Shaun Newman Podcast - #954 - Caylan Ford & Bruce Pardy

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

I’m joined by Caylan Ford and Bruce Pardy to discuss is there a “Common Good”.Caylan Ford is the founder of Canada’s fastest-growing tuition-free classical charter school network, Alberta Classical Academy. A former federal policy advisor with degrees from Calgary, George Washington, and Oxford. She also co-produced award-winning documentaries exposing human rights abuses. In 2019, she was a rising UCP star candidate until a leaked private chat about cultural preservation was weaponized as “white supremacy,” forcing her resignation within hours; she’s now suing for defamation. Bruce Pardy is a Queen’s University law professor, executive director of the law-and-liberty think-tank Rights Probe, and one of Canada’s sharpest classical-liberal critics of the “managerial state.” A former Bay Street litigator and decade-long adjudicator on Ontario’s Environmental Review Tribunal, he now writes and speaks on the front lines of the legal culture war—defending individual autonomy, free markets, property rights, and the rule of law against what he calls the “Unholy Trinity” of bureaucracy, human-rights tribunals, and activist courts.Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Tickets to the Mashspiel:https://www.showpass.com/mashspiel/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Pradnick. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Paredi.

This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. How's everybody doing today? Happy Wednesday. We've got, well, we've got an interesting show for you today.

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So if you're interested in precious metals, never a better time. And, you know, if you're a seasoned investor or new to precious metals, just go down on the show notes. Graham will work with you to answer your questions and recommend the best products for your meet your investing goals, whether it's buying, selling, storing, or using your retirement accounts to invest in precious metals. You can find Silvergold Bowl at silvergoldbill.ca or dot com, depending on the side of the border. And at any point, just reach out to Graham, and he'll help steer you in the right direction and answer all your questions.

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Caleb Taves, Renegate Acres, do the community spotlight. We've got some events coming up. The Mashbilt, January 17, 2026, Kalmar, just west of Ladook. That's where it's going to be held. There's 11 teams left. You can also, you can sign up as a team of four, or you can be an individual. either way. That's going to be a fun little event, a community builder, if you would,

for the mashup, and that's going to be January 17th. So find the link down in the show notes. The Cornerstone Forum, March 28th, returns to Calgary. This time at the Westing Calgary Airport. That's going to be a hotel and venue all in one. So when you're grabbing your

ticket, make sure to book your hotel room. If you're flying in, there's a 24-7 shuttle service that'll take you right to the hotel. It's like a three-minute drive. It's super close. And we got some Returning figures, Tom Luongo, Alex Kraner, Matt Erritt, Tom Bodrovics, 22 minutes. We've got some new faces coming this year, Vince Lanchi, Chad Prather, Karen Katosi, Sam Cooper, and more to come. We're going to be announcing them as they come along.

We're in talks with a group of people, and hopefully we'll have some new information on that in the coming weeks. Make sure when you buy your ticket that you also purchase a free ticket for the Friday night social. That's free to attend if you're purchasing a ticket to the Cornerstone. forum. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, X, Facebook, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review, and make sure to share with a friend if you're enjoying the show. All right, let's get on to that tale of the tape. Our first guest today is the founder of Alberta Classical Academy, the second, a law professor at Queens University. I'm talking about Kalin Ford and Bruce Party, so buckle up. Here we go.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Kaelan Ford and Bruce Party again. We're following up off of if you haven't gone and listened to episode 946, which was just November 5th. It was just a few weeks ago. You really should because that sets the stage for today and the common good. And I'm wherever else we get to. First off, thanks for joining me back again, folks.

Thanks, Kailen, Bruce, for hopping back on. Hey, Sean, thanks for having us. This is, this is great. Okay, so common good. Here's my thought, and then you two can just shoot holes in it. You can argue away like you two will do. The common good, Bruce said at the last, at the end of the last episode, that there is no common good. I'll leave you at that thought.

And I'm like, you're an asshole. Like, why would you say that? Now I'm like, I want to, now I'm going to stew on this and I have stewed on it for a while. So the common good, okay? When I, when I Googled the common good, this is, comes up refers to benefits and conditions that are shared and beneficial to all or most members of a community and I'm like okay well that makes sense you know I think of like roads and I was trying to uh you know figure out in the middle of you saying that what I was what I actually thought

common good was and what I landed on and I don't know if if this is what you two will say this but you know my ancestors came here roughly 1905 to Saskatchewan rural Saskatchewan and I would say the closer you are to death, the common good becomes very clear, right? Back then they would have been roads to get to services would have been, would have been a common good. They had really bad grass fires that were faster than the fastest horse, dropped, jumped everything. People left just because of that. So you'd say, well, the common good is making sure the forest or the grass fires don't happen, right? That would be a common good. And then as you become more settled in your spot, you know you you um are established i guess that changes because then you know you start to look at

uh you know there was a big program in the 60s to bring in recreational facilities and then if you fast forward to today you know you had things like covid well we all got to get the shot for the common good that's that is just the and and it's really a moving target and then i would say if the right people are in and by right i mean people that i agree with the common good i actually go well that makes sense but if the wrong people are in then i'm like what is this common good talk about so it's it's not only a moving target the further you get away from maybe life or death and maybe i'm wrong in that thought but the further you get away from that and you start to become most social issues i would say uh and then it's also who's in power if you agree with them you're going

to be like the common good makes sense and if you disagree with the people in power i don't know mark kearney you're going to be like the common good has has is going into this weird realm that is my throw it at the wall and let you two discuss i don't know who wants to start bruce do you want to start with your understanding of the term common good and i trust you can frame the debate in a fair minded manner all right sure kellen thank you Common good is like beauty It lies in the eyes of the beholder

The political realm The legal realm Common good is a power play It's exactly as you described Sean The common good is not common In the sense that It does not apply to everybody Because people disagree about what the good is

So if you are claiming to act, to achieve the common good, all you are really doing is trying to achieve those things that you think are valuable. And that's going to change exactly as you described. It's a moving target from person to person, party to party, interest to interest. And if that is the case, if it is a moving target upon which people do not agree, then that means that there is no single objective identifiable common good. It is a matter of opinion. And that means it's not common. I mean it's defies the term. For a good to be common, it must be universal. That's what common means. Now, I'm not denying that there are some things that governments and countries ought to do for its

own survival, like defend the borders. And one might say, well, that's common good. But in fact, the matter is, although I would agree with that step, the claim that it is common in the sense that it is universal, there are going to be some people in your country that don't agree. If common good was actually common to everybody, then everybody would want it. And the fact that they do not all want it is the justification for having it as a, as a public policy objective, right? But again, that defies the term. All right. So I'll start by defining, I like your definition, Sean, that you pulled, which is it's a good that accrues either universally or to the great majority of people.

So I don't think we need to be too pedantic and say that, well, there's always going to be a handful of people who are exceptions, who conceive of their interests differently. I think the vast majority of people I think is sufficient for our purposes. But when we talk about common good, it's another way of saying, do we as a society have a telos? Does our society have a purpose? Is there some goal to which we are oriented?

Is it human happiness? is it flourishing? Do we have an idea that we have immortal souls and that this world is preparation for the next, that we should endeavor to help people live as well as possible here, so that they're situated favorably to be able to enjoy a happier existence in eternity? Whatever it is. Maybe your telos is just that you want to accrue material wealth and power, But a society in order to sort of function in a coherent way, there has to be some concept collectively of who are we, where are we going, what to be considered the ends toward which we orient our lives and our society. And it's interesting to me, Bruce, that you started with the metaphor that the common good is like beauty and I was nodding my head. And then you said, it's in the eye of beholder, the beholder.

You're captured. You are the product of your society. Your culture has shaped you. Your culture has shaped you to be a cultural relativist and a moral relativist who believes that there is no such thing as an immutable, transcendent, universal standard of what is good or true or just or beautiful. So you've already been shaped by the assumptions of your society, whether you know it or not, as we all have.

And you've been led into a state of moral and cultural relativism where you say there is no such thing as the good. There is no fixed standard against which we can judge our society. There's no transcendent standard against which we can judge those who rule over us. There's no standard by which we can evaluate ourselves other than our own law that we think we make for ourselves, but actually we've imbibed through the culture around us. So that's, I think, the problem.

The incoherence that you're describing comes from the fact that we have lived under conditions of liberalism for the last several hundred years that have gradually eroded our understanding that there actually is a shared notion of truth, of beauty, of justice, to which we should be able to appeal when we have disputes. If you and I disagree about something, actually, it's really important that we have a shared standard that exists. above and beyond the opinions of any one individual, and we can say, let's adjudicate our disputes through reference to that. But you're basically saying, no, that thing doesn't even exist. And so all we're left with is this relativism, everyone to themselves. And that's not, you can't run a society in a coherent way. And I think this is one way of diagnosing what's gone wrong with our society. It's torn apart, because as Alistair McIntyre, for example, would diagnose, we have lost this concept that there is a common moral language,

that there are, in fact, universal virtues to which we can appeal when we think that we are being wronged. So we've lost that, and so we're in this state of, we're sort of suffering our own curse of Babel, as it were, where everyone wants to make their own law as private individuals in their own household, what Aristotle would describe as the condition of the Cyclops, who just makes his own law for his own house, but doesn't participate in a common society.

So we don't have a telos as a society. And so we don't know where we're going. And so we get leaders that sort of, as you said, it's a moving target. One leader to another, it's always just sort of shifting winds. It doesn't reflect everyone because we have lost this sense that there is something common which we are pursuing. So I think you are accelerating the problem that you're trying to respond to by just sort of throwing in the towel and saying,

well, these things don't exist. Interestingly, your position is reminiscent of the conditions that Plato was addressing when he was teaching in ancient Athens. In the Hellenistic world after the Peloponnesian wars, people's sense of what is right and wrong, just and unjust, was all inverted, all turned upside down, as Thucydides described. And one of the things, the tasks that Plato understood was set out for him was to rectify the sort of sources of, of moral order in his society. And one of the core arguments that he makes in particularly, very notably in the Republic, is that ideas like justice are not just sort of things to be negotiated among human beings, according to our whims.

It is actually a form of the good. One of these forms that exist above and beyond mankind, unchanging through time, we can never achieve perfect knowledge of justice, just as we can never achieve perfect knowledge of the good, But we can use it as a standard and try to approach it and use it as something that we judge ourselves and judge our rulers against. One of the challenges that Kalin and I have when we talk is that sometimes we are talking about two different things. And the dividing line between them, I think we disagree about. And those two things are morality and the law. and

Caitlin's not actually accurate that I'm a moral relativist. I do believe in things and I believe my views of them are correct. I hold moral positions. Let me give you an example.

One of the things that I wish did not exist are horror films, slasher films. Films built upon the depiction of violence. I wish people wouldn't make them.

I wish people wouldn't watch them. I think they're wrong. I would like to live in a society in which they did not exist. But I am not God. And the fact that I think they are wrong does not mean that they should be illegal because other people do not share my moral conviction. that doesn't mean that I think my moral conviction is relative or wrong.

It's that I acknowledge that we live in a supposedly free society where my moral predilections do not rule. We live in a society in which people disagree about basic things. And the case that Caitlin is making, I think, is that the phrase she used, we can't run a society that way. It's an interesting wording. We can't run a society that way. Well, we're not supposed to be running anything.

Nobody's supposed to be running anything. We're supposed to be living together in peace. Well, I think we can live together in peace if we can't agree. For example, if we can't agree that peace is good. Well, sure. And you make that argument, but people always go back to that. People always, so you know, the thing, if you, you know, you're criticizing moral positions, the objectivity of moral positions,

and how can you advocate for a peaceful society? Fair enough. My position on that is this. People might agree or disagree on the morality of peace. I grant you that. But there's still that choice, and everybody can choose whether or not they agree with the idea of peace or not.

But if somebody disagrees with peace and they decide that they want to attack me, then my moral response is that I'm going to defend and attack them back and then you don't have peace and that's fine you know in the sense that that's the that's the culture that you get if you do if you cannot find agreement on the idea of peace then you will you will have violence but that does not take away from the from the logic of the point the point is that those people who insist that society must be must be must be

in accord with a certain set of moral principles what they mean is our principles not their principles our principles we have the principles right and therefore you will all conduct yourselves in accordance with our moral convictions and that is not my that is not my vision of what the with the law ought to be if you claim to live in a free society so you must grant you must grant every the ability to make their own moral choices as long as those choices don't impinge upon your freedom to do the same thing okay so you said if we can't agree on peace we won't have peace well that this is where this is where the strong arm of the law comes in and this is a debate we can have is it is it

justified someone the lawmakers have decided that peace is an is an overriding value that is a matter of the common good, that peace should be enforced. Oh, no, I wouldn't call it the common good. I would call it, I would call it a, how shall I put it? It's a corollary of having a free society. If you want all of those individuals in your society to be free to make their own moral judgments. Okay, who's you? Who wants them all to be free?

I do. Okay. So look, I mean, we're talking in circles here. You want people to be free. You want peace. You want society ordered in a way that produces freedom and peace. You're prepared to use the law to enforce this vision that people should live peacefully. They should not impinge on the liberties of others. So, you know, to that question that I think you're trying to get at is that who decides. Well, in this case, you're saying that you get to decide, that you think that society should value peace, should value freedom, should value private property. And you're prepared to use the law to enforce this. those values. So what you're saying is not any different, really, from what advocates for a kind of coherent notion of the common good suggest, which is there are certain things, certain values that are necessary for a society to function in a peaceable, coherent, harmonious way where

people can get along well with each other, where they can transact their business. Trusting others will honor their contracts right so all of these things actually do depend on the existence of certain shared values your values are peace yeah and the ability to do what you want without inhibition from some external authority so let's let's just try that out logically let's say you have a government come along comes along and says you know what we're going to create and enforce a rule against violence. But we don't want to do that without consent. We want everybody to agree. So they go along and they ask every single person whether or not they agree with the rule that says no violence. Now some people will say they agree and some

people won't, to your point. Okay, let's consider those two groups separately. Those people who agree with the rule are consenting to the rule. So they're they're signing on. So we've got their consent. What about the other group? The other group says, don't agree. I want a society in which there is violence. Well, I can impose violence. Anybody can impose violence.

In other words, I want a society in which might makes right. That's my moral choice. So leave me alone. The proper response to that is, okay, you want a society in which might makes right. fine. In that case, we are going to act in accordance with your wishes and we are going to impose might upon you. Fight back if you want, but we are going to act in accordance with the idea that you've just endorsed and we're going to have a rule and we're going to enforce that rule with violence. If you are violent, we're going to punish you. And so in this opposite,

very different way, you have satisfied the inclinations of both of the groups who give you opposite answers. That rule is in accordance with everybody's preferences, even though those preferences are opposite. So if I say, let's say, we had this, we started this conversation post-interview last time and I want to carry it a little bit further and then I'll come back to the example that you just gave. Okay. So you value, you think that people should not hit each other. they should not engage in unprovoked violence against others because that impinges on another person's liberty sure do you think people should be allowed to litter on their own property okay but not on anyone else's property no because now you are you are committing an act of

violence by the fact of doing something on other people's property without their consent Okay, so you value other people's property without their consent. Well, you could, you could make a, you could make a theoretical argument, I suppose. I don't think that I would probably agree with it, but you could make an argument that in this kind of world where violence is prohibited, that, you know, property is not a thing. But I think property is a corollary of the idea that people have, have the liberty to possess things. And when they do, that they have rights to exclude others to them. But if you want to make an, you know, I know property argument, then you can.

I'm not. I actually think that private property is actually also essential to liberty. So I think we can agree there. Poisoning the river that feeds a city's, or that it's the water supply for a city's population. Yeah or nay. Well, if you go back to the common law conception of property, property rights, land rights have been understood to include rights to the quality of the water that abuts it. So I'm not sure that I would frame it in terms of the right of every resident of the city to a water supply. but certainly there are property rights that would cover that kind of situation.

Yeah, I mean, as a digression, I think the kind of society that you're advocating probably isn't going to have cities. It would be very small scale, probably agrarian, probably very short-lived. But let's imagine that there are cities that have a communal water supply fed by a river. Should poisoning the river poisoning the water supply be okay or no? I think probably the intentional poisoning of people would constitute violence. That's what you're getting out. And poisoning the air similarly.

Sure. Yeah. What's common to both is you have somebody now imposing conditions on other people without their consent. Yeah. So, yeah, and there's going to be a line somewhere. And when you're talking about the law, let's like, no, with this. When you're talking about the law, it is easy. Well, it's not that easy.

But if you establish, you know, a principled, rule for something, then that rule is going to be easily understood and applied in the majority of cases, but it's going to be always possible to creep to the edge of the rule to find the gray areas, the situations where does the rule apply here or not? That's always going to be the case. With any rule that you have, you're going to have gray cases. So I do not, I'm not trying to deny that. And I'm not trying to get to the gray cases, but I am trying to find the line. So let's keep going. what about so you say you know pollution of the air the water you don't like littering so you know these kinds of sort of physical pollution that impact the health in a very obvious way you say should

well i think i think i can see where you're going though and here's the distinction so what you're what you i think what you're trying to do is to show that you know where that line is located or the kinds of cases you're describing are cases about common good and actually that's not correct that's not my view well let me keep going let me let me let me just clarify what i need our listeners might not be able to read my mind so well as you bruce okay but let me just say this though any situation in which the rule would prohibit somebody from acting is because that act is violating the the the right or freedom of somebody else so if you pollute somebody else's land, you are violating the right. The reason that you can't pollute somebody else's land is not

common good. It's because somebody has property rights over that space and they don't want you to do that. So I'm yeah, I'm going to keep going. So pollution of land, water, air, no good. Um, what about visual pollution? I mean, if, if your neighbor starts littering all over their lawn and building monstrosities and perhaps they build a horrifying infill in your lovely little community doesn't respect the local vernacular that's fine one would think that that was fine now there are some situations in which in the common law the courts rightly rightly or wrongly have held that something that you do on your own land can in fact create create an unreasonable interference with the property rights of your neighbors.

But in the scenario that you've described, I'll be inclined to say, yes, look, if somebody's building something that you don't like the look of on their property, hey, their property, not yours, they can do what they want. If you do not want them to do what they're doing on their property, you better acquire the property. So there's, you know, there's an interesting body of research on the way that human beings are physically and psychically impacted by the... built environment around them. People who live in cities, for example, suffer all sorts of mental

health problems and physical problems that people who live in more bucolic rural environments don't experience. They're much more likely to suffer schizophrenia, for example, and lots of different immune disorders. And there seems to be a lot of evidence that actually that is tied to the aesthetic experience that they have, to whether they're surrounded by beauty or ugliness. So, I mean, the idea that there's a sort of stark division between what is good for our physical health and what is good for our spiritual or mental health doesn't seem to hold up. This division is less absolute. So what about if you're walking down the street with your child and the business owners are, they have screens in the windows showing pornography or

very extreme graphic violence? Is that okay or no? Well, you've, okay, you've inserted the child in there, and the child and children are, right, right? So before we go to children, why don't you just tell me what your, what your position on pornography is? For adults now, for adults, for consenting adults, why don't you tell me what you're positioned on pornography is? Well, let's, we let's come back to that. I'm happy to talk to that, but I'm just, I'm just trying to figure out where are the boundaries here. So I'm talking now, we've talked about sort of water pollution, air pollution. I want to talk about spiritual pollution in society. An example of spiritual pollution, I think, would be if a child can't walk down the street without confronting pornographic or violent images, for example. Yes, well, you want to talk about kids.

And the reason that the kids are a special case is because they're not able to consent. So I'm open to the proposition that there ought to be a different kind of figuring out for children because they're in a different category of human being. But they share a society with us. You can't say this street is okay for children and this one's not. Yeah, see, my initial inclination to your scenario is, look, people's property are their own. And the protection of children is a job for the parents. And so if you have a street in which this is just off the top of my head, but to the scenario that you've described, if there's a street that is where businesses are doing that,

then don't take your child down the street. They have property rights too. And they have their free people as well. And even though we don't approve of their choices, that doesn't mean they can't conduct themselves the way they wish. Yeah. So this goes to an interesting idea of freedom because I think you define freedom in purely negative terms, i.e., I'm free to do what I want without anyone coming and getting in my way and stopping me, right? The government shouldn't be able to impinge my speech. Other people shouldn't impinge my private property rights, right?

Like that's, I say it's a negative consumption of freedom because it's a, I want to be free from this interference. Right. Right. So this is interesting. So why don't, why don't we try this? Why don't you give your definition of what you think freedom is? And I'll do the same. Well, I want to take this example. You just said, it's the job of the parents to protect their children. So let's imagine you live in a society that is, it doesn't take too much imagining that is very kind of spiritually and morally debased where you walk down the street. You might encounter porn. graphic images at any given time. You might encounter drug users sort of keeled over. You might not feel very safe. Certainly letting your child walk on those streets, but even accompanying them, you might feel

that this is a dangerous environment for them. Gosh, as a parent, if your answer to me is keep your kids inside, I don't feel very free. My children are not very free to enjoy and participate in the common life of their community, because it's a place that will pollute them spiritually, visually, probably physically, that would be dangerous for them.

But if you're saying, well, parents, you just have to protect your children and that's your job. It's not a very free society. And I'll give another example of, I think, I have a concept of freedom. Can you give us a definition? So my definition of freedom certainly goes beyond the negative.

It is not purely freedom from restraint. It is also freedom to do certain things. to seek certain goods. And I'll give you another example. I think you, I heard one of our gym teachers once, a former gym teacher, gave this example. He said, you know, a child is not going to be very free when they're trying to dance

if they have never learned the discipline required for it. If they've never learned how to move their body, they've never acquired the flexibility through careful training. They're not going to be very, they're not going to feel actually very feel actually very free. If you put someone who has never learned to ski at the top of Whistler on a black diamond and you tell them, look, no one's stopping you. You're free. You can ski down. Well, they're not going to actually feel very free. They're going to feel terrified. No one's stopping them from skiing down the hill. No one's impinging on their rights to ski down

the hill. But they have never learned how to do it. And so their experience is not going to be one of exhilarating freedom. It's going to be one of sheer terror. So to achieve the kind of freedom. You can say, you are free to have discourse on Aristotle. But if no one's ever told me what Aristotle is, and I'm stuck into a seminar on Aristotle, I'm not going to feel very free. I'm going to feel like a moron. So freedom also requires there's a positive dimension to it. And this is where culture is important, where training is important, where we actually human beings are formed by their culture. And if you have a very rich culture, you will be you will have far more freedom than someone with a very debased culture because you will have had all of these horizons opened to you you will have developed the kind of habits that allow you to take advantage of them you'll have the capacity for self-governance so that you won't easily come under the thumb of anyone who wants to exert power over you so yeah i think freedom is also the positive right i think that's because we are defining two different kinds of freedom when i

I say freedom and okay I would you're quite right I define freedom in a negative sense in the in the in the sense of I don't mean it's bad I mean it's very good but I mean it in the sense that there is something not there I just want to wanted to say in my squeaky voice your answers to that those questions about the littering the water pollution the air pollution the spiritual pollution yes seems to suggest to me that you value rights that pertain to the physical body to physical health in a very obvious, immediate way. But you don't really care about things that concern spiritual health. On the contrary. On the contrary. On the contrary.

And that seems to me to reveal, again, one of my arguments that I make with Bruce is there is no such thing as neutrality. So anyone who purports to say, you know, well, we should just have a society that is value neutral, that doesn't make judge, about the good that lets everyone decide for him or herself. If you sort of scratch the surface, they're not neutral either. They actually do have very clear understandings of what goods we should and shouldn't care about. And often it comes down to private property is a good. Physical health is a good.

Spiritual health, ah, not so much. You know, maybe peace is a good, but only because it concerns the protection of the physical body. So you're shaking your help. No, I don't understand this. I don't understand this logic at all. So let me give you my definition of freedom, which is absence of something. In the political and legal sense, you are free if you are not subject to the coercion that is the force or threats of force of other people, including the state. In other words, no one is making you do things you do not want to.

do. That's what free means. In other words, if your actions are voluntary that is decided by no one but you, then you are free. Now, I do not deny what you said, which is that we are all made up of influences from our culture and our family and our background and our education and our psychology and our genes and all those kinds of things influence you. No question. I don't deny that at all. But the question is whether or not other people are empowered to make you do things you do not want to do. Let's do a concrete example. Is the drug addict free? No. In my terms, the answer is yes. Why? Because nobody is making him with force or threats of force do anything. Now, is he captured by his own addiction? Of course. Is he free?

in the sense that you are talking about? No. But here's the kicker. If we adopt your version of freedom in the political and legal realm, I don't have a problem with it in the moral and spiritual realm. Not at all. I think thinking about it this way makes a lot of sense. But in the political and legal realm, which is the realm that I'm talking about, the implication is this. If you are not free to ski down the hill without knowing how to ski, then in a free society, everybody gets ski lessons. If you are not free unless you have the skills and the ability, let's take another example. Let's say somebody is taking a car trip and gets to the end of the day and wants to stay at a nice hotel. Okay. Are they free?

To do that, my answer is yes, but this person on this car trip doesn't have any money. Are they free to stay at a fancy hotel? The answer in my terms? Of course they are. No one is stopping them, but they can't because they don't have the money. Are they free to? They are still free to. Nobody is preventing them, but they don't have the money.

If we adopt your version of freedom, then we create obligations on the part of society to provide people with things in order to achieve their human flourishing that you're describing. So leave full alone. So you're right. I mean, but these are, we're talking about metaphors, right? This thing about staying in a nice hotel, about being able to ski down a mountain, these are metaphors to try to understand what are the necessary elements that are actually required for us to be able to realize our full sort of our deepest, desires to achieve flourishing. But whose responsibility is that?

Whose responsibility is that for making sure that people achieve the highest degree of their human flourishing? Whose responsibility is that? Okay, let's get to that. So I was it, they're metaphors that are, I think, useful for illustrating the point. But now when we put them back at the scale of the society, you said that this creates obligations on the society to provide certain things. Yes, a society into which a child is born, that is,

the culture is the loam, it is the soil in which they take root. That child is absolutely, I think, has, you know, there's a certain kind of birthright that comes, that should come from being born in a civilization such as ours. They should expect that they receive the best that their society has produced. They should expect that the customs, the mores, the prejudices, and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, the positive prejudices that have been formed over many, many generations,

that unearned grace of the ages, the wisdom that is transmitted to us through our culture, that should be bequeathed to our children. And inherent in all of those cultural... If I can interrupt, though, I mean, it's all very well. I don't disagree with the sentiment, but let's be specific. Who is it as responsible for giving these children these things?

Okay. So a society, a state, let's say, is a macrocosm of the individuals who comprise it. Okay, so your culture, your government, but also all of your institutions, formal and informal, these are reflections of the character of the millions of individuals that comprise them. And in turn, these institutions also shape the culture of the people. reciprocal mutually reinforcing relationship there. I think we all have a sort of duty. Well, you roll your eyes, but it's true. I mean, that's how human societies work. Macrocosms, mirror microcosms, right? The state is the souls of man writ large. These are not new or novel insights, okay. So the state, okay, but hold on, if the state is a reflection of the souls of

mankind, if that is a truism, then you have to apply it as well to the state that we have right now because you can't have both ways you can't have the state that you prefer reflect you know all the good things about the human heart but then say well that's not true now because people don't think right and because their values are off no no no come on this is a disorder in our state your political loss is a reflection disorder in society this is a central proposition in your whole thesis but what do you think it reflects the collective values and views and behaviors of the of the people and we have a state right now if that is true that does exactly that and so by by your own terms that state therefore must be legitimate because that's what it's doing

well i'm not arguing about legitimacy i'm not this is not a sort of an ought-is argument i'm just saying this is the way it is right so okay that's the way it is it's also also states also in public institutions also over time shape the character of their citizens that's why i say this is a bi-directional relationship and when certain practices values institutions are embedded at the political level they can over time shape the preferences of citizens sure so I mean we have been living under under liberalism in various forms for certainly since Confederation I think you can stretch it back at least 200 years we've been living under the influence of liberalism that kind of says, among other things,

every man is the judge of what is right for himself, right? That questions of morality, of religion belong to the private sphere, not the public, that the state should be concerned with the preservation of property, life, and liberty, which are defined in kind of positivist terms to refer to like physical life, right? So the, sort of the bare biological life rather than the spiritual life. So these kinds of values that are embedded in liberalism, that God embedded in our laws and our public institutions, over time, through myriad different ways that the state shapes the character of citizens, it eventually shapes the preferences of the citizens living under it as well. Do I need to, sorry, you're kind of, you look a little bit perplexed. Do I need to explain that further?

I'm not I'm not sure where you're going but carry on well I'm saying that there's there's a reciprocal relationship here and and it is so it's a kind of collective duty that we have who has the duty to provide and pass down customs and norms everyone oh oh okay so he has a duty to give to the next generation a cultural inheritance all of us including the state yeah right sure but okay but so there's a so I would I've described things this way there's a there's a big there's There's a basic divide, in my view, between people that I might loosely categorize as sort of on the right, in quotation marks. And those two categories of people go like this.

I call one group the freedom people and the other group the virtue people. And the difference between them, to encapsulate a complicated argument, is that the freedom people think freedom in the terms that I've defined has to come first. order to be virtuous you have to have freedom first and the virtue people think the reverse they think in order to be free you have to have virtue first and in order to be virtuous that virtue needs to be imposed by the state to make sure that people are virtuous okay here's the logic of the freedom people of which i count myself among virtue lies in choice you are virtuous if you choose some things over other things. Therefore, if you are going to be virtuous, you must be free

to choose. Otherwise, it is not virtue. It's obedience. If you are not free, that is, if you are, if you are subject to the coercion of other people, then you are neither free nor virtuous. Let's take a concrete example. When I pay my taxes, which are used for, as we all know, know, all different kinds of things, including some of the kinds of things that you're describing, am I being virtuous? The answer is no. I am paying my taxes because if I don't, I am subject to sanctions from the state. The state is not being virtuous. I am not being virtuous. I am being obedience. If I was going to be virtuous about the degree to which I supported other people and their needs, then my contributions would be voluntary. And that is the difference. Any standards

that the state enforces, any resources that the state takes from some people to provide to other people is coercive and therefore not virtuous. Yeah. And so I think this need not be an either or proposition. I agree with you that the moral content of an act depends in part, in very large part, on the degree to which it is chosen, right? So, yes, there's a lot more virtue involved in donating to charity or dedicating your time for some charitable endeavor, as opposed to being coerced to pay taxes that are then redirected toward whatever ends. And I think you know, I actually like that argument because I think that wealth redistribution through taxation is not something that I particularly favor, partly because it takes the moral content out of

the act of giving. And it makes us, I think it sort of, it erodes civil society, it erodes the kind of charity that we undertake as neighbors toward one another when the state takes on that role for itself. So I think that's something we can agree on. But can I observe, though, can I observe though? So if the case that you were making was for voluntary action sort of across the board, then you and I would have nothing to disagree about. I don't disagree with your preferences or your moral positions on things or your aspirations for the kind of people and children and society that we would ideally have.

I got no problem with that at all. My problem is coercion. The implication of what you're saying is that these things are going to be required because there's a certain group of us that know best about what people should do. I want to go back to your point about when you said there's a dichotomy on the right between the sort of freedom first people as you define freedom and the virtue first. And the idea that there's some people who believe that virtue is the prerequisite to real freedom. And I think that's a fair characterization, except where you said that, and virtue needs to be enforced by the state.

I think that's far too simplistic, a summary, because I think virtue, as I said, is ideally something that is transmitted through culture. It's transmitted through the common culture that we enjoy, through our families, through public institutions, through our religion's life, right? So all these things. The state also has a role. it's that role that's in question though so so when push comes to shove it let's let's when there are some things that we agree about in the in the voluntary realm but but the but the part where the where the rubber hits the road is in that moment when that transmission that you talked about is not happening and you're not getting a culture that you approve of and people are not

behaving in the way that you like and and the voluntary version of things is not to your liking. It's not producing the outcomes that you think ought to be preferred. In that moment is the question, which is, is that the time that certain numbers of us must take over the state and say, these are going to be the rules. You shall not do that, even though that is your choice and even though you are not imposing force on anybody else, you will not fill in the blank. You will not, you know, prostitute yourself. You will not take drugs. You will not make horror films. You will not do it because it's a coercive rule. It is that, I think, upon which we disagree.

So you think that there should be no, we've talked about this before, that there should be, the state basically shouldn't take a position on what's good. The state should not take a position on what's good, essentially, correct, yes. And so this is where, and I might not be able to persuade you in this conversation of this, But this is where I'd say, ideally, I mean, the ideal situation is one where people are virtuous on their own because they have a rich culture. Yes. And they transmit their cultural norms and practices. And, you know, this applies best in societies that actually have had sort of thriving, flourishing civilizations that did conduce very well to human flourishing.

Not all societies do that. Right. And, you know, this generally requires immoral people. usually that means a religious people who preserve these institutions and preserve these cultural practices. And my argument is that from the top down, the ideology of liberalism that has been the dominant governing ideology for centuries in the anglosphere has incrementally eroded the basis on which that culture flourishes and is transmitted. Because of its assumptions about human nature, because it has certain assumptions about what

belongs to the private and the public sphere, because it has certain assumptions about what to value and what not, and implicitly what not to value. And those assumptions over time, again, in millions of tiny, often invisible ways, shaped the culture, such that it followed out this idea that, for example, it hollowed out the idea that there is a common good, it hollowed out the idea that there is such a thing as beauty that is not merely your vision, my vision. There's, there's, you know, it hollowed out the idea that there's a truth, not just my truth and your truth.

I don't, I don't see. Basically, it communicated to people that everyone gets to just decide these things for themselves and so you get social disintegration. So what I said earlier that I do have moral convictions about things. I think I know what right and wrong is. I think I know what beauty is, but here's the point. I do not want to be subjected by force to your version

of those things. That doesn't mean that I believe that they're subjective. I believe I'm right and you believe you're right. And everybody else believes the same thing too. And so the question is, how do you allow everybody to be free in a society in which people differ about what the truth of these things are? And it is not a solution to say, well, there's going to be a certain version of those things that's going to be imposed upon everybody else. If you're talking about a state that provide for the common good with a license to impose its version of what that good is, then that's what you're, that's what you're talking about. So I believe that I talked about the freedom people and the virtue people. See, at the end of the day, the virtue people

who want to put virtue first in the sense of requiring virtuous behavior. And by requiring virtuous behavior, I mean putting it into the law. In other words, you're not allowed to do these things because we don't think they're right. Okay. That means that the virtue people are violence people because every law is based upon the violence of the state. We're now away from voluntary behavior. We're now away from making choices that are virtuous or not. We are now into enforcing a code, a code that's in accordance with what some people believe is. the good and and others of us others of i don't want to lose this point others of us believe that the good the actual good is something else and we don't want to be subjected to your preferences

you use the word liberalism a couple of times and i just want to be clear about what it is that we mean by that term liberalism in its original conception let me let me just put it this way The world that we have now, and I know I don't want to put you in a box, but virtue people tend to think of liberalism as one thing, and with different variations. That's not what I think. The original idea of liberalism is the idea of individual autonomy. That is, we're not going to have governments and public institutions dictate to us what we're going to do.

We're going to have a situation, a society in which people have the autonomy to decide their own lives. That is not the liberalism we have today. In fact, the liberalism we have today, which I call progressivism or lots of other labels that might apply. That modern governance system we have today stands for exactly the opposite proposition, which is, no, no, no, you will do it this way. If you do not do it this way, we will punish you. You will speak other people's pronouns.

You know, we will flip the social justice pyramid. You will not speak these terms. This is a dictatorial ideology and has nothing to do with liberalism. Liberalism is the mere opposite of what we have now. Well, so this is, let's dive into this. I want to return to the, just quickly, you know, you talked about the state that I recommend is one where someone, the lawmakers, get to decide what they want. Well, look, that's every state, every law.

every law that is passed, every decision about how to allocate every single tax dollar is informed by some idea of what is good that is inescapable. Okay, so unless you, unless you had a, unless you had a state, and I know it's kind of a pipe dream, but I like the dream, unless you had a state in which one of the things that the state did not do was extract taxes from its people. Okay. So you're proposing a state where there's no taxes raised. So there's no police force.

Yes, right. So, well, let's, let's narrow it a little bit. There's no standing army. You and I both seem to, you and I both seem to agree or have a similar attitude towards the idea of redistribution of wealth. So let's limit it to that just for now. Let's say, no, no, no, you know, you said taxes writ large. So I'm curious.

I did. So are there taxes? Okay, go ahead then. Sure. There's no, no taxes are raised. So there's no police force. No, no. Well, there's got to be some other way to do it.

I mean, do you know of a society that has developed some alternative? I don't know of any society that doesn't extract taxes right now. There's no standing army, no professional army. So, well, hold on. So if your argument is, well, there isn't any such thing right now. I agree with you. Is that, is, are you, are you endorsing? In your, in your, I know you well enough, Kalenton, no, you're not endorsing what we have. No, no, I'm not, but, but I'm just, I'm going to this. I just want to sort of show how you know it's an interesting thought experiment but it's very unrealistic to say that there's

there could be a state that doesn't have any concept of what's good and that doesn't collect taxes which means there's no police force which means there's no standing army so there's no police force no that's not that's well you can you can describe it that way but that's not the vision that i'm describing to you so in my way no water sanitation there's no water treatment In my version of things, a state would primarily do three things, and not much else. Those three things are, number one, keep the peace. Number two, resolve disputes, that is some kind of a court system. Number three, protect the country from the outside, you know, have borders in a military.

Those are the three primary functions of having a state. That's the reason why you have one. So you raise taxes to fund law courts, a police force, You need some kind of revenue to pay for those things. Water treatment facilities. I think that should be done privately. Okay. Garbage collection.

Same. There's no public infrastructure, no roads, no bridges. Privately owned. Ideally, privately owned. We're talking about in the ideal situation, but yes, ideally. So, you know, I have a daughter in grade five, and I like talking to her. she's studying ancient Rome this year. And so I took her to over to Rome and talked to her a great deal about the aqueducts

and also about what happened to the states or the provinces on the periphery of empire when the Roman Imperium collapsed. And why was it that the urban centers were quickly depopulated and technology reverted to a much more primitive state and artisanal crafts disappeared and all these markers of high culture vanished. Well, it's very obvious. You don't have a state that is raising taxes. You have no one building connected roads. Yes, maybe people build a little road through their private property. It may or may not connect with that of their neighbor. It's not going to be policed, probably. You know, when Rome fell, you have all sorts of sort of vagrants and piracy and thieves on the roads

that are no longer being held in check. You don't have aqueducts that are bringing water into the cities and so without sanitation and clean water cities disappear and with that you're all these markers of high culture because that you're describing you're describing the decline of a civilization that had a certain structure and then that structure fell apart but but this is i mean you can apply the same to other civilizations there's certain things that you need but there's certain things that you need to want there are urban density there's such a culture to have high art right you need a state that is raising taxes

that is keeping the peace, as you said, but is also building public infrastructure, providing for sanitation, funding the creation of, say, stadiums or opera houses. Here are the things, to be realistic, here are the kinds of things that have characterized most civilizations,

you know, across time. Slavery, autocracy, and the lack of freedom. Those are the characteristics that have characterized most human civilizations at most periods of time. The outliers are those civilizations that have been liberal in the Western liberal democracy sense. And it's not this, there's only one, but there are very, very few. If you're talking about standard human civilization, you're talking about civilizations

that are characterized by top-down elite tyranny combined with, violence and slavery. All right. Well, I'll come back to that. I just wanted to make the point, though, that the kind of society that you're picturing, this is why I say, if it could exist, it would necessarily be basically a small-scale anarchist collective, very agrarian, because you can't have cities if you don't have the infrastructure. You're making huge, huge leaps and assumptions. Well, I mean, show me, you can tell me what kind of society has actually been run in the way that you prescribe. And if it maintained a city with over 200,000 people without any kind of public infrastructure and without taxation for anything other than law courts, police, and a military,

I will concede defeat on this point. But no society like that has ever been created. And you can imagine, though, that that that's the kind of response that, you know, you might have heard, you know, uttered in the, in the 13th, in 13, in 13, uh, colonies before the American Revolution like what are you trying to do you know every every society is ruled by a hereditary you know monarch or a king you you are you are now participating in some kind of of pie in the sky thinking this cannot be done what are you trying to do I mean the the the American experiment was an experiment it was an experiment and look how it and look how it turned out I mean it's not

antecedents that they were drawing off getting off the rails now your understanding of human nature and the limitations that it entails ah it's human nature okay so human nature on the kind of government that can work for human beings the human nature seems to be inclined to do all kinds of negative things like number one gather in like groups and oppose other groups of people who look different or seem different or have a different background than you and number two nature appears to like the idea of having power over other human beings. And those two things are things that the constitution and the law, in order for people to be free, needs to try to prevent giving its full expression in the sense that if you prohibit violence, then the ability

of some people to hold power over other people is greatly diminished. That's what we mean, or at least that's what I mean, by a free society. So I want to go back to your point about not confusing liberalism, as I'm referring to it, as you would understand it, with what is called liberalism today. You said there's no connection between them, and I disagree. You define classical liberalism, I'll say, as being founded on one of the core anthropological assumptions is that we are autonomous, that we are autonomous, rational individuals, who know our own lines, who know what is good for us, and who should be free to distinguish.

decide what is good for us because we're autonomous only the last part so let's let's just correct this correct the record I mean some some classical liberals do think this some classical liberals think that the basis of the of their ideology is rationality and and the ability of individuals to understand profoundly you know what is in fact in their long-term self-interest don't put that on me people are a lot of people are not rational freedom not depend on rationality that's not the idea at all the idea of freedom simply is you are your own individual and you make your own way and nobody else is in a better shot position than you are

to justify imposing their inclinations upon you that is all okay people people are free to be irrational if they want to i'm only gonna reject because kaelin you told me you had a hard stuff i'm like how do we like do we just square away uh bringing you both to Lloyd to the new studio and just sitting down for an afternoon to just hammer this back and forth? Well, I'll tell you, there's no, there's no resolution. I mean, look, the idea of liberal value of individual, the kind of freedom that you've described, negative freedom, autonomy, it's kind of usually for most people predicated on the idea that people do know their own minds, do know what's good for them. And that's why they should get to decide what's good for them. But I mean, to that, it's based upon self. It's based upon self.

interest, but it is only individual in the position on the idea that we know our own self-interest and we should be free to pursue it. No, no, no. You're making much too many large assumptions. You are, see, you're putting yourself in the position. You know their own self-interest. That statement necessarily involves putting yourself in the position of somebody else and knowing better than they do that, you know what, what you're doing is not in your best in your best interest. That's not the point. The point is it's their call and their call alone. You and I, and Sean have no business making judgments on the part of those other people. So, okay. So you're saying liberalism, people are autonomous. Everyone gets to decide what's

in their own self-interest. No one else should interfere. Yes. Even if, even if we don't approve, even if we think they're dead wrong, it's their call. Yeah. So again, I mean, this is where, and we alluded to this earlier, human preferences, the things we want to do, the range of choices available to us. The range of things we would even ever consider wanting is conditioned by our culture. And culture is common. So no one is actually autonomous. No one like I don't disagree with you. That's fine. That's not the kind of autonomy I'm talking about. And here's here's here's the thing that's necessary in order for this logic to work. Some people understand better than other people what the proper values are. You're speaking as though, you're

you know what the proper values are and those other stupid people down there don't and therefore we have to make sure that they get the proper grounding in your values that's what you're saying so i'll just i'll end on this question who decides right it's right and the answer is not any one individual who decide there's there's lots of different ways that a culture receives its understanding of what is good a lot of it is just it is received intergenerational. We belong to an intergenerational compact. We inherit from our ancestors. Now, I think this chain of continuity has been broken. But ideally, we would receive from our ancestors a robust set of customs, of values, of mores, of understanding, what are the rules governing

interpersonal relationships? How do we behave in trustworthy ways? What kind of values should we strive for? We receive training from earliest childhood in manners, in etiquette. That has to be formed, someone has to impose their will on us for us to develop those virtues through force, when we're children, especially. And then we hopefully pass that along to the next generation. So ideally, it's not a strong man who decides. Ideally, a lot of this is something that is accumulated. It is the collective wisdom of many generations that has passed on to us. No objection. No objection to any of that. That's totally fine, but that's not what we're debating right but when you start saying no we can't agree on anything everyone

decide for themselves you're undermining that so there are other way there are also other ways that is true and what is no no that's not true and this is been the of philosophers for thousands of years so it's not that that any one person gets to show up and say i know look you have the fact like you you have millennial bottom line though is still this If somebody comes along and says, no, I don't want to do that. I want to do this my own way. And that way is not in accordance with the philosophy that you're espousing, then what you're doing is endorsing institutions of the state to come along and say,

sorry, you can't do it that way. Yes. If someone wants to show pornography to my children, I support the institutions of the state. You can decide over your children. Let's talk about adults. No, no. If an adult wants to show pornography to my child, I say, know you should go to jail that's not what to your child i'm talking let's let's let's talk about the

other but equally contentious situation where you have adults can somebody decide to make pornography and show it to other consenting adults in your world uh okay yes you asked you started with this question what i think of pornography i'll end on this because i have to run yeah i think pornography should be banned exactly yeah folks it feels like we got to have a third installment thanks for I'm telling you there's no resolution yeah but you know you that's not a bad thing you know discourse is a great thing you two going back and forth I think respectfully is really cool to watch right it's it's a cool thing to sit here and be a part of at times and like I don't have two cents to add to this I mean I do because there's a lot of crazy things going on in our

society I still think I still think after listening both of you I still think there is a common good I think it is inherited from our ancestors. The problem we got is the coercion that you alluded to, Bruce, multiple times, of a lot of different things going on in society and that shaping some of the things our current government's doing. I'll let you out of here, Kaelin. I know you have hard of it. Do I get the final note?

Go for it, Kailen. Go for it. Okay, I don't like coercion either. I think that the way to minimize coercion is by fostering immoral people. The state does have some role in that, not an exclusive role. I'll give you a quote from my favorite quasi-wiggish conservative Edmund Burke, that men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to port moral chains upon their own appetites.

In proportion, as their love to justice is above their rapacity, in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsel of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power of will and appetite be placed somewhere. And the less of it is,

the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. I would prefer that more of the moral constraints are within, but absent

those, you will find more without. Let's not lose the message there from Burke. As Kaelan just read out, people can be given these freedoms in proportion to something and to the extent that they do not reflect that proportion, we cannot let them have it.

In our judgment, we are going to be their judges, and we're going to say to what extent that they can be free. Bruce, Bruce, you know what's funny is I'm like, I think each one of you want to have the final say at all times. Thanks for doing this again. I look

forward to hearing what people have to say, but thanks again for hopping on and doing this. Thanks, John.