The Paikin Podcast - Everything Political: Rising Violence, the Crisis of Liberalism, and the End of History

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Michael Bonner joins to discuss his book, The Crisis of Liberalism: The Origin and Destiny of Freedom, the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, then they go back and look at the early 90s and the promise of the end of history, the growing tension between individual and group identity, and why many misunderstand the origins of liberalism. Then they discuss the backlash to DEI, whether wanting to be free is part of our DNA, the western assumption of progress, and the usual round of “good on yas.”   Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcast Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznCIUEA11lZGcNIM4h?si=b5d73bc7c3a041b7X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social Email us at: [e-mail] 

Tony and Martha, this is the first time we've had a chance to have a conversation since the events in Washington, D.C. of last Saturday night when somebody tried to storm the ballroom at that hotel where the White House Correspondent's Dinner was taking place. And I'm going to assume that none of the three of us have ever been to a White House correspondence dinner. Twice I've been there. You've been to two of them? Really? How did you score that? I had friends in low places. What can I tell you?

Wow. Okay. Well, okay, then. And let's start with you when you heard the news. What went through your head? What went through my head was, I'm glad nobody was killed. And secondly, I've been to that. And, you know, the Washington Hilton, where it takes place, I've stayed at that hotel.

I just came away with the idea that maybe it has to be moved to a more secure location because you have guests who have nothing to do with the event, who are staying in that hotel. And that was the hotel where Reagan was shot. Although that was outside the hotel. Outside the hotel. But, you know, I'm just thinking maybe there's a more secure location is what I came away with. Martha, what did you think? I don't know.

I mean, I'm going to be down in Washington for the Canada U.S. Law Institute annual conference in a couple weeks. I have not been to the United States at all since the current president got reelected, not out of necessarily any aversion, but just it feels so far away and in so many ways. And watching that happen was just, oh, stuff is just happening. I mean, you know, we saw what happened with ICE in Minnesota and two people were murdered. Like, it just all of it, all of it is so unsettling. Is a bit of America that feels, or maybe more than a bit, but maybe it's a lot of America that feels very out of control right now.

I thought at the president's post-event news conference, which he kind of very spontaneously called at the last minute, I'm trying to remember who it was. I think it was Steve, who's Steve Doocy's kid from Fox News? What's his name? Peter. Peter. Peter Deucey asked the president,

which I thought was a very good question. Why does this keep happening to you? And I wouldn't mind some exploration of that. subject right here right now. Tony, if you've got any thoughts as to why this seems to happen so much on Donald Trump's watch? Well, I think it's the political climate, quite frankly. And this isn't just, you know, right-wing extremists who are advocating violence. There are people within the Democratic Party that at least condone this kind of rhetoric, if I may say so, and certainly allies of the Democratic Party also engage in this rhetoric. And it's just got to stop. I think on all sides.

On all parties, Tony, on all parties. And yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but, but, but this is about President Trump. But the president himself is he behaves in ways that almost encourage violence. Now you're condoning. Now I'm not, condoning violent behavior. I didn't hear her condone. I'm not condoning. I'm saying he condones. I'm saying his behavior after January 6th, his, his, like he is. Okay. So we're going to get into the political argument now about January. This is why his rhetoric, Tony, is violent.

Half the time his own rhetoric is polarizing. Okay, so it's all Trump's fault. Your argument is it's Trump's fault. No, I'm saying he's part of the problem. Well, Tony, are you saying he doesn't contribute to it at all? I'm saying, you're asking me a specific question about why Donald Trump is targeted. So you can either blame the victim or look for other solutions. I prefer to look to other solutions. And I think that that's how you have a good political dialogue. The minute you start

blaming Trump for almost getting killed. No, I'm just, I'm saying he contributes to the rhetoric. Monsters are we that we blame the victim. I'm not blaming him. I'm saying that he has significantly contributed to the rhetoric of intolerance. And, you know, does that mean he should get shot? Absolutely. not. But he is the president of the United States and I think has a higher obligation in terms of setting the tone and expecting better behavior from his citizens. I would agree with that. And here's my prediction for our wonderful little podcast. If he ever did that, it wouldn't make a whit of difference. The haters are going to hate. They're going to espouse violent behavior or condone it. And that's going to continue, even if president,

Trump was the model president that does everything that Martha says he should do. Well, let me jump in with this, which is to say, as I was driving downtown to do breakfast television this morning, I did hear Greg Brady on 640 Toronto Radio play a series of clips from late night television comedians who were giving a variety of punchlines, all of which referred to the fact that Trump was being assassinated and wasn't that funny. And Greg's point was, that really has to stop. And I'm with Greg on that. I don't find anything funny about joking about the president of the United States being shot.

I don't care who the president is. Agreed. But Tony, I think it's also fair to say that he has not exactly held himself up as a bastion of civil dialogue in the country. And in fact, quite the contrary, has, I think you can say he has had his share of responsibility for the violent bellicose language that is at least. used and we can go on from there. None of it condones an attempted assassination. None of that does. No, you're right, Tony. Agreed. And on that note of harmony, let's get on with the show. We're going to talk everything political. Well, we're off to a flying start with former members of parliament, Martha Hall Finley, who is now the chair of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary

and Tony Clement, one-time conservative MP, both in the Federal House of Commons and a progressive conservative MPP at Queens Park in Ontario. And we are delighted to welcome a special guest this week, Michael Bonner, the author and historian who has a new book out called The Crisis of Liberalism, the Origin and Destiny of Freedom. And he joins us from Blackstock, Ontario. And so the first question is obvious, Michael. Where the heck is Blackstock Ontario? That's a great question. Well, it's about 10 minutes outside Port Perry and maybe an hour on the way to Peterborough. It has a population of about 800, so my family and I significantly increased it. But it's a great place to live. I strongly recommend that everyone visit. Very good. And I'm really

happy to be able to reunite you with these two because this is not the first time you met Tony Clement, I believe. Is that right? That's true. It was when I was in a stroller on a political campaign going door to door in the in the heady days of the 80s. And I don't remember it. but I've certainly never been allowed to forget by my father, the campaigner, the doorknoy? What was he camp? Tony, do you remember what you were campaigning for at that time? No, I've been in so many campaigns. It's all a bit of a blur.

I apologize. Okay. And do you remember meeting two-year-old Michael Bonner at the time? Just say yes, Tony. No. Just say yes. Sure. He made an indelible impression on me.

He was an adorable baby. I remember every second about it. That's right. Now, you met Martha Hall-Finley at a previous conference somewhere as well. Is that right? Yeah, it was the Kuchuching Public Affairs. I forget the exact title, but the subject was the Arab Spring. And as a historian of ancient Iran at the time, I was just finishing my doctorate.

Overseas, I flew back and attended the conference. I asked some pithy questions and met. Martha. Wow. Michael, do you remember the heady days of what was happening in that time and how social media has changed? And oh, my goodness. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, it's much worse now. But much worse. Yeah. Those seemed like days of great possibility. And in fact, I'm going to use that as a segue to get into your book here, Michael, because I want to go back to, let's say, 35 years ago. It's the end of the Soviet Union. Most of us thought this is the absolute zenith of Western liberal democracy. It can only be good news going forward. I guess I want to start by asking you, did we have good reason to feel that way at that time? Good reason, yes. But I think that we took the wrong message from it, that liberal democracy wouldn't run on autopilot forever. And I think we see some of the problems with that now.

There were two famous books. Actually, one was a book, one was a cartoon, Aladdin. Fukuyama's the end of history. They both promised us or seemed to promise us a whole new world. And what ended up happening was that people read maybe the first 50 pages of Fukuyama and didn't read to the end where he predicts how things could sort of go wrong. And I think that instead of the criticism that sometimes gets leveled at him that he didn't get it right, Fukuyama is probably more like the closest thing we can get to a political profit since the end of the book seems to describe something like the problems we're having. He also mentions Trump, by the way,

at the end of the book, which seems kind of prescient. Indeed. Well, we also have to remember that the title, I think, had a question mark at the end. It wasn't stating that this is the end of history. I think it was asking if this was the end of history. But I'm intrigued by your book because you say that whatever assault is on democracy nowadays is less sort of threatening us from without, and more threatening us from within. What leads you to that conclusion? Well, it's the Fukuyama idea that the, once you have all your material needs satisfied

and you feel as though you've sort of attained the perfect political system, that the only thing left to struggle against, since people seem to need to have that struggle in their lives, he argues, would be against the system itself. we see that manifested exactly as Fukuyama predicts in the tension between the theory of universal equality and a kind of universal humanity and the need to stand out from that and be distinct with both personal individualism and then group identity. That tension seems to have, I mean, it seems to be getting worse if you ask me, but that's the root of the problem. problem. And Martha, I wonder whether or not you share Michael's deep concern that our democracy at the moment is in a heck of a lot of trouble. And if so, what kind of message are you kind of emitting to your students who are looking for, I presume, some way to save this Western liberal democratic world in which we've grown up?

that's like asking you know how are we getting our students to figure out how to save the world it's super tough and i think some of the lessons for students in particular haven't changed maybe we need to do better at getting them through but just focus on what's the evidence do your research be thorough in your research ensure that you're asking good questions never going to know everything. That's a tough one to say to young people, by the way, just saying, but understand you're never going to know everything. So have a pretty good idea of some of the important questions to ask, be willing to be willing to look at things that don't necessarily agree with your assumptions so far. Like I think a huge job of an educational

institution is not just to teach because you can get pretty, you can go down a path of we're teaching dogma, right? And I think in some cases, we've seen a pendulum swinging in the university world. I won't say dogma, but there's some other ways of describing some of the challenges. But to go to an insistence on it's not just teaching, it's learning, it's questioning, it's engaging in debate. And I will say I am one of those who has found the last number of years hard to have, really open debate on a university campus.

There have been, I don't want to go to extreme sort of labels, but I know that some people find it hard to stand up for something they believe if too many people in the room will shut them down. Or if their career will end because of their teaching it. I mean, that's the other thing. Exactly. And so it is that fundamental, you don't have to insult people, but be open to having those debates, be open to having those questions. That is true for, you know, regardless of the topic.

And I think that those kind of fundamentals haven't changed. I think we've sort of lost our way a little bit. But if we're going to come out of this with this frustrating polarization, those still hold. I think those those fundamentals still really hold. We just have to really, really enforce, or not enforce, we really have to encourage the people adhere to them. Tony, if I take you back to 1991, I don't think you can refresh my memory here. That's the end of the Soviet Union, and I don't think that you were an elected member yet. I think you're still a few years away from being an elected member of the Ontario legislature. But my hunch is, knowing you as I do and how much you follow historic trends,

you probably, like many of us, were thinking at the time, all right, we win the Cold War. Away we go. We're going to have a whole, we're going to have so much better a world now. And here we are 35 years later, and I'm not sure we can say that. What do you think? Well, first of all, I was actually in the Soviet Union when it was ending. I don't think you know me very well. I don't think I knew you were in this.

I think I know you're reasonably well. I did not know you were in the Soviet Union in 1991. So maybe you tell us what were you doing there and what did you see? With Glasnost and Perestroika happening, I was part of a small band of, hardy Canadians that were trying to do business in the USSR because it was still the USSR at the time. And in Moscow and St. Petersburg and in various fields, including real estate energy and tech. And I was actually in Moscow a couple of months before the counter revolution tried to, well, they did oust. they did oust Gorbachev for a period of time and then he was rescued and then the whole thing fell

apart Yeltsin took over the Russian Federation and all the other constituent elements of the Soviet Union went their own separate ways at least for a time and so I was I was a witness to that history and I saw there came away with a conclusion that loss of empire was going to be a big problem in Russia and that proved be prescient, of course. So I saw the hope and the opportunity in the former USSR, but I also saw some of the problems that we're going to, we're going to overtake, unfortunately, the Russian people and have the leadership that they have now.

So, yeah, I was kind of a witness to that, Steve. Quite so. I guess I need to know you better, Tony, and we'll work on that going forward. Let's spend some time. Michael, I want to get you back in this now. You've described liberalism in your book as, quote, a form of politics that has forgotten its own raison d'etra and what it may take to recover it. And you go on to ask, for how much longer I wonder can we maintain a form of politics

and a doctrine of freedom that are no longer widely understood and which cannot be clearly explained? Okay, pick up on that if you would. What's well not understood about what we're trying to do in this, part of the world. So I promised you that there would be no bloviation, but this may be hard to go for it. So if you think about the way liberalism is usually presented, say, in school, or in, you know, the history of ideas, that sort of thing, it usually is described as emerging quite suddenly in, you know, maybe if you're lucky, it's like Montaigne is the first liberal or Machiavelli, according to some people. Fukuyama is very big on explaining it as a quite rapid

evolution out of the Reformation and the 30 years war, and that instead of having a kind of religious orientated society with a sort of particular vision of the good life, we suddenly decide we're not going to do that anymore. So that isn't true. And that's a gross oversimplification. And if you think of liberalism, that way you don't really understand it, that it comes out of much older debates, even the claims of someone like Montaigne or, you know, take your pick, some early modern person. They're sitting on, you know, hundreds of years worth of scholastic debates, medieval Christian argumentation about the relationship between what we now call church and state. and certain theological and anthropological assumptions about human equality, about sort of dignity of everybody of sort of like a radical sense of like universalism, and also an idea of progress through history.

So these assumptions are sort of so deeply ingrained by the time what we call liberalism appears that people like John Locke or whoever you want to pick is your first liberal, they don't even need to assert them as true. They don't need to attempt to prove them because as far as they're concerned, everyone already believes them. And hence, Thomas Jefferson and company can write down quite a bold assertion. You know, all men are created equal. And it is a truth that is apparently self-evident. Well, I just don't think that that's really true anymore. And it hasn't been true.

Well, it certainly wasn't true in his day. No, it wasn't. And that's a part of, that's in my book too. But the fact that nobody attempts to prove it, even the United Nations, whatever the full title is, the declaration of the rights of human rights or whatever it is, it simply makes assertions. Assertions, which many people still believe, but many don't. And if they don't, the question is how are you going to, how are you going to prove to them that you're right? Now, there have been many attempts to make appeals to pure reason or to self-interest or to, you know, some sense that this, again, that these principles are obvious. But they're not really quite, they don't quite take.

They don't have the satisfactory sort of conclusion of saying that, you know, we were created a certain way or that being made in the image and likeness of God, all people are fill in the blank. So if you want to think about how this can be a transformative idea, you can think of, as you just alluded, the abolition of slavery. No liberal constitution achieved that. That was the work of Protestant, I don't know what you would call them, revivalists like William Wilberforce, which gave a sort of heft

to those claims that they didn't have. You can also... Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I'm just going to, I'm going to jump in with a follow-up, which is to say, is that why you, at some point, actually, I made a note of it here. Oh, yeah, here we go. Whatever may happen to liberalism,

a coherent vision of human freedom, its origin and its purpose, will survive within Christianity. You add those two words at the end of that sentence. Yeah. Which will, you know, obviously be appealing to some people who might want to read the book. And for others,

it's kind of a no-go zone. So why the reference to Christianity there? Well, I think I can illustrate this very simply with what the present Pope has to say about American politics. That that wields his criticisms or his sort of gentle direction. I'm not a Roman Catholic, by the way, but so I'm not, this is not a secret apology for the papacy. But it wields a heft that, uh, it wields a heft that, uh, wouldn't be there if, you know, if I just said, like, come on, guys, this is common sense. You know, get your acts together. It's very different when it comes from that. So, but there's a deeper reason, which is that liberalism has borrowed those assumptions.

It has borrowed the assumption and the very vehement assertion that we are all equal, that we have, that we are free by nature. We don't need to be made for it. We are free by nature. and that we have free will. Well, imagine if we eventually get ourselves into a mess where free will is no longer widely believed in. That's fundamentally a theological position to assert otherwise. And, you know, one can imagine, maybe not far from now,

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Martha is not going to be upset if I pluck a quote out of your book said by Wilfred Laurier, a former great liberal prime minister of Canada who declared himself a liberal because he was, quote, one of those who think that everywhere in human things, there are abuses to be reformed, new horizons to be opened up, and new forces to be developed. Okay, that's his definition of liberalism. By that count, Martha Hall-Finley, how do you think we're doing today? Not very well. But I don't know.

So here's a thing. we were talking a little bit about, or at least I was, university campuses. And I think there's been a view over the last number of years that there's a bit of a pendulum swung, that there were, you know, whether you blame it on the equality, diversity, inclusion movement, or, you know, there's some people who feel, and we've certainly seen this in the States, that what that did was that it meant it became actually quite difficult to have people of different views, right? I'm not espousing it. I'm just saying this is where I think we've seen some of this happen. But what's been very interesting to me is I've had a number of people say, we need to go back to what's,

you know, a true meritocracy. And I keep reminding them, you know, one, I'm female and I have hair color that indicates I've been around for a while. I remember the time when there were quotas. And I don't mean the inclusion type quotas, right? I remember a number of environments where there was a limit on the number of women. There was a limit on the number of people of a certain religion. And so I remind people, we didn't have a meritocracy before. So don't talk about going back to a meritocracy. If some of these movements that have, you know, whether it is the idea of EDI from a liberal perspective of everyone should be treated equally, everyone should be given those opportunities, let's take a.

advantage of those movements and that effort, even if a pendulum swung too far, but to be like in that sort of horrible corporate jargon of continuous improvement, we're not there. And I feel as though we've slid, we've been sliding back in some ways. It's again, but we just have to, we have to be on it, right? If we get complacent and we allow some of these things to, well, you know, we can't talk about that or we can't, um, then, then, shame on us. I do think the concept of liberalism, however you define it, is not something that can just happen and continue. I do think it requires people to continue to work for it because I do I personally believe fundamentally that that's an important aspect of society.

Tony, we've already established that I don't know you very well, so I'm not going to assume that you sign on to Wilford-Lorier's definition of liberalism, but... Well, I actually, I actually think I'm a I'm a Wilford-Lore liberal and everybody else isn't. So, so there you go. I mean, I and I would like to engage Michael a little bit on this thing. And I think he talks about it in his, I know he talks about it in his book, but, you know, liberalism used to be premised on the idea, as he said, of men, humans being created equal. But it was also about individual liberty. Yes. And individual rights.

and somehow liberalism has flipped over. And by the way, that was at a time when the group rights were the aristocracy. They were, you know, the groups that they were fighting against, they thought their group rights were in some way superior to the individual liberties of people. Now we're in a world where liberalism is all about group rights. It's all about how to use. the system, which is colonial apparently, to enforce the group rights of certain groups over other groups. And that is the new definition of liberalism. So me, as a conservative,

I actually think I'm a liberal. And a lot of the liberals, not all of them, Martha, but a lot of them that I engage with are not liberal anymore. They're group right thinkers, which is also found in our charter, by the way, but our charter also has individual. rights. But we've gotten into this mirror world, this bizarre world where liberals aren't being liberals anymore. I'd love to hear Michael on this. Yeah, Michael, go for it. Well, I agree with you that there has been, that there is a kind of incoherence there. But the way, the way I can resolve it is to say that the universality of liberalism comes from that fundamental sense of equality. quality that nobody is any more, nobody's any better and nobody's any worse.

Because if you want to have a, if you want to have what we would consider in the West to be a fair and free government, you have to assume that, you know, that people who are supremely evil, if that's what you believed, that they would seize power and rule as tyrants. And the people who are supremely good would be entitled to power. and logically deserve it, and they would be tyrants also. And we don't want either of those. So you have to assume a kind of base level of equality, but that has to be balanced with the individual moral autonomy.

And the moral autonomy of each individual has a particular goal, which is not to do necessarily whatever you want, although that is probably a consequence that we have to live with to some degree. But it is a moral autonomy with the obligatory. to choose what is good. And of course, we will all disagree about what is good. We've always argued about it. I love to argue about what is good all the time.

And people will have the evolution of moral ideas and moral progress and so forth. But if you orientate individual liberty toward a specific goal, a good goal, choosing what is right and good and just and so forth, I think you resolve a lot of that problem, but we don't talk about that. We choose about what we talk about choosing what you want and making good simply what you chose. And that doesn't really work. Michael, you do say in the book you have a weird take on liberalism. And I've been listening carefully. What's so weird about your take on it?

Well, okay. Well, I think that people are probably not used to hearing that liberalism grows out of a medieval scholastic thought world or that its foundation is very, very remote from our perspective. Well, they don't think it arrived with Justin Trudeau. So what makes this so difficult to believe? Well, because I think that it's considered a modern perspective on life that is necessary for, it's an outlook or an ideology, if you like, that is appropriate for modernity, that comes out of modernity, grows together with things like globalization and a kind of almost like a postmodern subjectivity. but it doesn't. It predates all of those things. And if you want to understand it,

want to know where it came from, like the Jerry Springer sort of revelation of who your real father is, you have to look at where it actually came from. Now, a lot of people will tell you, people like Boris Johnson, for example, they tell you that liberal freedoms come from ancient Athens or something, like democracy. That just isn't true.

It's not even remotely plausible. I find that as a former classicist, even, I find that a kind of laughable assumption. And it's not just because of the slavery. It's also ostracism or, you know, sort of very strange ideas about what, from our perspective, about what free speech means. So we shouldn't look there. But we also shouldn't look to the, you know, to the sort of virgin birth of liberalism in the mind of John Locke or something only about 300 and some odd years ago. It has a pedigree which

is rooted in theological disputations and sort of scholastic philosophy that I think a lot of people might even be uncomfortable with, but you need to know that if you really want to understand what it is and why people like Locke and their followers said what they did. Okay, well, two things. All right, yeah, go ahead, Tony. Do you, Michael, do you think that it's part of human DNA to want to be free? No, I don't. I mean, there's a sense in which, there's a sense in which we think it is in the West, if I, if I may use such a term, simply because we are so used to that idea that all political problems are best solved by some form of freedom.

or that the right form of government is the one that assures freedom. I reflexively think that. I think that my own political philosophy is very much compatible with that idea, although I do think that it's possible to be too free. That's what you call anarchy. So I'm not, no, I'm not. I agree. But there are other forms of political philosophy,

which don't necessarily reject the idea. of freedom altogether. But for example, Islamic political thought tends to emphasize justice more than we do, that the right form of government is the one that assures that everybody gets the just desert, that people are all rewarded according to what they merit or what have you,

and that you can see this, if you wish, in the Iranian constitution, for example. So it's not really big on freedom the way they are. And, you know, that's, sorry, the way we are. And that's just a historical difference. But can I jump in there? Again, I want to hear what Tony's got to say on this because do I infer from not only the question, Tony, but the look on your face during Michael's answer that you believe it is part of

our DNA to want to be free? Yeah, I do. And I think it's it's something that does go back millennia and manifested itself in different forms depending upon the context. But that struggle to be free, the struggle to make decisions for yourself or for yourself and your family, I suppose. I think is a theme in our history that does go back millennia. So to me, that's that's a worthy struggle. And I think that when, you know, whether it's Tony Clement who never likes to be told what to do or an Iranian who doesn't want the mullahs telling him or her what to do, I think that's a common refrain in human society and history. Marcia, you're going to break the tie here?

Well, as somebody who has often felt that I was really more of a libertarian than anything, really in the sense of I don't care what color you are, I don't care what gender you are, I don't care what gender you are, I don't care what. religion you practice. I don't care what you do. I don't care who you love. As long as you're not hurting somebody else, I think that's certainly something that, that whatever one calls it, that's been very important to me in my outlook on society. I will say that when you look at perhaps the Iranian constitution or you look at Jefferson and the self-evident truths, practice didn't actually kind of fit the bill, right? And humans have over millennia been astoundingly good at having a small number of people in power, really finding it quite easy to tell a whole lot of other people how to live their lives and what to do. And so my view is

I'm with Tony on this, but I would phrase it slightly differently, Tony. It's not a design. I don't think it's so much a desire to be free as it is a desire not to have somebody tell me what to do. And I think there's a difference, right? As long as, as long as we're just kind of respecting each other, fine. But as soon as somebody comes along and tells me what I can or cannot do, then it gets to be more challenging. And frankly, the history of mankind is one of, or humankind, sorry, is one. of small numbers of people actually using their power over lots of others. And so I don't know.

I don't know, Michael, this is a really interesting conversation. The roots of liberalism might, as you say, go back much further than many people will assume. But I find there's a pretty big difference between what people say is liberalism and how they ultimately behave. Well, Michael, over to you. Yeah, of course. And I think that, you know, there's nothing, let me put it this way, there's nothing that human beings cannot almost totally screw up and ruin. And, you know, that's, that's a fact of history, too. That's sort of the subject of my previous book, if anybody's interested. But nothing is ever totally beyond redemption. That's a liberal assumption that also comes, has a lengthy theological justification also. And that, that our sense that history is progressive, not progressive in the NDP sense of the word,

but that it has a, it moves toward a goal and that it has a tendency to toward improvement or betterment or however you wish to put it. The arc of history bends towards justice. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right, but that is a deeply held Western assumption that is very difficult for us to sort of get out of. If someone who said in response to that, well, actually nothing ever happens in history and it's just sort of the same thing over and over and over again, it's sort of like Nietzschean idea, no one would want to hear that and no one would instinctively wish to agree with it.

But despite the problems that you mentioned, I think that there is a faith, if I may use that word, that things will and do get better. And we'll be back right after this. With that, I, and since this segment is called Everything Political, I cannot, Michael, have you on this show without pointing out a political fact of your background, which is that if we go back, well, I won't say millennia, but let's just say a long time, we can remember that there was a guy by the name. name of Mel Lastman, who was the mayor of North York before he was the mayor of the mega city of Toronto. Michael, would you tell us who Mel Lastman's executive assistant was back in the day? That was my father, Dr. Alan Bonner. Yes, indeed, it was. Please give your dad our best wishes because he's been a pal of mine for a very long time, too. Yeah, I know Alan very well, of course. Please pass on. Yeah. Excellent. Now, I want to do, I want to do a bunch of other things here before

we say goodbye to everybody. The next thing is, you know, is, oh yeah, in a world of death and destruction, we don't like to leave everybody with the sense that everything is awful. And therefore, every couple of weeks, we like to give to various people in public life a good on you from our guests, as in you did this thing and good on you for doing it. It might have been a little bit against stereotype. And it's a nice little feature. So, okay, Martha Hall-Finley, get us started. Who gets your good on you this week? Wow. And I, what did I just say about fundamentally being libertarian. I am not a natural supporter of government control over a lot of things. And yeah. Yeah. She's going to say Wob Canoe, right? I actually am, Tony. I'm going to say Wob Canoe.

That was my good on you. And my, okay, well, the violent agreement. There you go, Steve. But my, my good on you for Wab Canoe is that to make, to propose something really. quite different, always take some courage. It's so much easier to kind of go with the flow or incremental changes. What are you referring to specifically? I am referring specifically to the effort to deal with social media and AI for young people. And I have six grandkids between the ages of three and eight. And I watch their parents struggle with some of this. And if if they have a community of like-minded parents and they can all kind of work on some of these, you know, protections together, that's great, but often they don't. And when there isn't that, if government can actually get involved, such as bans on smoking for kids, this is really problematic. We don't know

where it's going to go. And my shout out is to Premier Canoe for at least having the courage to put this out there to say, we need to look at this because it's a societal problem. Okay. There's a former liberal MP offering up props to a current new Democrat premier. Tony, over to you. So here's why I was doing my good on you for Wab Knew as well for the same reason. And I think it goes to our discussion because I'm all for freedom, but in a free and democratic society, I'm not all for anarchy.

And as our guest has indicated, there is a difference between the two. And with social media infecting our young people, ruining lives, affecting self-worth and self-regard, becoming a haven for self-destructive behavior, it's gone too far. And I do not see a distinction or any way. a contradiction with saying we should live in a free society, but for young people, we do have obligations as stewards of young people to give them some room to grow without having all this evil inflicted upon them.

And so, yeah, I think I'm all in favor of a social media curtailment or ban until you reach the age of 16, let's say. and certainly to get the phones out of the high schools, just to give some space for people to grow up without having all of that, you know, people and images and all of that infecting how they view themselves. I think it's been very corrosive. The results are in on this weird experiment

we've done for the last 15, 20 years. Let's put some walls up, please. There's a former conservative member of parliament saying something nice about the current New Democrat Premier of Manitoba. Okay, Michael, I'm going to hope you're not going to say something about Bob Canoe. Have you got somebody else on your list of who gets a good on you? Yeah, I do. In fact, since we've had two of the same guy, I'll give you actually two.

So first is the prime minister with his impressive shout out to Sir Isaac Brock. apparently the Brock figurine came from Mike Myers, which is surprising. This is in his forward guidance, nine-minute video. Right. And I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do now or what sort of what the marching orders are from that. But I do think that it's good to carry on with these forms of political communication and to begin sort of rooting them in history again. It's refreshing. Gotcha. One good on you for Isaac Brock. Who gets the other one? Yeah. Second is, as I alluded before, the Pope. One can remember, for example, John Paul

the second with his crusade against Soviet communism. I don't think we're seeing something quite so momentous now, but the powerful of the world need to hear the message that he is given and sort of talking, you know, talking down the sort of, attempting to sort of ratchet down the political insanity a little bit, I think that will probably help. And I would, I would like to hear more of it. And coming from a man who is both the highest sort of, sort of, you know, spiritual authority within Western Christianity and an American, the first American, I think that maybe these two sides can be sort of reconciled a little bit. But we'll see. You forgot one of his most important qualities. He's a big baseball fan. He likes baseball, yes.

You got it. Yeah. Now, he is a White Sox fan, so I guess we have to forgive him for that. But, um, okay. What the heck. Yes. Now, um, from time to time, we do get mail on this program. Actually, we get a lot, and we usually, as we did last week, leave it for a whole mailbag episode. But there was one thing I wanted to follow up this time, and that is Tony recently said something on one of our shows, which prompted this note from Carrie Lynn Knight from Huntsville, Ontario. I think you know where that is, Tony. I do. Because Carrie Lynn emailed in to say, recently on everything political, Tony Clement, once the MP in my writing, said the abortion issue was a thing of the past. it is not she says there is currently a petition in the house to vote on a referendum on abortion right now

the petition is sponsored by a conservative MP i felt compelled to reach out about this because it's important for people to know that the abortion debate is not over in this country thank you for all you do many thanks carrie lyn knight huntsville ontario tony did you want to respond yeah no i i obviously thank carrie lynn for caring enough to to communicate with us a good I'm sorry, Carrie Lynn, for doing that. Let me just say one thing about petitions, okay? Folks, petitions don't matter in the House of Commons, okay? Everybody submits petitions.

They may agree. These are MPs. They may agree with the petition. They may disagree with the petition. They may have created the environment in which people sign the petition. what happens next is they go to the government. The government has a certain amount of time to respond to the petition, and that is the end.

It's not even a private member's bill, which would go nowhere on abortion either, by the way. I'm sorry to all of the parliamentarians watching the show, petitions are irrelevant. They do not mean anything. So they're kind of a cosplay kind of thing where you dress up, say, oh, I'm presenting this petition. Okay, performative. Maybe that's a better word. But it doesn't

mean that there's going to be a groundbreaking change in our abortion legislation anytime soon. No, but it does put the position on the record enhancered officially in the cradle of our democracy. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. Okay. If your worry is this is going to lead to something, it won't. Okay. I think I remember you, Tony. I don't think you said the abortion issue was the thing of the past. I think you said it was sort of settled. I think that was the word you used. That it's kind of settled policy. And it, it does not look as if it will be unsettled anytime soon. But we thought it was pretty settled. But we thought, many of us thought it was pretty settled with Roe versus Wade. And it got unsettled down there. Times can change. There's no question.

to carry Lynn for, you know, writing in. I echo thanks for doing that. It's great to have that kind of engagement. It's not over for some people, Tony. And I think that's part of our whole conversation. We have to be able to have these discussions. If we feel that, well, it's been settled, so stop talking about it, then we do ourselves all some harm.

It's our ability to actually engage in the debate. So I'm hoping. You know where I am, Tony, on this issue. and I hope that it's settled. But I do worry when I see how something that was settled seemed to be settled in the United States is not settled anymore. Well, again, we're not the United States, everybody.

Yeah, thank you. Let me make that point. And secondly, yeah, you're allowed to stand up in the House of Commons and say what you want to say. And I think that's important. Heck, even the Liberal Party has a right to lifeer in its caucus now. At least one. And always has.

Yeah. Well, and we'll see where that goes. but it doesn't mean that the course of this debate is somehow reignited because it isn't. Agreed. Michael, I don't want to have you be on this program without offering you a shot to comment on this if you want to, but no obligation to. Over to you if you want. Well, I kind of agree with both sides that, I mean, petitions, even, I think when I was a staffer, I was handed, I don't know, like a thousand page petition. I can't remember what it was about.

I mean, this is sort of not even, not a really effective tactic for, and that kind of. goes for both sides. I mean, it's not going to trigger the debate, but it's also not going to achieve anything either way. It's just kind of a waste of time, unfortunately. However, I'm kind of wary in a sense of the theory of settled questions, because nothing is ever really settled for better or for worse. And to go back to an earlier point that was made when we think that things are sort of over and that we've finally reached the, the end of history, or what have you. We haven't.

That's usually the time when things begin to change. And if anything, I mean, I don't know if it would really be worthy of the, of Parliament's time to debate absolutely everything or to devote hundreds and hundreds of hours to this particular issue. But the debate is going to go on amongst people, even in a pub or what have you, no matter what. And if anything, I would like on on all sides of every question to to, to know more debate and more sort of hashing things out, obviously up to a point, because that's the kind of anarchy also. But, you know, I'm, I'm, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, kind of, kind of, kind of an

agreement with both. Okay. Let's just before we sign off here, give a little Patreon update because you know, we've created a community at patreon.com forward slash the Paken podcast, where we offer a web exclusive video. We offer you an opportunity to email in your ideas to us, and we will let you know what we think of them and act on many of them as we do. We also want to give thanks to Tyler Firth from Hamilton, who wrote a very thoughtful note to us with some very good constructive criticism so much so we're going to hang on to that tyler and no doubt bring some of your comments forward in a future mailbag show david hill in toronto thanks so much for supporting us on patreon same to tony villamar in calgary he says i especially enjoy the way you foster dynamic exchanges

among your guests it makes the discussions both engaging and insightful good that's what we're going for we don't want the food fight here somebody mentioned jerry springer earlier we should never be confused for the jerry springer program jerry was fine but that's not what we're about Kellan Thomas Campbell supported us from Pickering, Ontario. Thank you, Kellannene Loring, thanks to you. Janice Schick and Katie Hermet. Katie Hermann, my goodness, don't our families.

Yeah, you know her too. I do. Of course, Albany Club, right, Tony? Well, yeah, I think I was her canvas chair in the 1980 provincial election in St. George, St. David. Fantastic. Downtown Toronto riding. and I think at the risk of saying this incorrectly,

I think my mom and Katie's dad were both on governing counsel at University of Toronto together. I think so. Katie, you fact-checked me on that and let me know. I also want to thank Ralph Lean, who is another Palatonies and a longtime conservative party backroom advisor, now a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Ralph Lean says, I watch every show you do and therefore came in at the highest level of support. Ralph, I love having cigars with you. my hero for doing this. Well done. Thank you so much. Can we also thank Michael Bonner and encourage you to find his book, The Crisis of Liberalism, the Origin and Destiny of Freedom. Michael,

thanks for joining us from Blackstock, Ontario today. All of our shows are archived at stevepaken.com. And with that, we say, peace and love, everybody, and we'll see you next time.