind of

00:25:39.500 talk about, you know, strong, stable, conservative majority government, you know, for working class

00:25:43.520 families, we're going to do, we're going to working families, we're going to make sure that

00:25:46.500 taxpaying families are taken care of, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So he tried to, he kind of

00:25:50.060 created a sort of semblance of of not an ethnicity but an identity that could identify with

00:25:56.040 conservatism identity that people could identify with when it came to conservatism but i think i

00:26:01.240 think this is exactly the problem there isn't there isn't an articulation on the right as to

00:26:07.840 what is the commonwealth you know at least not in canada you know we don't have forgotten man

00:26:13.440 speeches coming from the right that was trump in the united states in 2016 we don't have you know

00:26:19.000 you know, empire of evil speeches in Canada. That was Reagan back in the 80s. So Canadian 0.81

00:26:26.340 conservative rhetoric needs to recapture, in my opinion, some some imaginative narrative that

00:26:33.040 helps people understand that, hey, it's worth it's worth going on about. It's worth going forward.

00:26:39.540 And this country is worth building. I think Diefenbaker was probably the last guy to really

00:26:43.380 articulate that but we'll we'll look for more uh you know uh we'll look for more help with that

00:26:50.400 uh in a few minutes here but we're going to go to our favorite philosophy professor

00:26:55.260 dr grant havers who's going to help us understand a little bit more about the state of conservatism

00:27:00.160 in canada today it's good to have you on dr havers good morning nathan good morning um i i maybe you

00:27:07.940 can take off where i left off there of of again this this what is the toryism in canada it just

00:27:14.920 it is different than american liberalism people don't seem to understand that they think like

00:27:18.700 republicans and conservatives could be the same people but they're not and in canada it seems like

00:27:23.060 we've lost track of of how to articulate a vision that is i don't know it's so it's softer than just

00:27:30.380 brutal capitalism but it doesn't need to be the leftist kind of fallacies we see nowadays

00:27:36.020 Yeah, I think there are some differences. Going back to the different origins of Canada and the United States, of course, as you know, the United States was based on a grand constitutional experiment that had never been undertaken in history.

00:27:56.920 I think that was the last thing on the minds of the Fathers of the Confederation

00:28:01.160 who simply wanted to unite a country without engaging in experiments whatsoever.

00:28:10.720 In fact, MacDonald in many ways thought that the United States was a failed experiment due to the Civil War.

00:28:20.100 But then the other big difference between Canada and, say, your typical nation state is that we've never had kind of a shared ethnic, linguistic or religious identity in contrast to, say, European nation states where there is that shared identity.

00:28:45.980 There are shared narratives that are important to at least the majority of people within the nation.

00:28:54.720 So it's very hard for a conservative movement in Canada to come up with a vision that would be national or to come up with a national narrative that would somehow unite the country.

00:29:11.000 I mean, even the building of the railroad can't really count as a national narrative because Quebec was not invited to be part of that.

00:29:23.860 And so as a result, even that narrative, which goes back quite a ways, could not be a unifying one.

00:29:35.020 So I think that's a challenge that any conservative movement faces in Canada.

00:29:42.240 One of the things, and maybe it's false remembrance for those of us who are Tories, we think back to, I mean, I wasn't even alive, but I mean, we think back to Diefenbaker's articulation of his Bill of Rights.

00:29:56.100 We think back to even his national vision, his national strategy, seemed to try and pivot towards developing the North.

00:30:02.220 that seemed to be extremely important to him.

00:30:04.660 And it seems like all of that kind of got left behind

00:30:06.440 the moment Pearson was installed by the Kennedys.

00:30:10.460 How much of that is true and how much of that is myth-making?

00:30:16.260 Well, I think it's a bit of both.

00:30:18.240 I mean, it is true that Diefenbaker was a master of rhetoric

00:30:24.940 and was probably one of the most eloquent political leaders

00:30:30.420 of Canada's ever produced.

00:30:32.220 I think it's important to bear in mind, though, that Ethan Baker's administration, in a way, set the tone for later unfortunate patterns in Canadian politics.

00:30:46.960 I mean, he was really the first prime minister to see the role of government as defining identity or defining Canadian values and to be the arbiter of public virtue and social justice.

00:31:02.500 And I certainly don't want to place all the responsibility for our managerial state on Diefenbaker, but I think it did begin with Diefenbaker, namely this idea of the state having to tell Canadians who they are and what they represent.

00:31:23.180 I mean, that went down like a lead balloon in Quebec at the time of Diefenbaker's reign.

00:31:29.500 But then the Pearson and Trudeau liberals built on that, especially Pierre Trudeau,

00:31:36.300 who even more ambitiously saw the state, or at least one purpose of the state, as the arbiter of identity.

00:31:46.100 And I think Canadians often forget that other nation states don't operate this way.

00:31:51.460 I mean, the French government doesn't tell the French citizenry what it means to be French.

00:31:59.660 People in France already know what it means to be French or what it means to be a citizen of France.

00:32:06.460 They don't need the state to tell them that.

00:32:08.280 But the Canadian state is unique because it's invested in this purpose or role of telling people what it means to be Canadian.

00:32:21.160 And what it means to be un-Canadian, which is, I think, a very chilling use of language.

00:32:27.520 It almost sounds like a totalitarian regime.

00:32:30.200 There are Canadians who represent Canadian values, and then there are un-Canadian values.

00:32:36.280 And we have to watch out for those people.

00:32:38.820 one of the things that's a big misunderstanding in canada as well and even among its own right

00:32:45.920 wing in different places is is that canada while it while it was so large a country that the state

00:32:52.200 just couldn't really enforce its will everywhere at once and that maybe some of its freedom was

00:32:57.680 kind of latent from the just the sheer limitations of state power by geography it also was never a

00:33:04.480 small state country certainly not in a sense of that that somehow limited government was its was

00:33:10.740 its reason dietra uh it was it was always right from the beginning with with the building of the

00:33:16.460 railway there's clearly a national strategy there's clearly a strong federal government

00:33:20.700 it was never not that how how do modern conserves again with so much kind of american ideas about

00:33:26.880 limited government or libertarianism how do they square that with the canadian experience

00:33:31.500 yeah i mean certainly as you said from the beginning canadian tories have not been shy

00:33:38.560 about using the state uh or or creating collaborations between the state and the

00:33:45.600 private sector of course the rail national railroad is a good example of that uh but of

00:33:51.880 course that was a temporary arrangement uh which clearly was discontinued with the completion

00:33:59.180 of the railroad. But it is true. I mean, generally, Canadian Tories have shied away

00:34:07.280 from ideological debates about what the state should and shouldn't do, without, of course,

00:34:15.580 being indifferent to the undue expansion of the state as well. I mean, I think one advantage

00:34:24.680 from Canadian history is that we've avoided those ideological debates that often make

00:34:30.520 American politics so colorful. But of course, the disadvantage is that if we don't have those

00:34:37.740 debates, as ideological as they are, then it's hard to answer the question, well, what do we

00:34:42.480 stand for? What are our principles? What are our traditions that are worth preserving? So

00:34:50.120 So, you know, it's important to avoid excessive ideological debates.

00:34:55.740 But at some point, I think political parties, especially the Tories, have to engage in them.

00:35:03.460 A party in search of an ideology or a thing to be is a criticism that's been leveled at the Tories probably since Diefenbaker and maybe even before him.

00:35:14.160 But certainly, certainly they've been lost in the wilderness many times, particularly throughout the 20th century.

00:35:18.960 And now it appears to be again in the 21st century. They will be lost for some time the upcoming federal election. What do Tories need to think about in that respect in order to try and articulate that? What would be a proper articulation of conservative values in Canada?

00:35:38.600 Because we aren't Americans, but we're also not Britain anymore, and we aren't Australia, and we aren't New Zealand.

00:35:44.900 We're part of the major English-speaking countries of the world, including a little bit the French-speaking countries of the world.

00:35:51.580 But what do those values look like 150-something odd years into our nation-state status?

00:36:01.280 Well, I think Canadian Tories need to emphasize freedom more or the idea of freedom, not just economic freedom, but freedom in a civil or intellectual sense or freedom of conscience.

00:36:22.540 So what I mean by that is that the Tories, I think, currently have an opportunity to really put a dent into the liberals because the liberals are, I think, threatening freedom of speech in this country, not to put too fine a point on that.

00:36:42.100 They are doubling down on censorship of the Internet, or certainly threatening censorship, and at the same time, they want to revamp anti-hate speech laws.

00:36:56.580 So I would think that Tories, who in part come from a kind of classical liberal tradition, I say in part, should emphasize that they are the party of freedom.

00:37:08.480 They should warn against these threatened incursions by the liberals into the private sphere of life that includes all the cherished freedoms that we have.

00:37:21.820 And they've done some of that, but I think they need to really educate Canadians on how dangerous it is for the elected liberals to threaten freedom of speech.

00:37:37.520 And, of course, that would be consistent with the best of conservative traditions in Canada, to have freedom of speech, to have a sense of ordered liberty, which certainly encourages or should encourage civil discussion, but at the same time keeps the private sphere of freedom off limits to that of the state.

00:38:03.920 I think they really need to do more work on that front.

00:38:07.520 it it's it's a brilliant reversal a complete inversion of his own father's words in a sense

00:38:14.900 when it when you think of our current Trudeau Trudeau Jr. and Trudeau Sr. in comparison

00:38:20.780 who you know famously Trudeau Sr. said right government has no business in the bedrooms of

00:38:25.960 the nation Trudeau Jr. appears to think that they they don't just have business in your bedroom

00:38:31.100 they have a business in your phone your your Facebook account where you go where you eat

00:38:36.500 apparently whether or not you're going to you know take take a shot or not and wear a mask

00:38:40.900 apparently the government has business literally everywhere on every square inch of your body uh

00:38:45.720 not i guess just the soul that they don't believe in is the only thing they don't possess of yours

00:38:52.400 how how did we get here uh in in modern canada i i if even trudeau senior who was no one's idea

00:39:00.300 of a freedom lover from a right-wing perspective,

00:39:06.000 if that is where we were in that generation

00:39:09.140 and his own son is where we are today,

00:39:11.700 how do we transform as a country to the point

00:39:13.980 where we thought that that was okay?

00:39:17.000 That's a great question.

00:39:18.080 I think the Liberal Party is liberal in name only.

00:39:22.520 One would have to look at the history of the term liberalism

00:39:27.020 And then see how that word, liberal or liberalism, has been reinvented beyond recognition, because the earliest liberals, the classical liberals, were very concerned with imposing constraints on state power and in the process, defending the private sphere of life and including freedom of conscience, religious freedom, intellectual freedom.

00:39:57.020 from the purview of the state. So in a nutshell, that's what liberal used to mean, at least in part.

00:40:05.080 But since at least the 1970s and beyond that, liberal, quote unquote, now means clamping down

00:40:18.140 on offensive or hateful speech, which sounds wonderful in principle, except that the state

00:40:25.760 is given the authority to decide what hateful speech is, and therein lies the danger. So

00:40:32.500 again, I think the Tories, I mean, they shouldn't engage in an academic exercise necessarily, but

00:40:39.200 they should try to educate Canadians as to what liberal, small L liberal, used to mean,

00:40:47.600 because the Liberal Party has totally reinvented and adulterated that term. Again,

00:40:55.160 they're they're not liberals in any traditional sense indeed they aren't indeed they aren't and

00:41:03.540 and one of those one of the funny things that happens though inside of canadian conservative

00:41:08.340 uh tradition often is they often somehow some way they often just become liberal light with

00:41:17.200 their policy when conservatives campaign as conservatives they seem to do well but when they

00:41:21.420 campaign as Liberalite, then everybody's like, well, why wouldn't I just vote for the Liberal

00:41:25.100 Party of Canada? If I can get light beer, I might as well get regular beer and just carry on.

00:41:33.060 Right. Well, Louis Saint Laurent once said that the NDP or the CCF are just Liberals in a hurry.

00:41:42.460 I think the Tories need to realize that they should not be Liberals in slow motion.

00:41:48.620 in other words they should not be a pale or slower version of the liberals because we already have a

00:41:58.140 liberal party in fact perhaps we have more than one liberal party i.e the NDP but we don't need

00:42:06.220 another liberal party that is slightly to the right of Justin Trudeau we we need a party that

00:42:15.140 obviously offers an alternate vision. And I don't know if it's too late for the Tories to

00:42:22.680 reverse their electoral fortunes right now, but I would think one way is to try to educate Canadians

00:42:31.360 as to the importance of freedom. And of course, that's an uphill battle, because people who live

00:42:38.320 democracies are usually convinced that they're already free. I mean, don't we elect our

00:42:45.400 government? Don't we have freedom of speech? And isn't it a good thing for the government

00:42:52.680 to clamp down on hate speech anyway? I think most Canadians are very trusting of their

00:43:00.520 government in a way that, of course, sharply contrasts with Americans who tend to be more

00:43:06.700 distrustful but uh i would think that again the the tories have to explain what they mean by

00:43:15.140 freedom and why freedom is actually a good thing that is part of the canadian experience and i

00:43:21.820 i don't think they've done enough of that yet and imitating the liberals is just uh a ticket to

00:43:29.440 electoral defeat it seems to me indeed it does seem like a ticket to electoral defeat as my

00:43:35.880 My opening statement this morning, I made mention of a trusted source

00:43:40.200 who I've been close to for many years, making the point that he has heard

00:43:44.320 as low as 60 seats returning to the conserves after the current contest

00:43:49.360 or the upcoming contest.

00:43:51.660 And those are bad numbers.

00:43:54.180 But even so, polling where they're at, it doesn't seem good

00:43:58.140 for Aaron O'Toole and his gang of Tories.

00:44:02.220 Yeah, I've even heard that O'Toole might lose his own seat if an election were called today.

00:44:10.620 I mean, that's right. And I'm not suggesting that the Tories should articulate a grand vision of what they plan to do.

00:44:24.000 We have to be careful with visions as they enter politics.

00:44:27.840 Usually visions are imposed on people. They're not desired by people. And certainly Canada has had its experience with different visionary leaders.

00:44:39.840 But at the same time, I would think that given the fact that many Canadians are exhausted with the lockdown, of course, we're just coming out of that, and many Canadians, I hope, are worried about the survival of freedom in this country, the Tories should take advantage of that and really distinguish themselves from all the other parties, not just the Liberals,

00:45:07.780 who actually support a clampdown on free speech and on the exchange of ideas on the internet.

00:45:20.340 I think those are themes that would resonate with many Canadians.

00:45:24.840 I mean, there'll always be a high number of Canadians who do not care about their freedom.

00:45:32.200 I know that sounds a little harsh, but there'll always be some Canadians who are more than satisfied with the way the government might restrict their speech because they don't believe that they're guilty of hate speech anyway.

00:45:47.820 But I think there are others who are tired of this and are looking to the Tories for a better understanding of what freedom means and a party that stands up for freedom.

00:46:05.480 Party that stands up for freedom. That'd be refreshing anywhere in the English speaking world, in the Western world generally. But I guess we can continue to hold out hope for it.

00:46:17.820 Perhaps something we can kind of get into here a little bit then is what is likely to happen in this coming federal contest, not just maybe in its results, but where should the conversation have been, but where is it likely to go, and why is Justin Trudeau likely to triumph?

00:46:39.380 Yeah, and I hope that's not the case, but it certainly looks that way.

00:46:44.000 Well, I would think one other challenge that the Tories face is an old one, the divide between Central Canada and the West. And of course, O'Toole represents the 905 area code in Southern Ontario.

00:47:01.980 And I would think that his understanding of conservatism, to say the least, is deeply informed by the interests of Southern Ontario.

00:47:14.160 Of course, I would explain why he replaced he wants to replace one carbon tax with another carbon tax, which goes down like a lead balloon in Western Canada.

00:47:25.960 I know that he has made some gestures towards reconciling the West with Central Canada, but I think he needs to develop themes that are radically different from that of the Liberal Party.

00:47:45.060 Again, the emphasis on freedom is important. The emphasis on good economic management

00:47:54.000 is important as well. I think the liberals are vulnerable on that front. But I don't know if

00:48:04.180 there's enough time left in this pre-election cycle. I mean, the election hasn't been called

00:48:10.660 yet, but everyone's feeling that we are in a pre-election cycle. I don't know if the Tories

00:48:17.120 have time to turn things around. I have friends in Alberta who are right-leaning, who probably

00:48:26.500 will sit out the next election. They will not vote for O'Toole. I mean, if O'Toole can't get

00:48:32.940 votes in alberta of all places then it's not good no it's not good maybe something else that

00:48:41.900 needs to kind of be touched on here is how how is the guy from papineau you know our current

00:48:48.200 prime minister uh how is he doing doing better amongst you know all sorts of classes people

00:48:54.160 including the working class uh while while the guy who represents durham which literally has

00:48:59.220 the oshawa car factory in it can't seem to connect with the people next door what what's going on

00:49:04.700 there i was hopeful that being being the representative for durham was going to be the key

00:49:08.980 to i'm a part of the industrial heartland of canada i know what what the industrial class

00:49:13.820 needs i'm going to reach out and make sure that that that everyone uh in in the well under class

00:49:19.720 at some extent but certainly the working class in canada which has been marginalized for decades

00:49:23.440 at this point uh how do how do we how do we bridge that gap why can't why can't mr durham see to do

00:49:29.620 that yeah i i think uh i i mean i i can't speculate as to what goes on in in the mind of uh uh mr

00:49:41.480 o'toole but i would think that many tories around him are probably afraid to play a populist card

00:49:49.200 uh even if it is a justified populist uh card like economic populism because it may remind

00:49:57.480 canadians too much too much of you know who uh donald trump who is still very much with us

00:50:03.480 so i i think uh the the tories at least uh the ontario establishment tories are are reluctant

00:50:12.380 to engage in that kind of populism.

00:50:18.700 And perhaps they even think that Doug Ford has cornered the market

00:50:22.520 on populism in Ontario, which has not resonated with all Ontarians.

00:50:31.280 I think Ford isn't doing that well in the polls either.

00:50:34.520 But Trudeau, yeah, it is astounding that a man of privilege,

00:50:41.760 i almost said a child of privilege a man of privilege uh is still seen as more receptive

00:50:51.920 to uh working class people and disadvantaged people uh than uh uh the the the tory leader i

00:51:01.120 mean trudeau does have a certain charm and i think there is this perception that he's done his best

00:51:08.880 during this time of pandemic and lockdown.

00:51:13.280 At least I think many Canadians feel that way.

00:51:17.200 But at the same time, I think the Liberal Party

00:51:22.740 is simply better at disseminating propaganda.

00:51:27.940 They're very good at using rhetoric like equality

00:51:34.300 and diversity and tolerance, rhetoric that's obviously

00:51:38.580 to their advantage when tories use that rhetoric it does it just doesn't fit them nor should it

00:51:45.300 i think these words uh invite or ought to invite great suspicion but from a purely uh political

00:51:52.700 perspective liberals have always been better uh propagandists and as a result uh they they're

00:52:01.220 they're more effective or more successful a better propagandist indeed it's been

00:52:07.880 but but but isn't that somewhat a cultural thing too are not are not those of us those of us who

00:52:16.120 who have friends to the left they always they're always better storytellers in some respects than

00:52:21.240 than those of us to the right uh it's not that the right can't tell stories they're very good

00:52:25.460 they're very good at history perhaps even embellishing history but but stories that

00:52:29.880 point towards the future or a vision of the future is it it's a purely culture or psychological

00:52:35.220 trait or does it have some more depth than that yeah i'm not sure how much depth is involved but i

00:52:42.440 i think when a party can position itself as more compassionate than its main rival on the right

00:52:50.620 then it then obviously it's going to do well in a time of uncertainty and anxiety over uh not not

00:52:59.320 just COVID, but other challenges. So I think this is what makes the Liberal Party one of the most

00:53:07.280 successful political machines in the history of the Western world. I mean, credit where it's due,

00:53:13.360 right? The Liberals are very good at using rhetoric or propaganda that appeals to the

00:53:24.640 the democratic psyche uh they're they're able to use uh rhetoric in almost a quasi-religious way

00:53:32.960 uh where words like diversity and tolerance and inclusivity uh almost become uh

00:53:42.480 new god-like words that uh require uh not just obedience but almost worship

00:53:50.080 in the Canadian public square.

00:53:52.880 So I think the Liberals really understand their voter base

00:53:59.380 who respond to this language, even if it is just empty rhetoric.

00:54:07.100 But they've been far more successful.

00:54:10.920 Far more successful.

00:54:13.980 Maybe what's needed then is just an totally alternative

00:54:18.240 conservative discussion but but one of the problems i find when it comes to conservative

00:54:23.120 discussions or conservative rhetoric is that if i've if i've learned anything from my experience

00:54:29.540 in politics and analyzing what's happened over the years is that austerity gets you the votes

00:54:36.820 the first time around and loses you the the votes the next time around so you can talk about how

00:54:42.360 there's government waste and everything else and indeed there's a lot of government largesse and

00:54:46.560 that needs to be taken care of but what always seems to happen is that it's always frontline

00:54:51.040 staff that get cut so of course it's it is the least of these and those who actually need access

00:54:56.020 to frontline people that that don't have the means to go to a private clinic or whatever else

00:55:01.280 they they lose so somehow the the senior bureaucrats always keep their positions and

00:55:07.180 the middle managers always keep their positions but it's it's you know again and most people who

00:55:11.120 would actually probably be most identifiable with the working class and the people they're serving

00:55:15.160 across from them at the wicket those people are the ones who get cut and that seems to be

00:55:20.300 the conservative problem is that it can't get out of this boxed in kind of pigeonhole

00:55:25.420 that it's just pegged you guys always cut frontline staff you never you always promise

00:55:31.880 a more efficient government but all you ever do is just cut frontline staff and that hurts people

00:55:36.400 and it takes people's jobs away and stuff like that and i think that that's a that's a narrative

00:55:41.460 that needs to be countered by conservatives pretty strongly.

00:55:44.080 I think a lot of people at the bottom rung,

00:55:47.120 even in the civil service,

00:55:48.200 are actually pretty conservative in their personal lives.

00:55:51.540 And they would be happy to see their overseers lessened

00:55:56.660 and to have more of their own brethren on the front line

00:55:59.720 so they can lighten the load

00:56:00.840 and have less people over them

00:56:02.240 who they don't really know what they do for a living either.

00:56:04.720 And they would like to see that reduced.

00:56:08.460 Yeah, I think that's a good point.

00:56:10.040 And even if austerity conservatism has some economic justification at times, it's hardly a vote getter, because I think Canadians have just got used to a very interventionist state that, at least in principle, is supposed to promote the common good or the general welfare.

00:56:35.360 i mean again these are terms that are that liberal party uh is quite uh comfortable with

00:56:42.240 of course the sad fact is or the unfair fact is that uh liberals can uh impose austerity measures

00:56:51.760 as well and sometimes that has cost them votes uh both the blood to the ndp uh as a result of that

00:57:00.560 uh certainly the the fruto liberals have completely abandoned the the austerity

00:57:07.440 liberalism of the past i'm thinking of the uh martin era of the 1990s and the early 2000s the

00:57:16.880 last thing that the liberals are interested in is balancing a budget or reducing uh the uh the 0.80

00:57:24.400 deficit or the national debt so the liberals have certainly cornered the market on the anti-austerity

00:57:33.360 uh kind of politics of our time which would explain in part why the ndp are not doing well

00:57:40.960 uh either because the liberals have already um really scooped up that voting block that would be

00:57:49.440 opposed to uh austerity so but yeah i i think you're right uh the the tories have to offer

00:57:57.280 alternatives that do not remind people of the image of the tory as cruel and scrooge-like

00:58:05.760 and uh indifferent to uh disadvantaged people but but at the same time i i think the tories

00:58:14.400 need to position themselves better as uh more fiscally responsible i i think one can do that

00:58:23.540 without necessarily threatening people with uh draconian austerity measures maybe we can do a

00:58:31.520 little bit of a history lesson here uh dr havers there's a there's a quite a question that's grown

00:58:36.680 in my mind is that a lot of a lot of conservatively minded people today or libertarian minded or even

00:58:43.140 even some social conservatives every now and again uh they reference the 19th century as like that

00:58:48.580 great age of classical liberalism and then of course the 20th century is seen as the growth

00:58:53.220 of the state of course the totalitarianism that came with it and i guess my question is is there

00:58:58.300 any reason as a conservative to hope that the mistakes of the 20th century are ever going to

00:59:03.440 be corrected income tax was supposed to be temporary for canada um the expansion of the

00:59:09.220 state in order to fight both the great wars uh has never left us and and indeed it is appears

00:59:16.460 that again the minimum the minimalist or the kind of freedom again of the 19th century the burgeoning

00:59:21.220 freedom jacksonian america uh the wild west um even even the beginnings of the railroad and

00:59:27.400 everything else this this kind of nascent freedom that happened particularly in the new world but

00:59:32.140 throughout the western world suddenly comes to an end with the great war is is made even worse in

00:59:37.020 the interwar period, and then is kind of solidly statized, you know, and there's a status element

00:59:42.820 forever, thanks to what happens in the Second World War. Is there any way out of that? 0.78

00:59:50.140 I'm inclined to say no. I mean, I don't think anybody wants to go back to the 19th century,

00:59:55.780 except people who romanticize the 19th century, but that's not going to happen. We're not going

01:00:04.480 to go back to a canada where the franchise uh was limited to a very small number of canadians

01:00:12.520 mainly uh male voters uh that's not going to happen and and any politician who proposes that

01:00:19.320 had better find a different job or career but i think the managerial state as i like to call it

01:00:26.860 uh is here to stay uh by that i mean a state that has to intervene in the economy and in

01:00:36.700 areas of social welfare uh to help people when they need help i i think that's going to stay

01:00:44.940 and there can be some tinkering or reduction uh of that role uh regarding the managerial

01:00:52.860 state but i i don't think we're going to be able to turn the clock back i think what should be

01:00:57.900 reversed though is what i would call the therapeutic state uh the managerial state on the one hand

01:01:04.700 which came out of the new deal era in the 1930s and of course its counterpart in canada

01:01:12.940 very legitimately responded to challenges of economic stability unemployment etc

01:01:19.420 But the therapeutic state is really a creation of the late 1960s, in which you have a state that's concerned with the consciousness of people.

01:01:30.320 And it goes back to the era of Diefenbaker I referred to.

01:01:34.220 The therapeutic state wants to practice therapy on the population by tracking prejudice, real or imagined, or by tracking attitudes that are un-Canadian.

01:01:46.480 I think that state is far more dangerous and far more destructive and, I would hope, far more unpopular than the managerial state.

01:01:57.980 And this is where I would go back to the focus on freedom.

01:02:02.860 Tories really have to push back on this therapeutic state that sees the role of the state as the arbiter of consciousness and thought and values.

01:02:15.820 uh none of which uh really resonates well with the canadian experience but the liberals are

01:02:24.060 very comfortable with that that's why they're trying to revamp anti-hate speech laws

01:02:29.580 uh that's why they often give the impression that right-leaning canadians are just the most

01:02:35.660 dangerous people in the world of course they get a lot of their ideas from the democratic party

01:02:40.540 uh which does the same thing south of the border so i think that state that state which uh is

01:02:48.700 preoccupied with the consciousness of canadians needs to be uh pushed back otherwise we're we're

01:02:55.560 going to lose our freedoms and uh they won't be recovered uh any as a result indeed indeed it

01:03:06.340 And let's parse this a little bit more for the viewers and the listeners, just a little bit more, because even I sometimes think I miss, well, I use these words kind of interchangeably, but I know the managerial state versus the therapeutic state, when we think of the managerial state, what I really think of mostly actually is kind of like basically hospital administrators, really.

01:03:28.640 I think of non-clinical staff pulling the levers of power inside of a hospital, which is kind of like, well, why is there a single non-clinical person here who isn't also a janitor?

01:03:39.780 This is a hospital. It's a place of healing people and treating the sick.

01:03:44.100 I understand somebody needs to count some beans somewhere to ensure that the lights stay on.

01:03:48.180 But the idea that there would be anybody other than clinical staff in here makes no sense to me.

01:03:52.420 And yet there's a whole host of managers doing the business of managing, which appears to be meetings, finger sandwiches, brainstorming, visions, values, posters on the wall through the comms team, which is another group of exempt staff, and a lot of busy work that really doesn't necessarily help anybody get well.

01:04:12.860 but but they're they're clearly trying to i guess keep the rank and file in an orderly fashion and

01:04:17.960 make sure there's somebody at a desk somewhere in order to receive you when you come in for triage

01:04:22.100 when we talk about the therapeutic state it's something a little bit different uh and and

01:04:27.760 the idea that people would would need the state to help them i don't know get over their anger

01:04:34.020 get over their issues uh try to try and teach them how to be better people not just economically

01:04:41.220 but psychologically i think i think that is a dangerous thing and maybe i don't know is it all

01:04:46.900 just one flew over the cuckoo's nest or is there something a little bit more nuanced to that story

01:04:51.200 yeah it's worth noting that we already have laws against speech that is threatening or slanderous

01:05:00.200 or libelous uh so it does raise a question why are liberals uh trying to bring back section 13 or

01:05:08.520 or the old law against hate speech that the Harper administration got rid of years ago.

01:05:17.400 I think the official answer is that hate is growing, prejudice is growing.

01:05:23.660 We have to clamp down on it.

01:05:26.440 But it also raises a question that I think any classical liberal would raise,

01:05:32.340 and that is who defines what hate is?

01:05:36.000 Do we want bureaucrats to do that? 1.00

01:05:38.520 You mentioned managers or administrators in a hospital who I think could be trusted in the role of making sure that a hospital doesn't go broke or managing it efficiently.

01:05:54.900 I don't think Canadians have a problem with that.

01:05:57.120 We do need efficient managers to be in charge of governments or corporations, depending on the responsibility that they have.

01:06:09.160 But monitoring consciousness, monitoring speech, monitoring thoughts and opinions, I don't think anybody has the expertise to determine what exactly is offensive and what isn't.

01:06:26.420 or at least they shouldn't be trusted with that kind of responsibility.

01:06:31.720 And, of course, the very term therapeutic state implies

01:06:34.520 that a large part of the population are neurotic or repressed.

01:06:42.880 As you said, they don't know how to deal with their anger.

01:06:46.820 But it's not the purpose of the state to be a therapist.

01:06:51.260 That's something new, not just in the Canadian experience,

01:06:55.380 But even in the United States, which has a very strong tradition of freedom of speech, and of course, different European countries have imposed anti-hate speech laws as well.

01:07:09.420 Of course, usually hate speech is associated with the right.

01:07:13.380 So it's already a political agenda on the part of the therapeutic state, which obviously raises questions about how objective or unbiased these bureaucrats are going to be.

01:07:25.560 this arbitration of consciousness or this this design to form the consciousness of the people

01:07:32.680 uh which which definitely definitely had a lot of a lot of play in the totalitarian regimes

01:07:38.480 of the interwar period and of course later uh throughout the 20th century i mean it maybe this

01:07:45.100 is a bit of a reach but didn't didn't we kind of invite this upon ourselves as as we in the west

01:07:51.100 went went through modernity if we were going to abstract uh values from or or at least the

01:07:58.040 value-making role of of the church or religion of of worship or whatever of of pastors and priests

01:08:06.660 in in the populace if that role was going to be reduced and reduced and reduced uh as secularism

01:08:12.920 did uh do that did did we not invite that somebody would step into that vacuum and is that is that

01:08:18.940 not in a sense somewhat the socially conserved argument nowadays of like well the state the

01:08:23.280 state has to retract in so many respects because it is forming the consciousness of people and

01:08:27.600 until you get it to retract it will just be there and it'll fill that vacuum fill that gap

01:08:32.380 that's right i mean i i i don't think uh the liberals will necessarily be stopped

01:08:41.760 from uh bringing in uh stronger anti-hate speech laws i mean if they're re-elected god forbid

01:08:48.020 But if they're reelected, I think they'll be fully committed to that type of agenda.

01:08:54.260 And part of the problem, too, is that many voters, not just in Canada, but across the Western world, don't see a problem with governments clamping down on so-called hate speech.

01:09:08.260 I mean, who could be against policies that restrict or eliminate hatred?

01:09:14.280 But, of course, people have to think about what is meant by hatred or what is meant by offensive speech.

01:09:22.720 I mean, if somebody is critical of the liberal government, is that offensive?

01:09:27.860 Is that hateful or is that legitimate dissent?

01:09:31.980 I would think maybe just the Augustinian inside of me, but I would think that all governments are sinful.

01:09:38.700 I mean, now it's time for a little theology here.

01:09:41.880 All governments are frail and sinful in the sense that no government really wants criticism.

01:09:51.780 And usually we think of that attitude as linked to totalitarian governments.

01:09:57.460 Of course, they won't tolerate criticism and they'll suppress it quite brutally.

01:10:02.360 But unfortunately, it's true of democracies as well.

01:10:05.360 I mean, despite the lip service given to freedom, I think most elected politicians, frankly, do not want to be criticized.

01:10:15.360 And the fact that they can't control the flow of information and speech on social media, I think, bugs the heck out of them.

01:10:23.400 And as a result, if they see an opportunity to restrict that speech or to restrict criticism, even legitimate criticism of government policies, they will take that stand and call it a clamp down on hate speech.

01:10:44.140 Indeed, they will. There's no question. I mean, I mean, if you could if you could silence and silence and control your opposition with complete impunity, like who wouldn't?

01:10:53.400 it's a terrible temptation

01:10:56.200 it's a diabolical deal

01:10:57.800 you can do whatever you want

01:10:59.540 without any worries

01:11:01.740 about who's coming down

01:11:03.760 to tell you what's what next

01:11:06.000 I mean, speaking of theology

01:11:08.560 it's one of those things

01:11:10.100 from the beginning of this year

01:11:11.580 I kind of resolved that I would get through

01:11:13.780 the good book in a year

01:11:15.860 through all of the Bible

01:11:16.740 and somebody's reading it on this audio thing

01:11:19.880 and as I get through it

01:11:22.460 and now I'm into the Old Testament kings.

01:11:24.360 I mean, this is the story over and over again.

01:11:26.720 Only the prophet ordained by above

01:11:28.960 is able to tell the king he has no clothes

01:11:31.640 or he has done a terrible thing.

01:11:33.180 And we need this criticism,

01:11:36.060 whether it's a democracy

01:11:37.400 or whether it's just an autocracy.

01:11:40.000 Obviously, the self-criticism is necessary.

01:11:42.320 It's been necessary since the beginning of time,

01:11:44.260 but it's not well taken often.

01:11:46.280 It's often rather...

01:11:49.180 It causes a lot of anger

01:11:50.940 and the person who's getting criticized.

01:11:53.940 Well, that's right.

01:11:55.100 And of course, most voters will shake their heads

01:11:58.640 over any association between democracy on the one hand

01:12:03.600 and tyrannical measures on the other.

01:12:06.260 I mean, I think we, not just in Canada,

01:12:09.520 but in the Western world,

01:12:10.980 are moving towards something

01:12:12.420 called democratic totalitarianism.

01:12:15.900 That was a term coined by James Burnham,

01:12:18.920 a famous right-wing thinker from the 20th century.

01:12:24.820 Burnham argued in a few of his books

01:12:27.580 that democracies can become totalitarian,

01:12:32.620 not because democracies will engage

01:12:37.760 in the same brutal tactics that the Nazis 0.75

01:12:40.480 or the Stalinists in Russia practice.

01:12:45.840 I mean, democracies don't have to be brutal.

01:12:47.920 All they need to do is use propaganda in order to convince the people that this is for their own good.

01:12:56.480 And unfortunately, many voters are quite happy to sacrifice their freedoms if that means fighting something called hatred without actually worrying about the ramifications of that.

01:13:11.360 So that's what concerns me. I think there'll always be a high number of voters who don't really want their freedoms, unless it's a freedom to consume, like to buy stuff online or go to the shopping mall.

01:13:26.660 That freedom is very important to voters, as long as they have their technical gadgets to distract them from politics.

01:13:39.220 But as far as intellectual freedom or religious freedom or the freedom to disagree, I'm not sure that a majority of Canadians necessarily care about those freedoms.

01:13:54.840 I hope we do. Otherwise, we're going to see a therapeutic state growing in leaps and bounds in the years to come.

01:14:07.360 I must admit that I was consulting the other week on the show. I put it up on the screen there. It was the second coming by Yates. It did seem like the best lacked all conviction and the worst were full of fury.

01:14:24.840 But it's it's if if we're going to try and map our way out of there and and and get out of I think there's another Canadian thinker, his name escapes me, but he talks about socialistic or tyrannical, socialistic, collectivistic, but libertinism.

01:14:42.700 Right. So you can you can consume what you want. You can do whatever you want to do in your bodily autonomy when it comes to sex and and or your gluttony and whatever. But you but but of course, there's no freedom. You can't shop for your medicine. You can't shop for for your insurance. Right. At least in British Columbia, you can't shop for anything else.

01:15:00.860 You have no choices around anything that kind of might have brick and mortar ramifications on your life or principles of freedom.

01:15:08.380 But you can you can watch whatever you want on the Internet and you can you can copulate with whoever you want to and you can buy whatever you want on Amazon.

01:15:15.160 It seems like we might be there.

01:15:16.760 Yeah, this is a new type of social contract, very different from the traditional liberal social contract, which emphasized the desirability of a limited state, a state that basically respects and preserves the private sphere of life.

01:15:39.040 But if people simply equate the private sphere of life with consumption, as you suggested, why should they care about whether the government will restrict their right to disagree or their right to embrace ideas that may well be wrong, but that is an expression of their freedom to disagree.

01:16:05.060 So I think it is a type of new social contract.

01:16:11.060 I mean, let's take a controversial example.

01:16:13.880 It's perfectly legal to change your gender now in Canada, 0.99

01:16:18.360 but it's not legal to criticize the politics of gender constructivism.

01:16:26.720 So I think many Canadians would see the first freedom as important,

01:16:31.540 but then would be critical of the freedom to disagree or to object to gender constructivism.

01:16:41.400 So I think that's disturbing.

01:16:44.460 If people no longer have the freedom to disagree, then really they don't have any freedom.

01:16:51.400 And I think, again, it's sad that many people are just satisfied with the freedom to consume products

01:16:59.820 that they probably don't need anyway.

01:17:01.540 i mean you're you're an educator uh you've been an educator for for years it it you know as as

01:17:09.620 you bring students into contact with some of these ideas have you have you seen a change in

01:17:14.660 the students that you know when you were trying to introduce concepts to them you know in another

01:17:19.920 time maybe they were more open to questions around these things or having lively debate around these

01:17:25.200 concepts and these principles and and contesting with one another but but today is there more

01:17:30.660 conformity and less and less

01:17:32.760 disagreement about what ought

01:17:34.760 to be, or even perhaps a fence taken

01:17:36.720 at the idea that there was ever somebody

01:17:38.980 who, I guess you could use all their identity

01:17:40.800 tropes, right? There was a cisgendered 1.00

01:17:42.960 white dead male somewhere in the

01:17:44.880 past who maybe proposed at some

01:17:46.900 point that, you know, like there was supply and demand

01:17:49.020 and like there should be labor applied

01:17:50.980 to items in the material world

01:17:52.900 and that becomes property, that somehow

01:17:54.760 that all has to be dismissed because it obviously

01:17:56.820 is being reasoned from a wrong place.

01:17:59.420 Yeah, I think there has been definitely a shift in academia, not just my own university.

01:18:07.760 I mean, in fairness, there's always been conformity.

01:18:10.280 There's never been such a thing as unlimited freedom of speech.

01:18:14.540 I mean, the old bourgeois ethos that once dominated North America did not allow unlimited freedom of speech.

01:18:25.000 there were still rules and unwritten restrictions.

01:18:30.740 But, yeah, I'm inclined to say, without sounding too nostalgic about the past,

01:18:38.420 that there was more freedom of speech in academia even 20 years ago than there is today.

01:18:45.580 I mean, one thing that strikes me is that the Marxist professors with whom I studied

01:18:51.160 as an undergraduate, most of them have passed on by now, were quite tolerant. They were quite open

01:18:59.340 to dialogue. They didn't mind being challenged by uppity undergraduates who thought they knew

01:19:05.880 everything. But they enjoyed the give and take of the classroom and were not offended by

01:19:15.780 disagreement. Without generalizing too much, I think many people on the left today in academia

01:19:23.560 do not have that kind of easygoing tolerance. They tend to believe that if you disagree

01:19:30.560 with me, you're not just wrong, you're a reprobate. You should be cast out. There's almost something 0.94

01:19:37.260 quasi-religious about this attitude. I think the left itself has changed. The left, again,

01:19:46.140 without sounding too nostalgic, was somewhat more liberal or pluralist in tolerating the exchange

01:19:54.880 of ideas, but that kind of left is an archaic left. It's going the way of the dodo bird and

01:20:02.440 being replaced, I think, by many people who are not tolerant at all, despite their lip service to

01:20:11.040 tolerance. One of the things that's kind of an interesting sidebar within this discussion is

01:20:16.960 that on this channel, particularly this show, we've had multiple discussions. Some of our

01:20:23.040 regular contributors are actually Marxians. And actually, you know, I've got one guy who calls

01:20:27.500 himself an old school Leninist. I got another guy who calls himself a Marxian. And they like to

01:20:31.880 wax philosophical every Thursday explaining

01:20:33.740 from their perspectives what exactly is going wrong

01:20:35.840 and ironically the only place they have to talk

01:20:37.820 about it is here on a right wing channel

01:20:39.740 because they couldn't get a hearing on the left

01:20:41.820 maybe something that

01:20:43.600 you can articulate for us a little bit

01:20:45.780 is as somebody who

01:20:47.820 had dealings with

01:20:49.460 Marxism in its time and Marxian

01:20:51.760 ideas in its time and how things have evolved

01:20:53.700 from here, one of the ideas that

01:20:55.760 my other two contributors contend

01:20:57.940 is that political

01:20:59.900 correctness is actually an imposition

01:21:01.800 that it actually doesn't follow proper Marxist theory at all

01:21:05.140 because it causes division amongst the underclass

01:21:08.020 that would need to have solidarity to overcome the oligarchs.

01:21:12.760 And it actually plays into the hands of the oligarchs 0.73

01:21:16.980 to have these divisions within people who are underprivileged.

01:21:22.200 What happened there?

01:21:23.540 How did the workers' revolution turn into a fistfight

01:21:28.240 and a bit of a catfight amongst non-profits

01:21:30.980 over whose pronouns are better.

01:21:34.720 Yeah, exactly.

01:21:35.340 Well, one of the ironies of the post-Marxist left

01:21:38.520 is that it's abandoned any serious discussion

01:21:41.020 of social class, which, of course, was central,

01:21:43.960 not just to the Marxist left,

01:21:45.660 but to the old left in general.

01:21:48.020 If there's any discussion of class or social class

01:21:52.120 to be had today, it tends to be on the right,

01:21:55.500 which is something that I didn't really anticipate

01:21:57.380 10 years ago.

01:21:59.480 I would have been astounded if somebody had told me that today the right would be the real movement concerned with social class or a class divide.

01:22:12.620 I mean, there are still some hardcore Marxists who are focused on class, but the more powerful or more prevalent left doesn't want to deal with class.

01:22:24.140 Of course, it wants to deal with race. 0.69

01:22:25.840 I mean, Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility, has said this more than once, that the focus on race is far more important than a focus on class.

01:22:37.820 So what everyone thinks about that, that's quite a shift in the history of the left.

01:22:42.820 And related to that, who would have predicted that the left would cozy up to big business, especially big tech or other corporations that have embraced not just the rhetoric, but the policies of so-called progressivism today?

01:23:02.820 I certainly would not have been able to anticipate that years ago.

01:23:07.240 So the left is not really anti-capitalist anymore, despite some rhetorical excesses.

01:23:14.460 They've made their peace with capitalism, or at least with certain sectors of capitalism.

01:23:20.860 And their aim is not to heal or address the class divide, but rather to clamp down on anybody who dissents from what they call their anti-racist agenda.

01:23:36.820 Although I think they themselves are engaging in racism on their own.

01:23:42.600 So, yeah, the left has really changed.

01:23:45.240 In a way, this creates an opportunity for the right, though.

01:23:47.660 I think we talked about this.

01:23:48.920 But if the populist right can, again, take advantage of this class issue, the class divide, which is getting worse and worse,

01:24:02.880 then there's some electoral potential there.

01:24:07.660 But so far, I think, as we just discussed, the Tories have been outmaneuvered by the Liberals, at least for now.

01:24:17.500 I'm not sure if the Liberals have any real solutions to the problem of home ownership or the decline of the middle class in Canada.

01:24:25.840 We'll have to see.

01:24:26.940 it's it's a great irony isn't it that uh i mean again when dr seuss was getting banned uh i my

01:24:35.360 in a show that i used to do well it's on hiatus uh but when one of those contributors aaron ekman

01:24:40.680 uh we were we were all co-hosting he we would we would sit there when we kind of go back and forth

01:24:44.860 he'd be the left-wing guy i'd be the right-wing guy and one of the jokes that we made while we're

01:24:48.340 both discussing this whole thing where they've just canceled dr seuss is that aaron looks at me

01:24:53.500 He's like, you know, I don't really understand it because, you know, from my parents' perspective and from my perspective, because his parents were pretty left wing, too.

01:24:59.320 It's like he was one of our guys. I'm like, yeah, from our perspective, he was one of your guys.

01:25:03.480 And I don't know when we decided that Dr. Seuss was somehow, you know, a crazy right winger.

01:25:08.800 But he that was just like we were both laughing.

01:25:11.920 I was like, I don't know who's decided that, you know, Dr. Seuss is Goebbels.

01:25:16.180 But I don't I don't agree with that assessment.

01:25:19.200 And it's funny that you make this point about the class divide being ignored, because at some point, I'm sure that a left wing undergrad or graduate student, for that matter, is going to start writing a paper or thesis about how obviously, you know, Victor Hugo and and Charles Dickens need to be banned.

01:25:35.260 Because because despite the fact that they tried to do so much for the underclass, they were obviously just people of privilege and they have no right to speak. 0.96

01:25:42.160 They should be taken off the shelf.

01:25:43.400 well that's right and just to connect this back to the the hate speech issue i i think people

01:25:50.160 in the left who support anti-hate speech laws because they assume that these laws will go

01:25:56.300 after those terrible right-wingers are being really naive uh because the left will cancel

01:26:03.700 its own heroes or its own present-day celebrities and as you said that's just happening i was just

01:26:10.000 reading this morning that a statue of emily murphy uh one of canada's most famous feminists

01:26:16.460 part of the famous five uh i think her statue in edmonton uh was vandalized with red paint

01:26:23.200 because uh she was a feminist who happened to have racist views who happened to endorse eugenics 1.00

01:26:30.800 and other nasty ideas that hopefully we have completely done away with.

01:26:37.840 So I think eventually the left will devour itself.

01:26:45.780 I mean, this is what happens with any revolution.

01:26:48.460 The revolution will devour its own architects because nobody is morally pure at the end of the day.

01:26:56.740 And as a result, I think this new left will end up alienating or splintering important parts of its own coalition, which I think is quite shaky.

01:27:14.040 I mean, it's too bad that Donald Trump is no longer president from a leftist point of view, because I think hatred of Trump was probably the one thing that united all these different factions on the left.

01:27:26.900 And now that he's gone, the big differences between these factions will become more obvious.

01:27:36.760 And I think one faction will end up accusing the other of engaging in hate speech or celebrating the wrong heroes or not pulling down the right statues and so forth.

01:27:49.720 it and i think that a lot of this is all connected back to again a sense of a sense of place or a

01:27:56.340 lack thereof um and uh one of my one of my favorite quotes is always of course i will not raise my

01:28:02.100 hand against virginia um whatever one might say of of the lost cause uh and and of the various

01:28:07.940 individuals involved with it in the end also a sense of place and fundamental loyalty is an

01:28:13.300 important one i think a strong value regardless of your of your left or right leanings the problem

01:28:18.560 is though that that we live in a time where there is no sense of place people are cosmopolitan either

01:28:23.840 by choice or by force they can't afford a home in their hometown they have to move somewhere else

01:28:28.480 they can't can't get decent work in where they grew up they have to go somewhere else is that

01:28:34.100 rootlessness also a part of the chaos we're sensing that that the people don't have a sense

01:28:39.780 of place a sense of regardless of national identity they don't have a sense of local identity because

01:28:44.520 they don't have a neighborhood. They don't have a home. Well, that's right. If people,

01:28:48.920 especially young people, no longer feel that they have a vested interest in the system

01:28:53.400 and, for example, cannot afford a home or will not have the money to raise children

01:29:01.620 or to have a job that places them in the middle class, that's a very dangerous situation for any

01:29:09.660 political party right or left as I think the the extinction or decline of the

01:29:19.740 middle class is a dangerous threat that not only Canada faces but the Western 1.00

01:29:29.580 world as well because if we don't have a middle class we're not going to have a

01:29:34.540 real democracy i think barrington moore famously said no bourgeois no democracy i mean we'll have

01:29:43.340 a kind of democracy which is governed by shall we say the mob or whoever shows the loudest but

01:29:51.580 we're not going to have a democracy that respects the rule of law or freedom of speech or other

01:29:59.420 important restraints on public authority uh so no middle class no democracy i i think it's kind

01:30:07.840 of funny i've had this discussion with some of my leftist friends as well there's i mean on a good

01:30:11.640 day on a good day i sympathize with orwell and on a bad day i i have i i have less doubts about some

01:30:17.620 of franco's uh designs and so it's this is the problem we we we and if you had told me that 10

01:30:24.580 years ago too it's like well it's like you know you you would meet people who would kind of sit

01:30:29.000 there and be like you know what i i don't know if if uh if if franco and the gang were wrong all the

01:30:34.740 time in or the other way too it's like well you know i like i like uh what or what was trying to

01:30:40.220 do but i i also disagree with maybe his methodology if you told me 10 years ago people are going to

01:30:44.600 have discussions like that where they were where literally either the foundations of democracy

01:30:48.660 were being shaken to the point that people were kind of trying to pick which kind of totalitarianism

01:30:53.420 they thought was best.

01:30:55.820 I think you

01:30:57.520 and I would both laugh that off. I think we would both

01:30:59.420 laugh, that's hilarious. Nobody's going to have a serious

01:31:01.600 discussion about it. No one's going to have a forum

01:31:03.340 about that somewhere except for someone living

01:31:05.360 in their mom's basement. It's like, no, there are

01:31:07.380 people who are legitimately all

01:31:09.340 but getting into street fight. We see this in America

01:31:11.580 and in some places in Canada as well.

01:31:13.340 We saw people, whether

01:31:15.360 it was Antifa or BLM, and then

01:31:17.340 there was people who called themselves

01:31:19.580 patriots and all sorts of things.

01:31:21.120 on the other side that society is clearly dividing because the system that we're in right now is not

01:31:26.140 working for a lot of people well that's right and and the center uh will not hold or and uh

01:31:34.240 it's legitimate to ask whether there is a center anymore i mean much of what uh president biden

01:31:40.820 is doing in the united states is far to the left of of obama uh and even farther to the left of

01:31:48.960 the Clinton administration of the 1990s. And yet, of course, it's all presented as mainstream and

01:31:56.440 moderate and not radical at all. But meanwhile, yeah, I think you're right. Polarization will

01:32:05.440 just continue. And we haven't quite seen that in an obvious sense in Canada, not yet. But of course,

01:32:13.620 there are serious regional divides that are fueling polarization as well. So the idea that

01:32:21.620 somehow our liberal democracies can depend on a consensus which encourages bipartisan

01:32:29.280 collaboration is just becoming an illusion because so many people feel alienated from

01:32:37.880 the political system again across the western world uh so i i think we're we're in for very

01:32:44.840 interesting times uh interesting times are not necessarily good or stable times of course but

01:32:51.880 uh and what's further depressing is that we don't seem to have a political leadership that really

01:32:57.240 understands uh how dangerous uh these times are and how there really is no political center anymore

01:33:07.880 no and and one of the one of the things that shows just how far gone we are again again you

01:33:17.760 know you and i are sitting down 10 years ago somebody walks up to us and says oh yeah there's

01:33:21.720 a whole bunch of churches burning we're both like well yeah i mean in the middle east obviously or

01:33:25.560 sudan or or or in north africa with boca haram and it's like no no no no there's uh there's the

01:33:32.660 problem is that we're we have we have churches burning in canada and uh and and we'd both look

01:33:39.420 at each other again we'd be like that's not happening that that's nonsense that's something

01:33:42.480 that happens over there not over here i i'd be interested to get your take on on what's happening

01:33:47.580 right now with with the oh yeah uh not not only do we have churches burning but uh we also have uh

01:34:02.660 uh powerful people in the media and in politics at least some powerful people who are either

01:34:11.260 downplaying the seriousness of these church burnings or even celebrating these church

01:34:17.640 burnings like uh that representative of the bc civil liberties association uh not too long ago

01:34:24.480 So, again, I wouldn't have been able to anticipate any of this years ago.

01:34:31.780 And, again, it raises questions about who exactly is our leadership class.

01:34:40.120 I mean, are they comfortable with any traditions in the history of Canada?

01:34:44.900 Or do they want to reinvent the entire country using not just propaganda, but also coercion?

01:34:55.880 But again, the problem is that I think many Canadians probably don't have a problem with many of these attitudes.

01:35:06.440 I think there probably are Canadians who think that the church burnings are understandable, as Gerald Butt put it.

01:35:13.320 And as long as you have that attitude, not just among our ruling class, let's say, but also the governed, it's very hard to convince the people that the rule of law is a good thing, that freedom of disagreement is a good thing, that we shouldn't try to demonize our entire history.

01:35:38.940 Again, I think that's what the right has to do

01:35:43.940 It has to engage in this re-education

01:35:47.420 And hope for the best

01:35:49.540 And it all falls into the same thing

01:35:54.540 Again, these questions of tradition, questions of narrative

01:35:57.120 The other big thing that's of course been happening throughout Canada

01:36:00.160 Longer than the church greetings

01:36:01.340 And will continue maybe after those finally extinguish themselves

01:36:05.440 If enough people are caught and punished

01:36:07.620 is the removal of statues and the

01:36:09.940 desecration of our

01:36:11.860 kind of monumental history

01:36:13.720 quite literally

01:36:15.020 in forms that are just kind of

01:36:18.040 bizarre. People who weren't

01:36:20.100 they were progressive for their time

01:36:21.940 but they've been dismissed. I mean you mentioned this earlier

01:36:23.940 when it came to the

01:36:25.920 suffragette but this is happening to John

01:36:27.920 A's statue. It's happening to

01:36:29.820 Queen Victoria's statue.

01:36:31.920 These symbols in

01:36:33.880 Canada are being torched

01:36:36.000 removed uh vandalized pushed over destroyed i mean i again i didn't think that i was entering

01:36:43.840 revolutionary france but apparently that's where i am yeah and i i think we both agree that

01:36:52.160 obviously canadians need to learn their history they need to learn that uh our history does

01:36:58.880 consist of periods of injustice and periods in which, you know, terrible things happen,

01:37:10.560 to put it very simply. So I don't think we want to support the erasure of history in that sense

01:37:17.460 either. But I guess the big question for me is, what is the new history that's being trotted out

01:37:25.560 here and who will present this alternative history and i i think unfortunately it will it'll

01:37:33.160 consist of people who are comfortable with the therapeutic state who want to expand the therapeutic

01:37:40.760 state to include as one of its functions uh the rewriting of history to equate canada with being

01:37:49.160 a genocidal nation that must be rebuilt uh from the ground up i mean that term genocide is is of

01:37:58.040 course a loaded term uh which is being bandied about i think in a very uh irresponsible way

01:38:05.400 i mean i i often ask my my diminishing number of friends on the left well are you comfortable with

01:38:12.680 that term genocide as it applies to canada because if you are you're basically putting canada on the

01:38:20.200 same immoral plateau as that of uh stalinist russia and nazi germany i mean one cannot celebrate 0.86

01:38:30.200 anything good about canada while at the same time saying that it perpetrated genocide when

01:38:35.720 that would be a contradiction

01:38:37.560 that's an exercise

01:38:40.160 in illogic

01:38:41.240 so I think this is what Canadians

01:38:43.520 have to think about but they also

01:38:45.900 have to think about who is presenting

01:38:47.740 this new type of

01:38:49.900 history and whether

01:38:51.740 it will actually do any good

01:38:53.620 or will in fact split the country

01:38:55.820 apart

01:38:56.220 and it doesn't get

01:38:59.860 much stronger than that

01:39:02.040 it really doesn't

01:39:03.080 We're here. We're here at the end of these things, and we wonder where it's headed to next.

01:39:09.260 And indeed, I think it's that simple. And maybe maybe we do have to ask Orwell for for his intercession on that count.

01:39:16.380 You know, I believe Samuel is is the donkey and in Animal Farm.

01:39:22.940 And he reminds everybody that, you know, if you didn't like if you didn't like your old masters, just wait till you've got your new ones.

01:39:28.860 This seems to be a perpetual amnesia when it comes to any revolution, right wing or left wing, any radical right or left, is that, you know, at some point the new oligarchs are going to show up and the new oligarchs might be far more cruel than the old oligarchs.

01:39:47.240 Well, that's right.

01:39:48.180 And I think that's where a knowledge of history is incredibly important.

01:39:52.320 I mean, I say that as a philosopher.

01:39:54.020 I mean, philosophy is important, too, but even more important, dare I say, is a knowledge of history.

01:40:03.760 And one of the most depressing lessons from history is that for most of human history, we did not have freedom.

01:40:13.500 Most of human history is really the history of not just violence, but tyranny, or at least governments that suppressed freedom or saw freedom as an alien idea.

01:40:24.020 the idea of freedom in the classical liberal sense is pretty new. It's a newcomer in the history of

01:40:31.420 civilization, perhaps 250 or 300 years old, which is just a drop in the bucket. Unfortunately,

01:40:40.400 human beings by nature do not desire freedom. Perhaps they desire freedom for themselves,

01:40:46.160 but not for others but that's not really freedom then so it's depressing that uh we

01:40:54.640 may be going back to a familiar pattern in history in which freedom just disappears

01:41:01.760 and uh going back to uh attitudes that i i think unfortunately are more natural to human beings

01:41:09.840 which is to be intolerant and disagreeable and willing to use coercion to get one's own way.

01:41:19.920 I hope I'm wrong about that.

01:41:22.300 But, again, the trend lines are not reassuring.

01:41:26.800 I believe, maybe as a concluding thought, I'm just recalling something that was made,

01:41:32.100 probably still one of the best speeches ever made at a modern conference by Mr. Stein,

01:41:39.640 anyways, at least one of his best little bits

01:41:41.380 when he addressed the Manning Conference, and I believe

01:41:43.760 in 2014.

01:41:45.720 And he made the point of

01:41:47.400 that freedom

01:41:49.580 is a rare thing, and at one point

01:41:51.600 in the 1940s,

01:41:53.580 there was not a free government

01:41:55.160 in the Eurasian continent.

01:41:57.840 It's from

01:41:58.480 Lisbon to Hong Kong,

01:42:01.620 there were no free governments.

01:42:04.520 They were all totalitarian,

01:42:06.380 and an entire

01:42:07.280 group entire populations of people of multiple races classes and creeds were were under the thumb

01:42:13.660 of of you know five people effectively and and we need to think about that and and i i at one point

01:42:21.040 the world managed to to to the free world what was left of it managed to get enough motivation

01:42:27.240 and and momentum that it went and reimposed freedom by defeating tyranny i don't know if

01:42:34.020 that same motivation lies inside

01:42:35.960 of us today to counter it, not just

01:42:38.080 in our own countries, but

01:42:39.860 abroad, but certainly in our

01:42:42.020 own minds, accepting tyranny

01:42:43.820 as a kind of

01:42:45.920 the

01:42:46.820 day's play

01:42:49.900 that that's how we are.

01:42:52.500 Yeah, to make matters worse,

01:42:54.280 we have representatives of China

01:42:56.200 and Iran

01:42:57.160 hectoring Canada about

01:42:59.840 its human rights record. I mean, that

01:43:01.920 would almost be funny if it weren't so grotesque but uh it is troubling that there's a new kind

01:43:09.020 of self-confidence on the part of dictatorships today not just china but also iran and others

01:43:16.080 who i think sense perhaps for some justification that the west is losing its resolve uh that the

01:43:23.920 West, including the United States, has lost its determination to stand up to dictatorships

01:43:32.160 and, meanwhile, is being bogged down over debates as to their moral legitimacy altogether.

01:43:40.680 So that's a troubling feature, because if people no longer believe in democracies, democracies

01:43:48.880 will not last.

01:43:51.360 And as a result, the alternative, which of course is dictatorship, becomes more palatable or at least is not seen as something inferior to democracy.

01:44:09.000 Yeah, the lights are going out all over the West, if we want to appropriate that particular line.

01:44:15.380 I do hope to see them lit again in our lifetime, but perhaps not.

01:44:18.960 uh that was that was a little bit of a downer but that i mean reality sometimes is that way

01:44:25.840 and that's why we console ourselves with philosophy uh and allow ourselves to have a

01:44:31.240 bit of a philosophic view perhaps we can end on on that old line by benedict a contemporary of

01:44:36.880 augustine at one point as augustine saw the world burn and was worried that it was all over i believe

01:44:42.340 benedict said pruned it grows again so we can only make that our prayer yeah and the good news is uh

01:44:48.720 with a nod to augustine is that none of this is inevitable i mean plato and to some extent

01:44:54.800 aristotle thought that it was inevitable that tyranny would replace democracy because they were

01:45:00.960 fatalists they were resigned to the cycles of fortune and misfortune but uh this is where i

01:45:06.160 like augustine augustine uh who admired plato still thought that no this is a matter of will

01:45:12.880 human beings, at least human beings who are open to the grace of God, are still responsible for

01:45:23.040 their actions. There's nothing inevitable about decline and fall. That is a choice that people

01:45:30.720 make. So like all choices, people need to think that through. Agreed. Agreed. Thank you so much

01:45:39.440 for joining us today and we hope to see you again soon thank you nathan absolutely

01:45:44.820 well we've come to the end of our time here today uh very thankful of course for dr haver's

01:45:53.160 contribution and what we have discussed here we went all over the place but in good places

01:45:57.560 uh fundamentally obviously uh the ethic of freedom needs to be reinvigorated throughout the west but

01:46:03.260 but particularly here in

01:46:05.260 Canada as we see 0.54

01:46:07.340 quite frankly just

01:46:08.780 slow acts

01:46:11.380 of cowardice to that precipice of

01:46:13.300 suicide when it comes to our civilization

01:46:14.920 that's what I see when it comes to our leadership

01:46:17.020 but whatever we'll do more hot takes like that

01:46:19.220 tomorrow. Of course we have Aaron on

01:46:21.240 tomorrow we don't have Stuart on tomorrow

01:46:22.900 Stuart is flying through the air

01:46:24.820 somebody asked me the other day if he bought some carbon

01:46:27.020 offsets we can ask him that later

01:46:29.260 the comments can come up for that

01:46:31.260 one if they want but the point is that

01:46:33.260 Stuart's not here, unfortunately, to teach us more about dependency theory and the issues thereof.

01:46:37.920 So we're going to have to figure out whether we're going to have Aaron on for the whole time or we're going to do some comment stuff at the end of tomorrow's show.

01:46:44.720 But in any case, what we're going to end on here now, of course, is the same thing we always end on, which is we're going to throw up the old email, remind people that if they would like to suggest guests and that sort of thing, bring it on.

01:46:56.040 We're happy to take those suggestions.

01:46:57.480 And the other thing we're going to bring up at the very end here is that I am getting married not so long from now.

01:47:06.760 And the question of when that hiatus is going to begin is up in the air.

01:47:11.220 I'm going to be discussing that with my overlords in Alberta, who are a little far away.

01:47:17.220 I got to find a time to kind of chat with them and figure out when exactly this hiatus is going to begin.

01:47:22.600 and you guys are gonna have I'm sure either something that replaces the show entirely as a

01:47:30.240 as a stand-in or a stand-in host for a while I'm just going to make sure that I you know consult

01:47:36.060 with both both both the people thereof and of course let all of you know our viewership and

01:47:41.780 listeners who I appreciate very much that that that is going to be an ongoing discussion I'm

01:47:46.820 not sure when exactly that hiatus is going to come to pass but it's important for you to be

01:47:50.800 given that forewarning. So you're not, you know, tuning in on a Tuesday and suddenly I've

01:47:54.900 disappeared. Uh, last points, uh, I guess would just be that again, uh, keep, you know, keep on

01:48:01.740 the straight and narrow, pray, pray for what's left of this country. And I am hopeful as well

01:48:07.480 that as we, uh, kind of journey forward, uh, we're able to kind of see what exactly, not just the

01:48:14.080 question of sovereignty, but also the wider question of regionalism and identity, uh, for

01:48:18.840 what it means to be, you know, at least a Western Canadian or someone who loves freedom,

01:48:23.420 what that could mean. We look forward to the federal election with some anxiety. I'm not sure

01:48:29.640 exactly how that's going to go. But hopefully, hopefully people make the right choices going on,

01:48:36.400 going on. Well, we hope. A couple of good comments here. Sheldon doesn't want me to disappear. He

01:48:42.940 still has to give me my rating on my hair uh and of course uh mr blair uh reminding me that

01:48:49.640 it's good it's good to be getting married that's awesome so that's all for us today uh that was

01:48:55.760 the last thing that's what escaped me two seconds ago when i looked like i was scrambling uh the

01:48:59.580 pipeline is on in a few minutes uh which i believe occurs always at uh what am i thinking 12 p.m

01:49:06.960 Mountain, 11 a.m. Pacific

01:49:09.440 on Wednesdays. So I'll throw

01:49:11.320 it to them right away. Thank you so much

01:49:13.280 for watching, and we'll see you again tomorrow

01:49:15.380 bright and early, 9 a.m. Pacific,

01:49:17.360 10 a.m. Mountain.

01:49:36.960 Amen.

Western Standard - July 15, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - July 14, 2021

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript