Western Standard - The 1867 Project - Why Canada should be cherished

00:00:00.000 Good day, Western Standard viewers. I'm Nigel Hannaford, opinion editor here at the Western Standard, an online publication.

00:00:08.380 I have with me today Dr. Mark Mielke, who is the author of the 1867 project, just published, Why Canada Should Be Cherished, Not Canceled.

00:00:21.340 Dr. Mielke is president of the Aristotle Foundation. He is also president of the Winston Churchill Society here in Calgary.

00:00:31.860 And he is the author of six books, formerly, one which is very much on the public mind at the moment, The Victim Cult,

00:00:42.460 in which he examines some of the trends in society that make life a little more difficult for all of us.

00:00:48.060 And looking back over his history, I've got this whole bookshelf of Dr. Mielke's books.

00:00:55.680 There's something about this which seems like it's a summation of a strain of thought that's been going on for more than 20 years.

00:01:06.460 Why did you write this book at this time, Mark?

00:01:10.360 Nigel, thanks for having me on.

00:01:11.840 Well, I think what's happening today, the best way to understand it, is when you hear people that want to cancel Canada,

00:01:20.140 sometimes literally, right, they think Canada is a genocidal nation state that somehow shouldn't be cherished.

00:01:27.120 Well, they're wrong on the first, and they're wrong on the second.

00:01:29.940 And what's happening these days is akin to people who want to take down an oak tree.

00:01:34.680 I love trees. One of my favorite trees is an oak tree.

00:01:37.040 Why? Because it's massive. It has a great canopy. It shelters people below it.

00:01:41.560 My car has been hit by hail a number of times.

00:01:43.680 If I'd been under an oak tree in a canopy, it probably would have been sheltered from the hail.

00:01:47.680 Countries are like that, right?

00:01:49.240 It takes a long time to build something successful.

00:01:51.960 And in the Anglosphere, anyway, and increasingly other countries around the world that value freedom of speech,

00:01:56.620 freedom of inquiry, capitalism, that sort of thing,

00:01:59.620 countries do take time to develop.

00:02:01.700 So, like an acorn that becomes an oak tree, what do you do as it grows?

00:02:07.660 Well, you make sure there's sunshine, which is kind of like freedom of expression.

00:02:12.620 You need water and nutrients to help the tree along.

00:02:17.040 That's replenishing, replenishes the tree.

00:02:19.420 And it's the same thing with countries, right?

00:02:21.260 You need freedom of expression.

00:02:22.560 You need nutrients for the country's ideas.

00:02:25.160 You also need resistance.

00:02:26.300 You know, wind can help an oak tree, you know, cement itself in the ground, anchor itself.

00:02:32.240 Well, we have people today, though, that will spot in history a limb on the oak tree and say,

00:02:36.560 well, that was, you know, it was a bad limb.

00:02:38.360 We should take down the entire tree.

00:02:40.120 No.

00:02:40.920 The fact that in Canada, 1867 or 1920, it wasn't perfect,

00:02:45.220 and they spot something bad in our history,

00:02:47.340 doesn't mean you take down the project that was Canada then or now.

00:02:50.680 So the problem today is we have people, though, that simplistically think that if something bad happened in history,

00:02:56.780 Canada has no credibility, and that somehow we should, what, start from year zero? 0.76

00:03:01.740 That's very silly. 0.64

00:03:03.240 It's also very dangerous. 0.94

00:03:04.120 But that's the best way to explain it, is that some Canadians, not a majority,

00:03:08.420 but they're influencing, I think, a great chunk of the population, think Canada isn't worth cherishing.

00:03:13.240 So myself and 19 other authors in the 1867 project disagree and say,

00:03:19.580 no, let's take another look at Canada in history and now,

00:03:23.580 and how can we renew this wonderful country that we have going forward?

00:03:28.080 So, Mark, in your book, you have got several chapters which I think are going to really surprise people

00:03:35.260 because you're bucking the mainstream consensus.

00:03:37.940 You are, for example, saying that Canada is not a systematically racist country.

00:03:46.820 All right, that goes very much against the progressive narrative.

00:03:53.780 Controversially, you're saying that the British Empire was a good thing.

00:03:57.120 I personally see no reason to dispute that, but others do.

00:04:01.260 And then, of course, you're saying, and I think this one must be generating a lot of heat for you,

00:04:06.840 so that John A. MacDonald, he whose statue is routinely pulled down as a protest,

00:04:13.340 actually saved more indigenous lives than any other prime minister.

00:04:18.500 Where do you get that from?

00:04:20.180 Well, we've got some very excellent authors in the 1867 project, right?

00:04:23.960 So there's 19 other authors.

00:04:25.840 And the authors you just mentioned now do a really great job of unpacking some of these modern-day claims,

00:04:31.080 which they would argue are false.

00:04:33.240 And some Canadians, most Canadians, I think, might have a sense that they're not getting the full history

00:04:38.660 or full explanation of something.

00:04:41.520 So what these authors do in the 1867 project is take these claims and unpack them.

00:04:46.280 So Matthew Lau on systemic racism.

00:04:48.600 We hear that a lot these days, that Canada is an institutionally racist country.

00:04:52.320 First of all, let's define that term.

00:04:54.240 Systemic racism, institutional racism, a century ago in San Francisco looked like this.

00:04:58.820 Whites wouldn't allow those of Chinese origin to enter their hospitals. 0.95

00:05:02.580 The Chinese of San Francisco had to build their own hospital because the whites wouldn't let them in. 1.00

00:05:07.100 That's institutional systemic racism.

00:05:09.320 If you don't allow Jews into university, or at least not to the proportion that they might enter based on test scores, 0.85

00:05:14.880 that was institutional racism.

00:05:17.480 So on and so forth.

00:05:19.460 But that's been illegal in Canada since at least the 1950s.

00:05:22.160 Ontario passed laws against discriminating based on race and gender and ethnicity and hiring and accommodation in 1951, 1952.

00:05:30.380 So let's not confuse what is institutional systemic prejudice then with the fact you can meet a bigot today.

00:05:38.540 But a bigot around, you meet a bigot on the street, that doesn't mean Canada is an institutionally racist society.

00:05:43.880 So Matthew Lau unpacks that a bit.

00:05:45.420 But he also goes into income statistics.

00:05:47.420 So, for example, when you compare incomes of whether it's males or females, what you find mostly is that if your ancestry is East Asian, for example,

00:05:58.620 you're at the top of the income heap, right?

00:06:01.400 Guys with pale faces like you and me are in the middle.

00:06:04.380 And if, you know...

00:06:05.960 You need to work harder, Mark.

00:06:07.360 Yeah.

00:06:08.220 And, you know, if you're of, you know, some other varieties of the rainbow, you know, you'll come under the middle, right?

00:06:15.040 But what Matthew does is he explains some things.

00:06:18.400 If, for example, you're a Taiwanese-Canadian, you know, or Korean or Japanese, first of all, your average age is older.

00:06:24.720 We make more money when we're older.

00:06:26.120 So that skews the statistics also.

00:06:29.200 And if you're younger, say, as an Indigenous person, the average, you know, Indigenous population is much younger than, say, a Japanese-Canadian.

00:06:35.580 So, again, those skew the income statistics.

00:06:37.320 Which means what?

00:06:37.960 Well, you can't blame stuff on racism that has to do with other factors.

00:06:42.860 Taiwanese-Canadians are among the most highly educated Canadians.

00:06:45.980 The more educated you are, the more money you make.

00:06:47.880 That's why you're on top of the income heap.

00:06:49.660 So what Matthew Lau tries to do is unpack that.

00:06:52.320 He does actually find systemic racism, but it's the kind of reverse racism today, which is justified by social justice activists.

00:07:00.160 And they no longer look at the individual, like Martin Luther King, in character and merit.

00:07:03.940 But they look at you as part of a collective that, you know, presumably, you, you know, your ancestors benefited from something 100 years ago.

00:07:10.940 So Matthew Lau unpacks that.

00:07:12.800 Now, Matthew is with the Fraser Institute, is he not?

00:07:15.100 Well, he's a scholar there, and he's also, he writes in the Financial Post every week.

00:07:20.840 Greg Piasatsky and John A. MacDonald.

00:07:23.380 Greg, citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, has an Indigenous, other Indigenous ancestry, French ancestry as well, Acadian ancestry.

00:07:31.360 Greg Piasatsky, he's a Toronto lawyer, who writes that Johnny MacDonald saved more Indigenous lives than any other prime minister.

00:07:38.900 How does Greg come to this conclusion?

00:07:40.920 Well, he comes to it honestly.

00:07:42.440 He says, examine the record.

00:07:44.000 Examine what Johnny MacDonald did.

00:07:45.480 So, for example, MacDonald, along with, you know, other colonials and British of the era, favored treaties.

00:07:51.120 Why?

00:07:51.820 They didn't want the Canadian West settled before treaties were in place, because they didn't want to see what happened south of the border.

00:07:57.740 Where there were Indian wars, and Indigenous folks in the United States suffered greatly, because settlers just came, didn't do treaties, just stole them, and murdered, in some cases, entire tribes.

00:08:10.160 So, Johnny MacDonald was conscious of that, as was the colonial government of the day, pre- and post-Confederation.

00:08:15.860 So, that's one thing.

00:08:17.280 The Northwest Mounted Police, its creation.

00:08:19.260 Part of the reason for its creation was to make sure the rule of law and order in the Canadian West existed.

00:08:25.820 And again, this is a British inheritance, right, that we're not going to take territory without treaties, you know, and the Royal Proclamation of 1763 is an example of that thinking.

00:08:36.620 So, Johnny MacDonald saved Indigenous lives because he wanted the rule of law, he wanted treaties, he wanted to defend the first settlers, so to speak, from later settlers.

00:08:46.680 And there are reasons for that.

00:08:48.040 So, also, smallpox epidemic.

00:08:51.660 Much of the Indigenous population across Canada was inoculated against the smallpox virus.

00:08:57.720 That's a MacDonald success, as well as the Liberal government before him.

00:09:00.700 So, and then lastly, perhaps the most contentious part of this, is famine relief on the prairies that Johnny MacDonald instituted.

00:09:09.300 There's a phrase from a critic of MacDonald, and Greg Piasatsky in this chapter references the book, where MacDonald talks about half rations for natives in Canada.

00:09:21.100 That was a reference to those off-reserve.

00:09:23.180 There was a deal under a treaty, the federal government was obliged, rightly, to, you know, provide rations on reserves as the buffalo were disappearing.

00:09:31.740 And they did, full rations.

00:09:33.400 But MacDonald gets into trouble because he's battling the Liberal opposition in Parliament, which doesn't, which wants much less spent on Indigenous Canadians of the day.

00:09:41.800 Saying, why are you spending all this money on Indians? 1.00

00:09:44.780 This is the Liberal opposition, you know, vis-a-vis MacDonald.

00:09:48.280 MacDonald defends his decision, says, no, we have to feed people.

00:09:51.160 Now, we're going to provide half rations off reserve, but full rations on reserve because we're encouraging them to go to reserve.

00:09:56.980 That's part of the treaty deals.

00:09:58.520 Now, that sounds harsh, and it was harsh.

00:10:00.220 These days, we would just say, forget the deal, forget the treaties, just feed people wherever they are with full rations.

00:10:06.280 So MacDonald can be criticized there.

00:10:08.480 What Greg tries to do, and the other authors in the 1867 project do, is provide context, history, what was happening at the time.

00:10:15.780 So Greg concludes, and again, you're right, it's probably the most controversial chapter for some.

00:10:21.160 Is that John A. MacDonald actually was a net benefit to Indigenous peoples, even though that's not how it's seen today.

00:10:28.680 But as Greg writes in his chapter, you know, John A. MacDonald hasn't changed.

00:10:32.800 The history of John A. MacDonald hasn't changed, but the perception of him has.

00:10:36.540 And that's because Canadians no longer know their own history. 0.57

00:10:39.200 I think we've actually had some of Greg's articles in the Western Standard in past months, so it's pleased to see his name in the book here.

00:10:48.120 And, you know, I'll let you talk about the British Empire another time, but why do some, I don't think it's everybody by any means,

00:10:59.000 but why do some Canadians think that Canada should be canceled and not celebrated?

00:11:04.560 I see a lot to celebrate here.

00:11:06.080 Why should we be ashamed of our past?

00:11:07.900 Well, we might have to bring in the British Empire to explain that. 0.76

00:11:10.320 So again, there's a simplistic view of history that I think people have.

00:11:13.680 But the British Empire, for example, and you know this, was the empire that abolished slavery around the world,

00:11:19.320 or fought, you know, fought slavery around the world,

00:11:21.320 and in most cases was able to abolish it in any territories they control.

00:11:26.500 Why do people think Canada needs to be called canceled today?

00:11:29.780 I think in part there's a couple of things going on there.

00:11:32.740 Number one, we have utopians today that look to the past and go, well, it wasn't perfect.

00:11:37.480 Therefore, we can't respect it or we can't celebrate it.

00:11:40.660 That to me is short-sighted.

00:11:43.280 And what I mean by utopians, though, is if you think about the 20th century,

00:11:47.140 the main utopian movement was Marxism.

00:11:49.000 And Marxists, you know, were wrong about pretty much everything,

00:11:52.820 the economy, human behavior, so on and so forth.

00:11:55.340 But I suppose at least a Marxist could argue their utopia they were going to create was in the future.

00:12:01.900 We have people today that look back in history, which by definition is closed.

00:12:05.940 You can't change it. It's done.

00:12:08.260 I think it should have been perfect, even though history contains imperfect human beings like today.

00:12:13.980 And so they're very immodest because they can't conceive of how 100 years from now,

00:12:17.760 someone may look at them or Nigel and Mark and say, what were you thinking?

00:12:22.260 And 100 years from now, find something that we believe today to be accurate and think, no, you're way off base.

00:12:28.400 Similarly, we have immodest people today, though, that can't conceive that they could be wrong about something.

00:12:32.920 But they also look at history in very simplistic terms.

00:12:35.240 And what I mean by that is this.

00:12:36.500 You know, in the 1950s, with due respect to John Wayne, I wouldn't want to have been an indigenous person in one of his productions 1.00

00:12:45.420 because they were always kind of the sidekick.

00:12:47.380 They were always, you know, the supportive role.

00:12:48.600 You know, I think it fairly can be described as not exactly friendly, you know, and not an accurate portrayal, you know, and somewhat even racist.

00:12:59.480 But that's flipped today, where indigenous good, colonial era bad.

00:13:04.400 That's simplistic, too.

00:13:05.540 One of the things the British Empire had to deal with, and in British Columbia, where I'm from originally, in the mid-19th century,

00:13:12.180 was slavery issues among the indigenous population.

00:13:16.320 So Governor James Douglas, in the mid-19th century, has to buy slaves from some First Nations to free them

00:13:22.000 because, you know, it's impossible, given the smallness of the British presence of the day,

00:13:26.540 to really abolish slavery in British Columbia.

00:13:28.560 And that didn't really get abolished until the late 19th century.

00:13:31.280 Now, I bring up the indigenous slavery in British Columbia, not to pick on indigenous folk,

00:13:35.440 but to simply say slavery was a reality of human history.

00:13:39.160 And if you simply look at history, you know, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, where the British did no wrong

00:13:45.320 and everybody else was, you know, inferior or the reverse today,

00:13:49.100 that's why the British Empire analyzed and it matter.

00:13:51.420 And Chris Champion does another chapter in the 1867 project as well.

00:13:55.240 But you have to look at history as the potential for good and evil in each one of our ancestors

00:13:59.620 and also take the good from the past.

00:14:02.400 So the British gave us the rule of law, capitalism, the rights of women. 0.94

00:14:06.100 These were ideas that, you know, can be lauded by anyone and should be kept, right?

00:14:12.240 My background is German, but I wouldn't recommend that we take much from the Germans historically.

00:14:16.220 So, look, I think the problem today is people are utopian.

00:14:20.720 I think they have a very black and white, really shallow view of history, 0.99

00:14:24.760 where they don't understand how to learn the right lessons from history.

00:14:28.220 So I think that's what's led to some of our modern day disputes.

00:14:31.540 Let me ask you this.

00:14:32.200 Do you think we're having a good faith discussion with the people who you describe as utopians?

00:14:38.500 Or is this actually a twisted narrative that they use in order to gain power,

00:14:44.980 political power at the expense of people who they perceive to be in power at the moment?

00:14:49.480 Well, I mean, I think two things are driving.

00:14:50.940 I do think people have some sincere ideas and wrong ideas about how to view Canadian history

00:14:55.580 and why we can't celebrate it.

00:14:57.300 So as I've explained, I think they're wrong in terms of their view.

00:15:00.700 But sure, I mean, power, you know, people in power sometimes, you know,

00:15:04.420 and if you're convinced of something, you don't like to be contradicted.

00:15:07.120 But that's precisely why we need to contradict them.

00:15:09.740 I mean, look, the way forward, again, back to the oak tree analogy,

00:15:14.140 why do oak trees need sunshine?

00:15:17.380 Because they expose flaws in the tree.

00:15:19.140 If you want to, you know, if you want to prune the tree, you're not going to do it at 2 a.m. in the morning.

00:15:22.580 You're going to do it, you know, the light of day.

00:15:25.120 When there are problems in a country like Canada,

00:15:27.300 the only way to correct those problems is to do some pruning in the light of free expression.

00:15:32.760 And so that's part of the book as well.

00:15:35.640 That's why the first part of the 1867 project goes through cancel culture.

00:15:39.040 And some of those examples in journalism, in politics, elsewhere,

00:15:43.660 but also some of the core problems today where Bruce Party from Queen's University,

00:15:49.580 the Toronto law, the Toronto University and the law professor at Queen's.

00:15:54.460 Party argues that, you know, we've succumbed to kind of a new Marxism where everything is about power

00:15:59.440 and there's no objective reality out there.

00:16:02.040 And the Marxists thought this about economics, but it's now morphed into these other spheres.

00:16:06.080 And Party does a wonderful job of saying, listen, the Marxist and critical theory

00:16:11.380 are at the root of some of these problems, where they think there's no objective reality.

00:16:16.300 And that's why you can have woke folk today decide that, you know, nothing matters.

00:16:22.580 Nothing is concrete.

00:16:23.660 All that matters is power.

00:16:24.720 And that's a dangerous road to go down.

00:16:26.300 If they lose power and some actual fascist power takes power one day,

00:16:30.700 they will regret kind of lobbying for the look at all of us through only the power lens.

00:16:36.660 In the saddle today and under the horse's heels tomorrow.

00:16:39.760 Yes, exactly.

00:16:41.100 Now, it would be very easy to make this a depressing book.

00:16:45.100 And yet I see that towards the end, you throw out some hopeful signs.

00:16:50.460 Can you just elaborate on those?

00:16:52.060 We do.

00:16:52.300 The last third of the 1867 project, available on Amazon, I should probably promote that,

00:16:57.740 is looking forward.

00:17:00.360 And we've got a number of authors.

00:17:01.480 So we've got one author from Goa, India, an entrepreneur, Garev Jaswell.

00:17:05.040 He says, why are you Canadians beating up yourself?

00:17:06.720 You've got a great country, and here's why.

00:17:08.240 And he goes into some detail.

00:17:09.580 And we've got other immigrant stories, actually, in the book as well.

00:17:13.460 Rima Azar, who came from Lebanon, who said, don't focus on identity politics,

00:17:16.300 because identities are unchangeable.

00:17:18.360 That's dangerous.

00:17:19.300 And she saw that in Lebanon.

00:17:21.820 So in the last part of the book, though, we do go into looking at how Canada has been successful

00:17:27.740 and can be successful in the future.

00:17:29.700 And oddly enough, you know who was good at understanding the why was Pierre Trudeau.

00:17:35.180 All his faults, Pierre Trudeau understood that you need to focus on the individual.

00:17:39.560 And he would disagree with his son's identity politics fascination today.

00:17:43.920 Pierre Trudeau said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that your rights precede the state.

00:17:48.780 The state doesn't give you the rights.

00:17:50.080 You lend them to the state to do some things, you know, collect tax and do things you think

00:17:53.440 only the government can do.

00:17:54.660 But you lend those rights to the state.

00:17:56.480 Your rights precede the state, said Pierre Trudeau, battling ethno-nationalist separatists

00:18:00.880 in 1992 in the Charlottetown Court referendum.

00:18:03.500 This is where we get the quote from in the book.

00:18:05.900 But the last part of the book says this.

00:18:08.540 And Van Bikachala, a friend of mine, and I author a chapter.

00:18:11.920 I author another chapter.

00:18:13.080 But the basic gist of both chapters is let's not divide on identities in Canada.

00:18:19.140 That's a recipe for disaster because no one can change their color, their ethnicity, where 1.00

00:18:23.040 they were born.

00:18:24.180 Let's unite around laudable ideas, the worth of the individual, putting the individual at

00:18:28.620 the center of law and policy, which means no discrimination pro or against or skin color

00:18:32.820 on a job application or a grant from the federal government.

00:18:35.920 Let's unite around those laudable ideas or the rights of women, right, which took a long 1.00

00:18:40.740 time to get to in the world and in many places are still not recognized.

00:18:45.500 Let's unite around those laudable ideas.

00:18:47.260 Let's unite around free and open markets and free expression, right?

00:18:51.140 Open inquiry.

00:18:52.300 Those are the best past or flourish in the future.

00:18:55.240 If you get people to unite around, I think people are always going to be tribal, Nigel.

00:18:59.520 But you don't want them to be tribal on identities.

00:19:01.720 You don't want them to be tribal on, you know, color because that can't change. 1.00

00:19:05.380 You want them to be tribal in a good sense and unite around good ideas, laudable ideas.

00:19:09.980 If we do that, Canada has a future.

00:19:12.300 If we divide based on identities, then we're hooped.

00:19:16.160 And we become like every other country or civilization in history, which for the most part, most people

00:19:21.180 in history have been tribal, and they will say, you're in the wrong group, I'm in the

00:19:24.620 right group, I win, you don't, I will crush you.

00:19:27.980 That's tribalism, at least attached to identities.

00:19:31.320 It took us, what, the enlightenment?

00:19:33.640 It took the conception of the individual in Western Judeo-Christian thought.

00:19:37.280 It took centuries to get to the place where we gave individuals the rights they deserve,

00:19:42.900 whether they're indigenous or women or minorities.

00:19:46.180 Well, let's not reverse on that now.

00:19:48.260 So the last part of the book is really trying to remind Canadians of this laudable history

00:19:51.680 you have, and in fact, that showed up in the 19th century.

00:19:54.760 It wasn't like Johnny MacDonald or Wilfred Laurier or British colonialists didn't value

00:19:59.300 the individual.

00:19:59.960 They did.

00:20:00.780 And in fact, there's a wonderful story that's not in the book, but I'll tell it.

00:20:04.100 In 1858, black Californians, 30 black Californians moved to Victoria, and they loved the place.

00:20:09.900 Why?

00:20:10.420 Because they're treated as equals pretty quickly.

00:20:12.580 They can become citizens in two years.

00:20:14.180 They can run for the city council, the school board.

00:20:17.120 They can own private property.

00:20:19.180 And they encountered a lot less prejudice in Victoria.

00:20:22.380 In fact, they were welcomed by the archbishop, the local archbishop, and by the governor of

00:20:25.620 the day, James Douglas.

00:20:27.380 So they wrote to their friends in California and said, come up here, because this is a tolerant

00:20:32.840 society.

00:20:34.000 So Canadians today don't know their history.

00:20:36.400 They don't know that these ideas actually long predate us.

00:20:40.400 And it's why Canada became the flourishing success story that it is, because we value

00:20:44.600 the individual, not perfectly.

00:20:46.240 There were diseased limbs on the tree of Canada, so to speak.

00:20:48.700 But those limbs were pruned off years ago.

00:20:51.580 So let's not add bad ideas or cancel Canada today because of mistakes in history or the

00:20:58.520 fact we didn't fully arrive at some perfect nirvana.

00:21:01.320 No country's perfect.

00:21:02.720 But is Canada worth cherishing?

00:21:04.480 Myself and the other 19 authors would say yes, it is.

00:21:06.740 I like the idea of writing a news article.

00:21:09.440 Mark Milkey says Pierre Trudeau had some good ideas.

00:21:12.700 This is a...

00:21:13.500 News at 11.

00:21:13.980 That's a keeper.

00:21:15.180 Look, let me ask you a little bit about the Aristotle Foundation.

00:21:18.100 We don't have a lot of time left, but quickly, what is the Aristotle Foundation?

00:21:22.460 Who funds it?

00:21:23.400 And what is the objective?

00:21:25.100 Well, I've been thinking about this for 10 years because I thought there's some issues

00:21:28.760 out there that deal with kind of core, again, you know, core ideas in Western civilization

00:21:35.220 and the Anglosphere in particular, freedom of expression, right, or empiricism, the need

00:21:40.420 to actually ground yourself in what works, in science, for example, that sort of thing.

00:21:44.520 I've been thinking that as all the great work that other think tanks do and which I've

00:21:48.400 been proud to be a part of, they ignored some of these cultural issues or foundational

00:21:52.060 issues of civilizations.

00:21:54.280 But the short way to put it is we founded the Aristotle Foundation to make you think.

00:21:59.820 When people say Canada's institutionally racist, we publish a book saying, really?

00:22:03.480 Sure about that?

00:22:04.000 We want to make people think, in a good sense, and contribute to a thoughtful, reasonable society.

00:22:09.480 We also want to get into some urban issues, right, the decline of cities, where there's

00:22:13.740 some bad policies there.

00:22:15.180 But it's funded by Free Will Contributions.

00:22:17.980 We're a charitable organization.

00:22:20.080 So you can go on the website, aristotalfoundation.org.

00:22:22.760 You can contribute, you can find out more about the organization.

00:22:25.440 But I would say, really, the organization exists to kind of fill a gap in the think tank world

00:22:31.100 and Canada.

00:22:32.180 And in fact, we want to reach 100,000 students with facts and informed history.

00:22:37.380 But data and statistics cannot live alone.

00:22:41.900 We actually want to bring in history as well.

00:22:43.320 Because I think when you introduce some history to the debate and policy debates, like I mentioned

00:22:48.800 on how black Californians loved Victoria in 1858 of all times and places, that helps modify

00:22:56.020 some of our maybe harsh rhetoric today, you know, on various sides that, you know, when

00:23:01.860 you look in history, there's some good things that happen in history.

00:23:03.680 And I think history, it's one of the things we want to use at the Aristotle Foundation

00:23:06.860 to broaden the scope of what's being discussed and get people to think more.

00:23:11.880 So the Aristotle Foundation, we created it to make people think.

00:23:16.700 Last question.

00:23:18.100 Of all the people you could have chosen, why Aristotle?

00:23:21.940 2,400 years ago, Greek rhetorician.

00:23:25.260 Why Aristotle?

00:23:26.240 And I had advice not to do it. 0.62

00:23:27.720 He was a dead white male who, you know, held slaves, right? 0.67

00:23:29.980 Well, Aristotle, because if you go back to ancient Greece, it was in ancient Athens where,

00:23:37.160 at least in the Western tradition, they first started debating democracy, an asient form

00:23:40.880 of democracy.

00:23:41.680 How should we govern ourselves?

00:23:43.100 They also asked questions, which we want to ask today and should ask.

00:23:46.100 And we do ask, consciously or unconsciously, what does a good life look like?

00:23:51.000 You know, also Aristotle wrote about politics, you know, and he wrote about friendship, right?

00:23:55.640 So he wrote about things that concern us all and the family.

00:23:58.320 So Aristotle was an empiricist.

00:24:00.900 He was thoughtful.

00:24:02.680 And he asked the important questions.

00:24:05.240 And much in history is not new.

00:24:07.300 And I would submit that a lot of the answers are not new either.

00:24:10.280 So we named it after Aristotle because, you know, here's a fellow millennia ago and those

00:24:16.100 that surrounded him in ancient Athens that started to ask the important questions.

00:24:20.200 And I think we have to ask those again today.

00:24:22.240 What kind of Canada do we want?

00:24:23.920 How should we live?

00:24:24.760 Mark, congratulations on establishing the foundation and upon this, the first production

00:24:32.160 from, out of your Aristotle Foundation.

00:24:35.480 It's been great to have you on the show.

00:24:37.340 Thank you very much for coming here.

00:24:39.500 Ladies and gentlemen, that's it for now.

00:24:41.220 I will just remind you that to find out more about the Aristotle Foundation and no doubt

00:24:47.280 to order your copy of the book, go to aristotlefoundation.org.

00:24:52.720 Am I right?

00:24:53.160 That's correct.

00:24:53.620 Aristotlefoundation.org.

00:24:55.540 And thank you for watching.

00:24:57.420 Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:24:59.640 Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago.

00:25:04.180 These guys are on the front lines helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms regulations

00:25:09.900 and legislation in Canada.

00:25:11.860 And more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong

00:25:16.580 people.

00:25:17.180 We've become a member.

00:25:18.080 It's absolutely worth every penny.

Western Standard - June 23, 2023

The 1867 Project - Why Canada should be cherished

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