Category Archives: Sethics vs. Assorted Assumptions

SethBlogs goes deep on assorted Sethical conundrums.

THE UNJUST MEDICINE?

Image via Flickr by NRKbeta.

“Hey, guys, we’re not asking for much,” American congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said amidst a gathering of reporters, “we’re just asking for equity in laughter.”

Progressive US politicians have apparently observed that progressive comedy does not receive as many laughs per punchline as woke-free comedy, and so they are proposing a bill to require that audiences laugh more equitably at all shapes and guises of humour.

“Silence… in laughter… is violence,” Ocasio-Cortez noted with strong intonation.

The ACLU joined in supporting the bill. “It’s time,” the human rights organization said in a public statement, “that all comedians, regardless of race, sex, or ability to amuse, receive the same level of laughs as the privileged non-progressive comedians.”

Ocasio-Cortez explained further: “Both Saturday Night Live and New Yorker comics have long shown us that the best comedy has nothing to do with laughter. Comedy’s about touching our hearts and our minds, not our funny bones.”

Dove Soap has joined the cause with an advertising campaign, titled “RealHumor,” to celebrate comedians who “haven’t received their fair share of chuckles because they don’t meet traditional comedy standards.” Celebrity spokesperson and trailblazing low-laughter-provoking late-night talk show host, Seth Myers, explained:

“It’s not okay to choose your comedy by how much it makes you laugh! It’s time we realized that all jokes are funny in their own way—especially real humour that doesn’t conform to the comedy/laughter paradigm.”

But one reporter asked: “If laughter isn’t relevant to whether someone is funny, why then is it so important to have equity in laughter?”

“It depends on the context,” Ocasio-Cortez explained. “But what I can tell you is that all people, especially those of us who are progressive and experiencing humourlessness, have the same right to giggling audiences as those who are born with a silver tongue in their mouth.”

The congresswoman was then asked if she would still support the bill even if it meant compelling people to laugh at progressive jokes that they personally found to be offensive.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not waver. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Think about it, guys: it’s literally impossible for a progressive person to make offensive jokes. Offensive humour equals power plus laughter. We have neither power behind our jokes, nor, as we’ve already stated, does anyone laugh at our jokes—which is exactly the problem.”

SIMULCAST ON SETHSTACKS

ACADEMIC FIEFDOM: Overcite vs. Oversight

The SethBlogs annual list of The Top 100 Under 100 Who Dislike Cancel Culture has come out, and I am pleased to announce that I, my very Seth, have qualified once again. I believe that cancel culture is unethical (because it uses intimidation to promote social conformity), cruel (because it dehumanizes those who don’t follow its codes), and unhelpful (because it divides us more than it yields the social improvements it claims to seek). While I’m not opposed to consequences for behaviours, my position is that punishments should stay in their jurisdiction. For instance, if you are alleged to have taken part in a crime, it is up to the legal system to take a crack at you as opposed to pre-trial panels of laymen announcing that you are to be relieved of your occupation.

Meanwhile, I have also landed on the SethBlogs Top 64 Reaching 6’4” or More Who Criticize Wokeness. I leave you to my official SethBlogs definition of wokeness for detailed reasons why, but, in short, I contend that political correctness is dogmatic (dismissing criticism as bigotry), duplicitous (employing sliding-scale standards of evidence), and punitive (utilizing a cancel culture division to deal with dissenters). To my mind, even if wokeness were correct in its one-dimensional assessments of our culture, the means by which it pursues those ends are dangerous to a free society.

One of my areas of particular anti-woke ranting is what I perceive to be woke studies within academia. (I listened to the woke PR firm, CBC Radio, for ten years, and in each of the many times that they invited a woke academic to the microphone, obvious holes in the supposed scholar’s reasoning were gaping despite the cuddly interviewer following CBC policy to never ask a “progressive” a challenging question. Examples available upon request.)

So, given my moral philosophy combo pack of anti-wokeness-in-academia and anti-cancel-culture in general, you can imagine my heartstrings being tugged in both directions when I discovered that Florida has cancelled certain woke academic programs. For instance, the New College of Florida has expelled its gender studies program.

To sort through the Sethical implications of such a restriction, let us first take a long walk on the general anti-woke side. I note there that a suspension of academic work does not necessarily fall into my definition of cancel culture if the program is being taken out by a legitimate academic authority because of clear and present anti-academic work product.

To that end, let us consider tools we might utilize to assess whether a gender studies program might be non-academic.

Popular-with-heterodox-academics journalist Jonathan Rauch suggests (in a discussion with social psychologist Dr. Jonathan Haidt) that we have an implied academic constitution:

“The constitution of knowledge… says that there are two things that [you’ve] got to do if you want to make knowledge. The first is: epistemically, I call it the fallible-ist rule which is anyone could be wrong, so no one gets to shut everybody else up and say we’ve reached the right answer—‘everyone go home.’ Second is the empirical rule, which says the way you make… objective knowledge is not by yourself in a room or not because you’ve had a divine revelation. You’re going to have to check with other people and do it in a very specific way… you’re going to have to go through a very disciplined process through institutions with other trained people… a lot of protocols, a lot of learning in order to establish that what you’re saying is actually true.”

Sounds reasonable. More specifically, I would say that if, within a scholar’s academic work product, they make mathematically illiterate statistical inferences, freely apply double standards, ignore alleged logical inconsistencies suggested by critics, and generally eschew the scientific method, and/or teach their students that their ideological opinions are truths (and they punish students for questioning those alleged facts), then they are failing to be academic in those cases.

I’m not saying that we should consider individual instances of not-so-academic work or teaching as an indication that a professor is a failed academic. (Even the biggest brains among us make intellectual errors sometimes. In fact, I’m told that academia works via a series of corrections zig-zagging back and forth, with a general trajectory of greater understanding of the material.) But if a thinker is clearly captured by non-academic reasoning in their work then I’m not sure how they can still be considered academic. The problem increases if particular fields of study are dominated by such pseudo-scholars. (In that case, the chance that the general direction of the discipline is towards better understanding is greatly reduced since the protective mechanism of criticism is not in place to encourage the discovery of errors.)

Whatever the measurement of academic standards, I believe we must demand that academia keeps its eyes on the goal of producing information and ideas that oscillate toward more accurate results. So certain disciplines that have announced alternate “ways of knowing” without, as far as I can detect, sending the new processes through rigorous skepticism would surely fail any reasonable test of academic work that we might imagine. (If such knowledge diversifiers had simply claimed to have discovered alternative “ways of thinking” that were worthy of exploration, I’d be happy to join the voyage myself. But, as it is, these parallel knowledge claims are running around their fields unopposed.)

This all may sound like mere speculation about gender-and-other-identity studies—Why don’t you write a DEI-stopian novel instead, SethBlogs?! (Not to worry, I did. And it’ll be coming soon!) But if you like my speculation, let us bolster it with some reader-sourced anecdotal evidence.

If you have spent any time in or near academia in the last few decades, you may have noticed that some professors—and, in turn, some disciplines—are more dogmatic about their arguments than others. For instance, while I was acquiring my philosophy degree, I met a sociology final exam that featured a multiple-choice question regarding the correct opinion of a certain sociological case. I don’t recall the exact question, but I can report it was not asking a familiarity-with-the-material question such as, According to X-ideology, what would be the most likely view on Y situation? No, it was literally claiming that there was an objectively correct moral interpretation of a scenario that could be checked via a multiple-choice question.

In contrast, in all of my philosophy classes, opinions were never facts. Instead, we were tested on our knowledge of previous arguments, our logical consistency in critiquing them, and our abilities to rationally construct our own case for anything we wished. On my favourite occasion, I wrote an ethical critique of Affirmative Action, and the professor poured red-inked criticism all over it, and yet he also gave me the highest mark I’d ever received on an essay.

And, yes, all of that’s anecdotal evidence. But anecdotal evidence isn’t intrinsically irrational. It depends on what it is intended to do. It should not be used in academia to prove a generality, but it can be used to persuade that a generality is worth considering (and perhaps even investigating). In this case, I would like to draw upon your experience and suggest that you too have been where I have been. I’ll bet your continued reading of this essay that you have encountered a demagogue ideologue of an instructor. And I’ll bet you’ve also met the opposite: the smile-provoking scholar who is not only open to contrary opinions but seems to invite them.

Now, if your memory does include such case studies, then I’ll thank you to stick around and take in my additional prediction that you have likely also noticed instances of my second, more vital claim that certain academic disciplines are waterlogged with unscientific scholars—and thus peer-review pressure to support all of their preferred ideological conclusions. And, if we’re right about that, those departments’ entire relationship with the truth-finding mission of academia seems to be in danger of sinking.

Consider again gender studies (née women’s studies).

[Gender is a fascinating topic worthy of many questions and hypotheses, but I think it’s simpler—and less dangerous—to aim this critique at gender studies’ most long-standing faith-based ideology, feminism.]

How many in gender studies’ feminist leadership have ever considered legitimate counterarguments and possible counterfactuals to their presumed conclusion that, say, we in the West live in an anti-female patriarchy? How many feminist professors have asked, for instance, If Western Society is built by men for the benefit of men—as is a popular feminist claim—why do men keep sending their favoured selves face first into wars as well as the most dangerous occupations? And how many women’s studies professors have raised their eyebrows at the corollary claim from public feminists such as Margaret Atwood and Hilary Clinton that women are actually the primary victims of war?

Furthermore, if you’ve ever taken a women’s/gender studies class or any other identity-honouring course, have you ever noticed a tendency in them to apply reasoning differently when it comes to the group they’re allegedly studying versus less welcome populations? For instance, when investigating, let’s say, negative stereotypes that women (in contrast with men) might encounter, do feminist academics design their survey questions to illicit a check mark from female respondents while not offering questions that might produce similar victimhood-confirming results from male respondents?

(If you’re still not sure, please refer yourself to any of the “privilege” tests available in academia-inspired DEI workshops. Do you think the questions cover an even-handed collection of positive and negative experiences associated with a variety of demographics? Or are they blatantly calibrated to match up with the sort of presumed experiences that will put specific groups in the hated “privileged” positions? It’s like creating a Dog vs. Cat Friendliness Test and asking the critters to step forward if they recall wagging their tails when they greet their humans and yet not asking the creatures to move forward if they purr upon receiving a neck rub—or whatever the vile felines like. I’ve even seen some privilege assessment tools that literally ask people to step forward towards the privilege guillotine if they match a particular identity marker, and then when those groups are found to be standing farther forward than others, the facilitators note they now have additional proof that those demographics are privileged! In our imagined pet friendliness appraisal, this would be akin to simply asking the dogs to step forward if they are dogs, and then saying, “Wow, dogs really are the friendliest! This isn’t something you cats should feel bad about—it’s just something you should be aware of so you can do something about it.” It may be the most baffling example of circular reasoning that I have ever witnessed.)

Along with your and my individual anecdotal experiences, evidence that pseudo-scientific work might be proliferating in academia can be found (as I’ve mentioned before) in the Grievance Studies Affair wherein three scholars—Dr. Peter Boghossian (from Philosophy), Dr. James Lindsay (from Mathematics), and Helen Pluckrose (from Early Modern Studies)—successfully pranked academic journals. First, the trio invented ridiculous conclusions that flattered woke-leaning descriptions of the world, and then our clandestine triad reverse-engineered ways to “justify” their wild claims. In other words, they produced deliberately bogus academic work to see if woke-seeming academic journals would evict them from consideration. Seven such papers—including a re-write of Mein Kampf in feminist language—were accepted, and more seemed to be on the path for the same, but the project was spotted by a nosey journalist first.

And then, from the other woke flank, peer-reviewed papers (such as by political scientist Dr. Bruce Gilley or psychologist and behavioural geneticist Dr. Mike Bailey) have been withdrawn and retracted respectively not because errors were found in their facts or reasoning but because woke individuals protested the PhDs’ controversial arguments.

Social Psychologist Dr. Cory Clark argues (in a discussion with social critic Chris Williamson) that changing priorities within new cohorts of academics has likely resulted in a larger percentage of researchers who view protecting people from unpalatable scientific findings as more important than truth itself.

“Some of the most prominent journals in all of science…” she says, “have put out a series of editorials over these past few years saying that they would not publish—and potentially would retract—science that has likely potential to, I think the phrasing was, undermine the dignity of human social groups.”

I can understand such an inclination to prefer one’s research to have a positive effect on society than for it to add new hurtful data to our collection. I too would rather be a net contributor to happiness than truthfulness. Yet, if scholars are no longer on a treasure hunt for truth, how can we be confident that they’re on the most-likely-to-find-goodness path? Indeed, if a rigorous checking of the evidence is not guiding our scholars (and, instead, they are censoring legitimate hypotheses and conclusions), then what intellectual legitimacy does academia maintain in its efforts to help us sort through our public policy questions?

Moreover, as Clark points out, how do we know that the presumed short-term positive benefits of suffocating uncomfortable results are a net positive for our well-being? Let’s say a study seems to demonstrate that a certain charity’s work doesn’t help those it claims to uplift. Such a determination might have an immediate negative consequence that, say, fewer people will donate to charities in general. Yet learning about the flaws of that one organization may also push public policy advisors to seek out beneficial new ways of helping people, which, in turn, may be a net profit for non-profits.

I submit that pursuing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is not only worthwhile for its own sake, but it should also be the prime motivating value of academia for the sake of assisting non-academia in selecting the most effective policies to pursue our ethical hopes.

Therefore, I think a case can be made for regulating professional academic standards in the same way that we do other professions.

Indeed, in most occupations, there is a range of practices that fall within and without what is considered to be professional practice. For instance, an on-duty lawyer can take on any side of any issue that they prefer. However, if the lawyer builds their case by suborning perjury or intentionally acting outside the best interests of their client, they may be disbarred for not following their professional oath. (This is not cancel culture, which occurs when a portion of a culture attempts to oust someone from a profession or other role due to actions outside of their work.)

And yet a major trouble with the notion of regulating academic work is that academic standards have an additional consideration beyond just producing quality material. As I understand it, we also include in our reasons for protecting professors the notion of academic freedom so that we can ensure that these leading minds are allowed to go wherever their insights take them without fear of social or financial de-incentivization.

[I define academic freedom as an unfettered right of scholars to pursue any topic, hypothesis, and/or argument that they wish. This includes the options to write about their findings, to be criticized for their assumptions, methodology, and logic, and even to be proven wrong, and perhaps, along the way, to present their arguments to their students to test them some more.]

Technically, I do see a theoretical pathway to regulating academic standards without annihilating academic freedom. Perhaps an academic department builds its arguments on the presumed correctness of controversial premises and the practice of rigor-free methods to then prove new claims that their professors will then describe to their students as “something we know.” I would contend that such work—and the sermony teaching it provokes—is not academic: it is an anti-intellectual faith haven that does not adhere to best academic practices. Therefore, regulating such anti-intellectual work is not necessarily the same as infringing upon academic freedom to pursue—and comment freely on—whatever line of inquiry interests individual scholars.

Nevertheless, telling academics they’re on the wrong side of academic methodology and best teaching practice is still dangerous because the line we cut to itemize what counts as academic work and teaching practice must be laser-sharp. Otherwise, we risk our own ideological bias sneaking into the oversight and taking out our enemies for points of view instead of points of order.

Al Capone was convicted for tax evasion instead of his more infamous activities because law enforcement had trouble proving he was responsible for deadly violence in Chicago. I don’t object to that: prosecuting Capone for lesser crimes that could be demonstrated in court was a clever strategy that had a clear ethical upside. However, I worry that the power of academic oversight could be used in a similar manner. I can imagine a case where the academic regulators dislike the political perspective (or irrelevant-to-work behaviours) of a scholar, so they help themselves to a few inadvertent and petty technical violations of academic-work policy so that they can legitimately cancel the problematic thinker.

Such an unintended means of taking people out is a risk with all oversight, but again academic freedom is, I suspect, a particularly vital component of academia, where our membership includes a wide variety of special, potentially earth-saving brains, many of whom run on various levels of genius, eccentricity, and curmudgeonliness.

Have you ever known the joy of meeting an eccentric, genius, curmudgeon professor? While such a scholar can frustrate one’s sense of fair contemplation, if a student can let go of the gruff delivery and learn to understand half of what the tough prof is saying, they’ll learn lessons of thinking, argumentation, and even style that they get to keep permanently on their own talent belt.

If we do attempt to evict the bath water in which clearly non-academic professors are swimming, do we risk losing our eccentric, genius curmudgeons in the process?

As you can see by the length of my argument defending the notion of defunding non-academic disciplines, my heart says the risk is worth the reward. Nevertheless, I fear that my long frustration with woke academia may be causing me to underestimate the unintended consequences of regulating faith-based thinkers out.

To be safe—in lieu of going straight to professor or department exile—I wonder if it would be reasonable to offer academic probation with various options for helping the unscholarly academics to reset their courses.

Perhaps, as in other professions, some professional-to-professional mentoring might be undertaken. If that sounds too punitive to the professorial ego, maybe professors proven to be utilizing the unscientific method in their academic work could be given the option to take part in an Adversarial Collaboration Project (as co-authored by Dr. Clark at the University of Pennsylvania) which gathers academics who disagree with each other to see if they can find some results in common. Finally going paper to paper with their critics might help the previously unmoored thinkers to see the value of looking in advance for vacancies in their own arguments.

In conclusion, I am technically ambivalent about the solution to the conundrum of non-academic proselytizing in higher education. But I hope that Western academia recognizes soon that they have a complicated problem that requires their big brains to balance academic rigor, academic freedom, academic eccentricity, academic oversight, and oversight protocols to keep the regulators, themselves, from wielding the same ideological bullying that they would be intended to eliminate.

If they can do that, they may just qualify for the SethBlogs Top 10 Over 10 Wonders of the World.

SIMULCAST ON SETHSTACKS

AN ANTI-WOKE DEFINITION OF WOKENESS

Before we begin, I want to admit that I’m on the anti-woke end of the spectrum. Nevertheless, I hope my definition of wokeness is still useful to those living to the woke of me. After all, unless you are Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo, there will always be someone more woke than you. So if you find yourself yearning to critique the argument of a person who out-wokes you, I humbly submit this breakdown for your consideration in preparing for your endeavour.

I also hope this analysis is a useful reference point for those who would like to debate woke policies but are sometimes blocked from entering the discussion if they don’t have an exhaustive definition handy. In my view, such definitional demands on potential discussants are tools of avoiding genuine deliberation. Wokeness is like humour: despite being all around us, it is difficult to identify in words; yet I think we all know it when we feel it. Nevertheless, I offer you my hard-thought but surely imperfect definition of woke behaviour as an opening bid that might assist you in gaining access to those restrictive conversations.

PART I: DIVIDING WOKENESS

Among those who discuss the moral code of wokeness, I notice that we have a surplus of definitions. So, with arrogance in my heart, compassionate anti-woke bias in my soul, and clarity as my goal, I will now attempt to define what I think most of us intuitively mean by “wokeness” (or “political correctness” when it was run under previous management).

Those of us who criticize wokeness and those who abide by it seem to be speaking of two nearly distinct philosophies. According to the woke themselves, wokeness is alertness to injustice. (Wokeness sounds noble when they put it like that.) Yet, according to critics of wokeness, it is something like justice advocacy that determines who is eligible for its services via identity markers that are generally associated with historical maltreatment; moreover, it insists that all claims of injustice by—or on behalf of—those woke-protected individuals are undeniable; therefore, anyone who doesn’t agree to its descriptions and/or corresponding prescriptions must be punished socially, occupationally, and, where feasible, legally.

Sometimes both of these pro-and-anti-woke descriptions could be true at the same time: a woke person could have a fair point about a particular injustice and yet still be puritanical in how they make it. So, by criticizing woke assumptions, tactics, and recommendations, we anti-woke babblers are frequently presumed to be opposed to every stated goal of wokeness, including the most honourable ones, such as declawing racism. But, if I may speak for the majority of anti-woke thinkers, we tend to favour the enlightened values that woke activists claim in their titles but don’t, in our view, exemplify in their actions and arguments.

For that matter, it’s not just the anti-woke who are skeptical of woke tendencies. In my experience (and perhaps yours?), even defenders of wokeness admit that there is a point where they too see the woke elite “going too far.” (See political comedian/commentator Bill Maher who often irritates both sides of these debates because he cheers on certain woke talking points in one monologue only to mock woke gospel in another.) For instance, whereas a woke-inclined person may defend most ethnicity-related woke justice claims, they might be skeptical of the woke commandment to censure so-called “cultural appropriation.” Instead, such generally-woke-aligned-but-skeptical-of-particular-cases thinkers might assess the notion of certain cultures owning certain types of expression as extreme and contrary to their own value of cultures being free to influence and be influenced by each other.

So, if I’m right that even the woke-sympathizing among us view the influential moral disposition as sometimes overreaching, then we can conclude that almost all of us perceive wokeness as not identical to the simple call for justice, equality, and the humanitarian way. Wokeness includes bonus material beyond its gleaming self-description. By analogy, in my country, the party in current power is called the “Liberal” party. Yet I think the Liberal leader has some authoritarian (i.e. anti-liberal) habits. (For instance, in 2022, he said that approaching protestors possessed “unacceptable opinions.”) Nevertheless, despite my anti-Liberal-leader critique, I am fond of liberal values. When I criticize the capital-L Liberal Prime Minister, that does not mean I am opposed to small-l liberal ideals such as free speech and equal marriage access. Instead, I am a critic of particular policies and rhetoric that my Liberal government uses in the world, which I believe ethically contradict their title principles.

So I am pro-liberal and anti-Liberal at the same time. Similarly, by its own definition of itself, I am technically pro-woke: after all, I too am opposed to injustice. And yet I simultaneously disagree with nearly all of the arguments and tactics expressed by woke representatives.

So, when discussing wokeness, are we referring to the official definition of the thing or the way in which the concept is actually used? I believe that the public debate around wokeness is almost universally pointed at its actions and policies in contrast with its headline principle. For that reason, I will now attempt to define wokeness as I see it behaving as opposed to how its PR department portrays it.

PART II: DEFINING WOKENESS

Wokeness, I submit, is led by a maxim that identity groups can and should be sorted into permanent victims vs. permanent villains. Woke philosophy presumes, that is, that particular historical injustices have prominent and unyielding tentacles in every modern-day institution and social interaction. (See the woke’s use of bulk “privilege” diagnoses wherein all members of certain demographics are described as advantaged regardless of their particular encounters in the world.) And that irresistible notion inhibits the woke’s ability and/or willingness to consider instances where their analysis might go wrong.

If you’re a human reading this then you have likely at some point taken part in motivated reasoning and/or confirmation bias to guide you to a favourite conclusion. Such preference-guided thinking is not easy to avoid even among those with ironclad integrity. For that reason, the scientific method includes double-blind protocols to help the most logical of researchers avoid jumping for the unearned inferences that their brains want for them. The trouble that I see with woke moral reasoning is that it incentivizes us to disregard our own sleights of mind and instead to lean in to our prized assumptions. (See “The Grievance Studies Affair” by Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose in which they seem to have demonstrated anti-scientific woke bias within academia. To do so, they invented outrageous conclusions and then justified them utilizing woke language but no scientific evidence; the trio of authors subsequently had seven purposely “broken” papers accepted in academic journals. While the intentionally unscientific work couldn’t be supported with scrutiny, it aligned with the already-established inclinations of those publications, and it was rewarded.)

I have no doubt that certain woke premises and even conclusions sometimes have merit, but the woke method of justifying their arguments greatly reduces woke thinkers’ chances of spotting their own errors along the way. Unlike the scientific method which facilitates spotting leaps of logic, I contend that woke philosophy rewards faith-based groupthink, using three leading means to motivate us to defer to its pessimistic conclusions.

(1) Woke representatives insist that their descriptions and prescriptions represent unimpeachable virtue that only bad people would question. Given that wokeness has appointed itself the official spokes-value against many of the worst injustices of history, those of us who prefer to be good people (and/or seen as good people) are compelled to join a cause that claims to be on the opposite side of those moral catastrophes. (See how the woke refer to their openly discriminatory advocacy as “anti-racism.” Who, in their modern right mind, doesn’t want to be anti-racist?)

(2) Now under cover of their dogmatic insistence that they are the most virtuous among us, the woke announce revolutionary moral conclusions, seasoned with phrases that on first taste make them seem as though they are doing nothing more than protecting the demographic victims of history from further abuse. However, hidden beneath the woke’s flowering of sweet-smelling phrases, there lies in the soil not-so-fragrant machinations that are required to maintain the beauty above. (See the common woke incantation “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” which looks bright and cheerful on its surface, but which—through its equity call for demographic matching in the roles it targets—directly implies and leads to policies of “positive discrimination” against “over-represented” identity groups.)

Perhaps those unspoken components can be justified, but woke policy is to deny the existence of—and distract us from observing—any possible ethical quandaries and victims that come along with their effervescent platitudes. Consider Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2015 justification for using a sex-based quota to choose his cabinet ministers. (From 50 female and 134 male MPs, Trudeau promoted 15 of each to the top positions.) When asked why he did so, Trudeau explained “because it’s 2015,” suggesting that his discriminatory policy was, by definition, evolved to match the modern year in which we were living and that questioning his magnanimity would be akin to discriminating against women. Predictably, none of the reporters present dipped their toe into Trudeau’s linguistic trap, and he received no good-faith questions about whether there could possibly be an ethical downside to the government choosing its leaders—and excluding certain candidates—on the basis of sex.

And (3) once the woke’s policies land in our consciousness, they do not simply disagree with critics: they accuse them of being loathsome and irredeemable sinners who are unworthy of public participation. (See Canadian NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, who in 2020 put forth a bill to diagnose the RCMP as systemically racist. Only one of 338 MPs—across all parties—voted against Singh’s dogmatic conclusion, and, for the holdout’s skepticism, Singh accused him of racism too.) Such reflexive demonization surely then scares away other would-be critics who might have had some legitimate counterarguments.

All totalled, here is my one-sentence definition of present-day political correctness:

Wokeness is a virtue pyramid scheme that collects adherents, as well as casualties, via dogma, intellectual trickery, and intimidation.

My critique of wokeness as a doctrinaire and scary fraud is not meant to suggest that all woke-leaning people are evil and that woke moral conclusions are always wrong: I don’t doubt that there are well-intentioned woke-aligned individuals and that the woke have some worthwhile insights. My criticism is that wokeness is to moral philosophy what astrology is to science. Your horoscope may sometimes correctly point out something true about you that you might not have otherwise noticed, but, since the horoscope writer is using an unscientific method, we ought to be extra careful of using it to guide us in our daily decision-making.

So I would not count the late 20th and early 21st-century activism in the West that called for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples as woke. After all, those gay rights campaigners didn’t cheat in their arguments—perhaps because they didn’t need to: the discrimination they described was present and accounted for in the laws of most Western countries, so they were easily able to use good faith and reasonable arguments to arrive at their pleas for equality. Similarly, almost every modern moral thinker agrees that Martin Luther King was a hero of history who fought to undo clear American violations of equality and human dignity. Yet, the fact that the woke may agree with many of MLK’s conclusions doesn’t make King woke, just as a meteorologist who occasionally predicts the same weather as an astrologist is not necessarily using an astrological method to reach those results.

PART III: EXEMPLIFYING WOKENESS

In the hopes of validating in your mind the above three-part definition of wokeness as dogmatic, dishonest, and punitive, I will now attempt to show how wokeness consistently exemplifies that critique.

(1) Wokeness is Dogmatic:

This one’s the easiest to justify since it’s right there in the name. Being “woke”—i.e. morally awake—includes a metaphor for objectivity. Those who are awake are seeing what is truly there (in contrast with those of us in the dream state who are seeing a fanciful view of life). Such a claim of infallible access to truth is an essential component of woke rhetoric: any alleged injustice is always closed to disagreement. The woke are not merely making arguments about society: they are—according to their language and actions—truth holders. They are “educating” the rest of us as they replace subjective terms such as opinionperspective, and belief with objective reframes such as “My truth,” “Lived experience,” and “Different ways of knowing.” And, whereas the Western legal system is theoretically grounded on the notion of innocent until proven guilty, woke feminists have argued that we should “believe victims” independent of investigation.

The woke also insist that they possess infallible access to the minds of presumed perpetrators. Recall the infamous 2018 Philadelphia Starbucks case wherein two not-quite-yet customers tell us they were waiting for a business meeting at a table in the coffee shop without having purchased a beverage. According to even the woke-leaning New York Times version of the story, the might-eventually-be consumers were asked to purchase something or depart. Our soon-to-be famous fellows declined both options, and the manager subsequently called the police, apparently to have the unpatrons removed. The police then also asked the beverage-free table-dwellers to exit and were told No again, so they arrested the visitors on suspicion of trespassing. The story subsequently morphed into an internationally-discussed incident of presumed racism against the customer impersonators. Starbucks accepted the condemnation and shut down 8000 stores for a day to give their employees woke-approved “Implicit Bias” training. No evidence was supplied for assuming that the manager was motivated by racism other than the races of the alleged victims. In this and countless even more punitive examples, the woke successfully claim the talent of mind-reading among their powers of infallible perception.

(2) Wokeness is Dishonest

(A) Via Double Standards:

Whereas the scientific method of inquiry might see woke sociological claims as hypotheses that must be tested, woke philosophy notes that all contentions have already been proven by the “lived experiences” of the complainants. The woke need only point out cases where woke-protected individuals or groups fare worse in a situation to claim proof of present-day discrimination. As woke prophet Ibram X. Kendi puts it, “Racism… is a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.” Cancelling out the circular parts of Kendi’s definition, we are left with Racism is racial inequity, which is to say that any time two demographics have disparate results, we have proof of bigotry.

I disagree with Kendi’s oversimplified notion, but if divergent outcomes proved ongoing systemic discrimination, then woke scholars would have to admit many counterwoke examples where non-woke-guarded populations fare worse than woke-protected groups. For instance, men are more often victims of violence, suicide, murder, homelessness, and gay-bashing than women, but that is not the sort of inequity that woke thinkers are looking for.

(B) Via Word Games:

Wokeness uses several definition games to protect its arguments. For instance, one means by which woke philosophers avoid accusations of double standards is by defining themselves as morally infallible.

Consider feminism: when criticized for some of their women-first analyses, many leading feminists will note, “No, no, look at the dictionary: we are simply advocates for the equality of both women and men,” suggesting that, by their definition of themselves, they cannot be accused of favouring female people over male people (despite the contrary indication in their title). How feminists were able to achieve such a counterintuitive result in the dictionary, I do not know. But they are right: most dictionaries have given feminism that very feminist-guarding definition. Yet, in action and advocacy, almost all public feminists (save for the occasional Christina Hoff Sommers or Camille Paglia) seem to call for a double standard of care when considering the rights, protections, and dignity of female as opposed to male people.

On the one side of its advocacy, feminism claims that any alleged “microaggressions” against women are evidence of an anti-female society. For instance, feminists successfully cancelled medical researcher and noble laureate, Dr. Tim Hunt, because of his alleged misogyny after he uttered a joke (during a speech in which he was cheering on women in science) that women are more likely to cry in the workplace than men. Feminists are free to take offence to such attempted comedy and even to diagnose its sentiment as sexist if they choose, but why then—on the other side of their advocacy—do they promote much more severe insults of men, such as “toxic masculinity,” “mansplaining,” “manterrupting,” “the male gaze,” “the male ego,” “male violence against women,” “Teach men not to rape,” and so on?

Once again there is a clear distinction between the idealized egalitarian philosophy that feminism tells us about in its dating profile vs. the female-people-only advocacy that it shows up with on its actual dates. Referring to feminism as advocacy for equal treatment only to protect one sex from eyebrow-raising jokes while sending dehumanizing insults to the other is a form of ideological catfishing.

Similarly, woke advocates will sometimes announce that they have changed the definition of certain bigotries to exclude themselves. “Woke-protected race X,” they’ll say, “cannot be racist because racism equals power plus prejudice.” Power plus prejudice is certainly a useful concept worthy of its own term, yet its repurposing (dare I say colonizing?) of the word racism stops us from pointing at a specific and formidable villain of human history (the belief that a particular race is superior to and/or more deserving than another). This is not just a linguistic muddying of our words. By limiting racism to only certain genres of racial bigotry, the woke shield themselves from criticism when they cheerfully unleash pejorative terms such as “whiteness,” “white fragility,” and “white saviorism.” Under the original definition of racism, we could call such demonizing racialized language what it is, pure and uncut racism.

Ironically, of course, if racism were just prejudice plus power, then surely the woke would be identifiable as the most racist of all; what, after all, could be more powerful than defining yourself as infallible and then getting away with it?

Next, the woke manipulate our language by conjoining situations that are non-violent with words of violence. (See “microaggression,” “silence is violence,” and the call for “safe spaces [from ideas].”) Such blending of violent and non-violent concepts surely then creeps into our minds and creates an illusion that the woke are combatting a greater threat than may actually be out there. [The term “Concept Creep” was first expressed in 2016 by Psychology professor, Nick Haslam.]

(C) Via the Problematization Treadmill:

In King’s I Have a Dream speech, he was considering an idyllic, racism-free society. If achieved, it would mean that his goals had been reached such that, in theory, he could retire from that aspect of his activism. At present, however, it is not in the social or financial interest of woke activists to promote or acknowledge improvements for victim identity groups. Indeed, according to their own testimony, woke educators can never actually succeed in their woke work. Expensive diversity trainers, such as sociologist and White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo, famously tell their congregations that the bigotry of white people (including from DiAngelo, herself) is not something they can turn off. The professional woke person’s job then is to educate the alleged perpetrators of the bigotry and, just as importantly, to undermine the notion that such training could ever fully reverse the socially-implanted prejudice of the problematic students.

Notice also that woke changes to our language are running a perpetual updating process that can never quite reach its destination. Once woke corrections to the language are accepted by the majority, those interventions themselves become “problematic” and are discarded in favour of new sets of phrases that will eventually succumb to charges of being “harmful” as well. [As early as 1994, linguist Stephen Pinker spotted the pattern of eternally adjusting acceptable language and referred to the phenomenon as “the euphemism treadmill.”] While in theory, woke linguists claim they are attempting to remove hurtful word choices from our common phrasing, their actual duty is to maintain their critique of society as hostile to particular victim identity groups. Therefore, if the majority uses woke words, those terms can no longer be considered woke and so must be re-critiqued.

(D) Via KafkaTraps:

Perhaps the current champion of woke manipulation games is their use of Kafkatraps in their rhetoric. For instance, the charismatic woke-scholar DiAngelo provides her troublingly white followers two options: they may agree to her critique that they are incurably racist, or—if they attempt to defend themselves—she accuses them of suffering from “white fragility.” The double-edged concept has caught on so well with DiAngelo’s self-accusing crowd that it is now available in feminist speak, allowing men to choose between a diagnosis of misogyny or male fragility.

In other lectures, the woke will give non-woke-protected individuals two options for how they would like to be demonized. If a “straight white male” would like to support a woke cause, they may still be accused of “white saviorism” and/or “mansplaining,” but, if they decline to take part, they will be told they are participating in “white male apathy” and that their “silence is violence.”

If a non-woke-protected person attempts to promote another culture’s designated pastimes, they will be told they are “culturally appropriating.” If, however, such a person does not take part in a variety of cultural products and instead succeeds in advancing their own assigned cultural works, they will be accused of being narrow-mindedly obsessed with their dominant and problematic culture. (See “centering whiteness.”)

The number of woke Kafka traps are too numerous to list here, but I think they can be summed up by the Tina-Fey-led television show Mr. Mayor in which Holly Hunter’s political advisor character attempts to undermine Ted Danson’s mayor character. After asking him if he had had the decency to put up a black square on his Facebook profile during the leading BLM protests, she remarks, “Either way, how dare you?”

(E) Via Gaslighting:

Perhaps the most startling aspect of woke trickery is its denial that it’s up to what it’s up to. Consider the woke’s frequent use of the infamous Motte and Bailey trick where they do something controversial (the Bailey) and then, when questioned about it by critics, they hold out their innocent palms and claim that they are merely trying to support something to which almost no one would object (the Motte). For hypothetical instance, it seems to some of us skeptics that there are many “diversity trainers” as well as university professors and high school teachers who “educate” workers and/or students utilizing far-woke interpretations of history and society (the Bailey), but then, when those educators are criticized for, say, over-racializing and essentializing their supposed learners via privilege tests, the demagogue pedagogues gasp and claim that all they want to do is teach society undisputed facts of, say, American history (the Motte), such as the existence of slavery and Jim Crow laws. If I may speak for the anti-woke, we wholeheartedly support discussions of the cruelties of history, but we have many times witnessed the woke instructors in these matters utilizing their personal ideological interpretations of sociology to guide them. [The Motte-and-Bailey as a metaphor for certain ideological warfare was first utilized by philosopher Nicholas Shackel.]

As always, in some cases, the woke may have a worthy moral point that they are defending, but it’s difficult to have a debate about, say, Critical-Race-Theory-inspired pedagogy in schools when its practitioners are only willing to discuss a heroic interpretation of what they’re doing.

(3) Wokeness is Punitive

Wokeness is so sure of itself that it calls for those who have ever been a critic, a friend of a critic, or a non-follower of maximum wokeness to be punished via shame, de-platforming, cancellation of professional relationships, speech restrictions, job insecurity, and reduced access to due process.

In keeping with its gaslighting policy above, woke advocates will often deny that they have a cancellation branch, pointing out, for instance, that eight-hundred-millionaire author JK Rowling (who is a critic of certain trans-advocacy) still has a job. But either unintentionally or (I suspect) intentionally, the woke are confused about what cancel culture means. The term does not suggest that every cancellation attempt will be successful; instead, it refers to a minority but influential group of people who attempt to punish—via de-platforming and job emancipation—those who have non-woke opinions, behaviours, and/or artistic productions. When Rowling offers an officially problematic argument, the woke call for boycotts of her artistic work. The fact that Rowling’s career has not yet fallen is irrelevant to the question of whether a culture of cancellation tried (and continues to try) to take her out. In turn, such hostile advocacy surely scares away many woke-skeptical offerings from writers who don’t have the protection of a globally-successful franchise on their resume.

Despite the dispute, I won’t try to prove the existence of cancel culture to you here. I believe the examples are too numerous and far-reaching to deny in good faith. (If you prefer to have a case study handy, please refer to the example I provided earlier of Dr. Tim Hunt, the medical research superstar who was fired from all of his positions for uttering wronghumour.)

To my ear, the unstated theory behind woke enforcement is that the person caught in the act of being unwoke has not merely made a philosophical error: they are illustrating an intrinsic failing of their humanity, which cannot be redeemed. Therefore, they must be excommunicated from polite society so that their impure thoughts cannot spread to others.

So not only is cancel culture a hostile project which attempts to destroy fellow humans for saying the wrong words, it is, I believe, contrary to the alleged goals of ideological wokeness. If the woke are truly afraid of anti-woke zealots becoming radicalized, the last strategy they ought to employ is marginalizing such people to the scratchy outskirts where they will disproportionately encounter other supposedly evil-minded people. If the woke want to persuade their fellow citizens to join their allegedly anti-racist cause, they ought to promote us mingling with each other, which, as Mark Twain notes, is “fatal to prejudice.”

PART IV: CONCLUDING WOKENESS

Once again, I must insist that not all people who align themselves with woke causes are woke in action. Perhaps you sincerely believe in many woke claims. Maybe you’re right; maybe you’re wrong, but if you make your case with humility (i.e. you don’t claim moral infallibility), intellectual integrity (i.e. when two of your positions seem to contradict themselves, you reasonably attempt to reconcile the apparent discrepancy), and humanity (i.e. you don’t aim to destroy anyone who disagrees with you), then I would describe you as a good faith moral reasoner who happens to share some conclusions with woke thinkers. However, if you are dogmatic, intellectually devious, and/or punitive in your defence of a woke position, then I submit that you are being a woke bully, at least in that moment.

As already indicated, uncritical thinking is not exclusive to the woke. Other groups—including the anti-woke—can take on any of the above-listed patterns. However, what makes the woke so scary, in my opinion, is that even though it is only a minority of people who advocate its teachings, a super majority of us are afraid of its power to punish us. Consider woke’s forename, political correctness. As the description suggests, it is not necessarily providing morally correct insights, but instead politically useful offerings (i.e. maxims that we’d best assent to if we want to politically flourish), regardless of our moral objections to them.

I think it is imperative (when safe to do so) to point out occasions where woke advocates are being dogmatic, intellectually dishonest, and hostile. If, for instance, they racially profile someone as racist, we should ask them if they can see into the mind of the accused. If they respond by noting they are using their “lived experience” to infer bigotry, we should ask them exactly how that standard of assessment is different from bigotry itself. If they point out they cannot be bigoted, because bigotry equals prejudice plus power, we should ask them if there is any greater power than the option to be prejudiced without being criticized for it.

SIMULCAST ON SETHSTACKS

THE UNACCEPTABILITY OF UNACCEPTABILITY

SETHITOR’S NOTE: I recognize that this post is untimely given Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and the trucker-led obstructions discussed in this post have moved along. Nevertheless, I present it here because I have been slowly accumulating my response to the media response to the trucker protests, and I would like to house it here for future reference.

In a perfect world of protest analysis, the media over-lookers who guide our responses would attempt to give us material to help us contemplate answers to the following crucial moral questions:

(1) Do the protestors have a point?

(2) Are the protestors’ actions a reasonable and fair means of making that point? And

(3) At what point, if any, is it appropriate for our government and police to intervene?

These are not easy questions, and so the media (on both the right and the left) tend to avoid them, and instead, they choose to answer this question:

(4) Are the protestors the sort of people with whom we’d like to be associated?

Recall the American Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests of 2020. The predominantly progressive-stream media in my neighbouring country of Canada were—as far as I could observe on a daily basis—desperate to demonstrate their racially-conscious bona fides and so—in lieu of asking whether the protestors had a point—they assumed the righteousness of the political objectors. They assumed, as the protestors claimed, that individual occasions of police violence towards Black individuals in a country of 330 million people were not only, by definition, racially motivated, but also proof of widespread systemic racism perpetrated by police across that country, and then across its continent, and then across the Western world.

Not once in my daily listening did I hear Canadian progressive flagbearer, CBC Radio, consider the work of the Harvard economist Dr. Roland G. Fryer, whose analysis of ten American cities suggested that, while Black and Hispanic suspects were more likely to be handled aggressively during police confrontations than White suspects, Caucasian persons of interest were either equally or very slightly more likely to be shot. (This single study does not disprove BLM’s contentions, but perhaps it indicates that these issues aren’t as simple CBC Radio’s reporting implied.)

Nor did CBC Radio stoop to interview any legitimate critics of BLM, such as The War on Cops author Heather Mac Donald, who contended persuasively that BLM-2020’s call to #DefundThePolice might successfully provoke a reduction in law enforcement efforts (especially in predominantly Black neighbourhoods), which in turn might cost lives (especially Black lives). Perhaps Mac Donald was wrong in her further assessment that most citizens in poor Black neighbourhoods actually want more police to protect them, but ignoring Mac Donald’s daunting-to-refute argument demonstrated to this observer that Canadian progressive media cared much more stringently about signalling their affiliation with BLM than actually looking into the matter of protecting vulnerable Black lives.

Now let us look at how the truckers protest objecting to various Canadian government health mandates has been viewed by our predominantly progressive Canadian media. The ethical questions these protestors are proposing, like those of BLM, are heavy ones that ought to be checked by our journalists and pundits for reasonableness.

I, myself, have been agnostic about all government policies since the beginning of the pandemic. This is not a boast: taking the middle position on any political dispute is often the easy way out of putting one’s ideals on the line. But, as a non-expert on the most significant matters at play (from epidemiology to vaccine technology to economics to social crises resulting from isolation), it has always seemed to me that no matter what decisions the government made, they were in a precarious ethical position. If they were right that their health mandates would save lives, then not invoking them might have been a moral blight; yet simultaneously, by enforcing various restrictions, they limited freedom, suffocated the economy, and increased social isolation which critics suggest costs lives, too. So, embarrassingly, I have long raised my arms in uncertainty about the government’s actions because these questions seem too complex and elusive for a non-expert like me to have confident answers.

However, what is clear to me is that the majority of Canadian media decided early on that—in lieu of exercising their crucial role as eternal questioners of all government policies—they preferred to signal that they were evolved, scientifically-minded folk who were willing to defer to the government’s public health experts. They did not ask our political leaders tough questions about contrary scientific experts and evidence (merrily adopting the phrase “follow the science” as if the actions and evolutions of a novel virus were clearly “settled”). They did not ask the political leaders if there were any limitations on their moral right to restrict their citizens’ behaviours. Most crucially, they did not ask whether the damage to the economy and social flourishing was perhaps being neglected for the sake of safety that their measures weren’t guaranteed to protect.

While it may be the case that all Canadian governments perfectly balanced all needy considerations at all times, I submit that political leaders are less likely to pursue such an equilibrium if it is not asked of them.

So now we’ve had a trucker convoy that travelled through Canada, landed in various Canadian cities, and then blocked and/or disrupted vital pathways for commerce. Once again, I don’t know if the truckers were morally right or wrong in their arguments and conduct, but I do know that I was glad to see someone publically making the case that Canadian rights to freedom of movement should be considered, too.

So I would have loved to have heard the Canadian media asking that vital question, Do the protestors have a point?

But our Prime Minister told the media not to. Instead, Justin Trudeau spotted the approaching criticism, and announced that the truckers were “fringe,” “racist,” “misogynistic,” and possessing “unacceptable views.” Not only was Trudeau unwilling to consider the arguments of his citizen critics, but he also demonized them with accusations that required no evidence and then dismissed their critical point of view with that one terrifying word, “Unacceptable.”

Mr. Trudeau, you are the Prime Minister of all Canadians. Some of these citizens may not be the sorts you would take home to meet your mother, but to dismiss them as fringe is to divide your constituents into two classes: those worthy of civil dialogue and those not. Sir, are you not the party of human rights, delivering us the charter of rights and freedoms? And do those protections not apply to everyone? In 2015, Canadian citizen Omar Khadr (who had been convicted of “murder in violation of the laws of war” when he threw a grenade at American soldiers in Afghanistan) was paid ten million dollars by your government because Canada hadn’t sufficiently defended his human rights during his detention in Guantanamo Bay. While I emotionally disagreed with your decision to settle with Khadr at the time, I could respect your judgment to take into account the human rights of even violent criminals.

In contrast, Mr. Trudeau, your dismissal of disruptive but peaceful truckers as “fringe” is a shocking abdication of your responsibility to look out for all of us, regardless of whether you like us or not. Assertively explain your position to them and Canadians? Great. Tell them why you’re confident in your policies? Sounds good. But to suggest certain dissenters are not part of the mainstream, and therefore unworthy of consideration, is an anti-enlightenment position, which ought to have provoked a convoy of critical editorials from our mainstream punditry. They might have asked, for instance:

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the truckers, is it appropriate for the leader of a liberal democracy to determine which citizens’ opinions are allowed and which are not?

Instead, in my observation, most in the Canadian media dutifully followed Trudeau’s instructions to demonize the protestors, and offered various versions of, “We’re seeing swastika flags and Confederate flags at these protests.”

Now, first of all, reporting from independent media indicates that the flying of the swastika flag may have been misconstrued. According to the now exiled former host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup and currently trucker-sympathizing pundit, Rex Murphy, the Nazi symbol was an accusation that Trudeau’s government was behaving like a fascistic tyrant. This may be a vicious and indecent comparison, but note that it’s the same criticism that Mr. Trudeau was levelling at the protestors.

But even if the swastika flag does turn out to have been an endorsement of genocidal fascists, that does not disprove the argument of an entire protest. Dear media, have you ever been to a protest about anything anywhere? There will always be wild, irrelevant contentions presented by a few in every bunch of protestors. Even at a rally of Geologists for Earth, you’ll probably find at least one flat-earther. Consider how some BLM-2020 protestors were violent and a few of them were even murderous. Surely those heinous actions do not make BLM’s argument, itself, intrinsically “unacceptable.” So, if there were one or two evil symbols included in the truckers’ diverse display, that unfortunate inclusion does not disprove the message of the group, who as far as I can tell, disavow racism as wholeheartedly as their prime minister does. (In fact, according to independent reporting, they chased away the confederate flag-waver.)

Rupa Subramanya of the conservative-leaning National Post said in an interview:

“I spent three weeks at the protests every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes late into the night speaking to everyone I possibly could, and I didn’t encounter a single racist, white supremacist, or even a misogynist. These were some of the warmest and friendliest people I’ve ever met in my life in Canada in the… more than two decades that I’ve lived here. So it was quite unusual that my perspective as a person of colour who went into the protests was so different from what the mainstream coverage of it was and… that there seemed to be this total disconnect between what was being said about them and what I personally experienced.”

That description neither proves that the protesters were all nice people nor that their cause was right, but maybe it—along with many other such testimonials from independent broadcasters—might be worth considering before sheep-ily accepting Mr. Trudeau’s assessment of who’s worthy of consideration.

But accusing the truckers of being bigots was our Prime Minister’s best option to avoid acknowledging their complaints. Recall that in 2020, Trudeau defended the right of farmer protestors in India to march on their government, stating:

“Let me remind you, Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest. We believe in the importance of dialogue and that’s why we’ve reached out through multiple means directly to the Indian authorities to highlight our concerns.”

Love or despise the convoy, it seems clear to me (from the fact that the trucker-criticizing media hasn’t, in my viewing, produced any evidence to the contrary) that they were a peaceful lot. Annoying to Ottawa citizens? Sure. Loud and disruptive? Yes. But violent? It doesn’t seem so.

It was much easier for Justin Trudeau to go against his own advice to the Indian government by creating a media-backed character profile of the truckers as a white supremacist underclass so devoid of good Canadian values that they didn’t deserve the protection of Canadian values.

Explained Trudeau:

“I have attended protests and rallies in the past, when I agreed with the goals, when I supported the people expressing their concerns and their issues. Black Lives Matter is an excellent example of that. But I have chosen not to go anywhere near protests that have expressed hateful rhetoric, violence towards fellow citizens, and disrespect not just for science but of the frontline health workers and, quite frankly, the 90 percent of truckers who have been doing the right thing to keep Canadians safe to put food on our tables.”

Mr. Trudeau, Black Lives Matter was the required view of any public person at the time you supported it. Standing beside such an unquestioned movement does not show great conviction. Instead, it is like a judge who’s accused of being too harsh in their sentencing, saying, “Nuh uh. Look how easy I was on my popular friends when they were accused of crimes.”

Yeah, I don’t think you’re making the point you think you’re making, Mr. Prime Minister. The measure of a leader is not how well they treat protestors with whom they ideologically align, but how fairly they respond to those with whom they disagree.

Even if one is convinced that the truckers are loaded with Nazi-sympathizers and cheerers-on of slavery, I reiterate that our best bet as a liberal society is to zoom our public focus on whether their actual argument has any merit, and whether their actions are lawful. But, by taking part in the demonization of protestors’ characters, our media facilitated Trudeau’s extreme means of resolving the conflict.

Deputy Prime Minister/Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland led Canada’s way down the path paved by our media, explaining that Canada was now criminalizing financial support for the protestors with adjustments to Canada’s financial laws—adjustments that she said she intended to make “permanent.”

“The illegal blockades,” she said, “have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms and some payment service providers they use are not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act.”

Wow. Again, I understand that the truckers were disruptive and causing pain to the Canadian economy. But so, too, were the government mandates which provoked the protest. Perhaps the latter has more merit than the former, but surely a liberal society wants its citizens to have the option of expressing their disapproval of government policy peacefully. Maybe there’s a point at which the government should take serious action to intervene on disruptive behaviours, but treating peaceful protestors (and their financial backers) like organized criminals and terrorists is not a de-escalation strategy designed to move protestors along; it’s a punishment and a warning against civil unrest in future.

Then our Mr. Trudeau—backed by the supposed workers-party leader, Jagmeet Singhactivated Canada’s most powerful tool, the Emergencies Act, to take on the protestors. (This high level of response has only been used three times before, during each world war, and in response to the October Crisis in 1970, which had featured bombs, kidnappings, and murder.)

Along with allowing the police more stringent powers to remove the irritating convoyers, the high-level powers enabled the government to direct financial institutions to review their relationships with anyone involved in the protest and report them to the RCMP.

“As of today, a bank or financial service will be able to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order,” explained Freeland. “We are today serving notice: if your truck is being used in these illegal blockades, your accounts will be frozen.”

Wait a minute. Even if you think the trucker protest was full of jerks who shouldn’t have been allowed to set up shop in Ottawa, do we really want a precedent created where the government can financially neuter public dissenters? Dear progressive-leaning thinkers, would you be comfortable with a future conservative government not only breaking up peaceful left-wing protests but also financially wounding anyone even tangentially involved?

The Ottawa police chief, Steve Bell, put the point more starkly:

“If you were involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges, absolutely. This investigation will go on for months to come.”

So it isn’t sufficient to defeat the protestors: we must punish them until they learn to never publicly disagree with their government again. Count me in if the protestors were violent or even if they damaged property, but again I’ve heard no such accusation. Instead, because the protestors were not in ideological agreement with our leaders, their disruptive actions were unworthy of a proportional response.

As it is, Trudeau’s hierarchy of values appears to be this:

(1) Citizens have the right to protest for racial justice (regardless of whether protestors contravene health mandates in doing so).

(2) The government has the right to impose health mandates (regardless of whether health mandates disrupt the economy).

(3) Government has the right to protect the economy by invoking the Emergencies Act (regardless of whether such actions impede the rights of protestors).

Now, to their credit, Canada’s progressive-leaning media seemed, from my channel-flipping survey, to be more interested in the vital question of how much power the Canadian government should exercise to break up peaceful obstructions. For instance, CTV News included an interview with a leading lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who argued that the threshold for invoking emergency powers had not been achieved and, therefore, its use here was a setting a dangerous precedent. (And, to my surprise, the CTV interviewer didn’t even accuse the lawyer of being a hate-monger.) But, while such inquiries into civil rights are welcome, their effectiveness was muted, I suspect, by the media’s previous parroting of Trudeau’s demonizing of those truckers’ initial right to complain.

Somehow, the progressive media seems to have been so hypnotized by Trudeau’s soft-spoken and noble-sounding delivery that they have trouble seeing the antidemocratic tendencies within his words.

When first elected, Trudeau “progressively” chose his cabinet on the basis of qualifications such as race and sex, and when asked why, he simply told us that the date was 2015, and that was an end to it. If our media had followed their professional obligation and asked him some tough ethical questions about his discriminatory principles, it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to run wild with them. And, when Mr. Trudeau referred to his own citizens as possessing “unacceptable views,” if a reporter or two had asked the government how they defined which anti-government criticisms were acceptable, maybe Trudeau would have had no choice but to stop answering irrelevant questions such as whether protestors were the sort with whom he wanted to associate, and instead considered, “Do they have a point?

CBC, NOW PRINCIPLE FREE III: CBC Radio Declares Moral Bankruptcy

CBC Radio’s Editorial policy is clear:

(1) CBC Radio promises to tell every story from the perspective of truth and justice, and

(2) CBC Radio endeavours to alter their definition of truth and justice depending on who the players are in each story.

CBC, NOW PRINCIPLE FREE SERIES:

I: CBC RADIO CELEBRATES PRE-FORMANCE ART

II: CBC RADIO ENDORSES EXCLUSIVITY POLICY

III: CBC RADIO DECLARES MORAL BANKRUPTCY (you are here)

IV: CBC RADIO HONOURS THE ROBIN HOOD OF RACISM


In my cranky opinion, our friends at CBC Radio are unprincipled. They will, that is, trade their favourite principles for their antitheses any time political correctness is in need.

For instance, CBC Radio is assertively opposed to drug addiction stigma. This is demonstrated by their many gentle interviews with advocates who inform us that drug addiction is a disease and never the responsibility of the addict. CBC Radio makes an instant moral switcheroo on this position, though, the moment the addict is a public figure (especially, it seems, if they’re a rich, male who is of the right), such as, say, the former mayor of Toronto.

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that one principle must always fit all situations: distinctions between cases and/or moral hierarchies can leave us with alternate answers in different scenarios.

For instance, maybe the reason CBC Radio is pro stigmatization of celebrity drug addicts is not because CBC Radio is bigoted against rich white males, but instead because they believe we cannot afford a buzzed driver at the wheel of major affairs.

My criticism of CBC Radio, though, is that, when they trade principles, they never seem to point out a nuanced distinction that justifies the alteration. Instead, like a flipped switch, they go from all in to all out the moment a principle yields a politically incorrect result.

I’ll provide three examples to justify this accusation.

1. FEAR

Two of the guiding moral positions of CBC Radio are that when there is an Islamic terrorist attack (A) we must not give into fear, and (B) we must be careful of blaming all Muslims for the cruel actions of a few.

To my mind, both are understandable values. If we allow fear to rule our attitudes and public policy, we may diminish some of the great achievements of our free society.

Nevertheless, I also empathize with fear-based policy because I do believe there is something significant to fear here. And the value of better protecting ourselves from terrorism (whether that’s giving in to fear or not) is at least worth considering. Ultimately, all safety measures are fear-inspired, so the question is not whether we yield at all to what scares us, but instead how much we weigh and protect our individual rights along the way.

That does not mean that I dispute being wary of letting fear take us into an Orwellian apocalypse. However, my objection to CBC Radio is that they do not consider these moral questions from the principled position that they claim for themselves (always weighing rights over fear). Instead, they value human rights and freedoms when they align with PC tastes, and they ignore them when they don’t. Consider when a mass killing is committed not by an Islamic terrorist, but by a Westerner. Suddenly, far from cautioning us against letting fear intervene upon our freedoms, CBC Radio is open to discussing not only how we can change laws to protect us, but also the flaws in our culture that may have provoked the violence.

Indeed, if there is a murderous attack on a mosque by a Westerner, CBC Radio will convene a panel on Western Islamophobia (after all, we Westerners are complicit in provoking an individual zealot to act). In contrast, if there is an Islamic terrorist attack on Westerners, CBC Radio will also convene a panel on Islamophobia (after all, we must remind ourselves that most Muslims are peace-loving).

I don’t object to either sentiment in principle. Checking our culture for bigotry is worthwhile. And reminding ourselves that not all members of a group are guilty of the worst acts of individuals is also worth doing to reduce the above bigotry. But why does CBC Radio always seems to treat Western culture as guilty of the crimes of its worst citizens, and Islamic culture as separate from its members’ worst actions? Is there not some nuance available in both cases?

As ever, there may be legitimate distinctions between the types of fear CBC Radio does and does not approve for motivating public policy. However, once again CBC Radio never dwells on such intricacies. Instead, they take their seemingly fundamental principle of “not letting fear influence us because we can’t let the bad guys win” and they turn it off any time that fear is oriented in a politically correct direction.

2. DUE PROCESS

CBC Radio shares a hotel room with the progressively correct movement “Black Lives Matter” (or BLM), which contends that the United States (and BLM Toronto and BLM Vancouver claim Canada as well) has a significant police racism problem against black citizens.

I don’t know if BLM is right or not. Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer offers us research which shows that black people in US cities are more likely per interaction to be handled aggressively by police, but also that white people are actually slightly more likely per previously non-violent encounter to be shot. Neither of these points proves BLM right or wrong just yet, but they do indicate to me that this is a complicated issue worthy of further study.

If CBC Radio had any true principle, they would look into BLM’s claims with an open, but skeptical mind. But, for CBC Radio, any questioning of a claim of racism is racist, itself. Consequently, whenever CBC Radio interviews a pundit who supports BLM, they treat the commentator as a prophet for due process and anti-racism whom they shall not trouble with critical questions.

However, amazingly CBC Radio once again drops the principles of due process and anti-racism in cases where the accused is not of progressive concern. For instance, if a white police officer is accused of mistreating a black suspect, CBC Radio treats the police officer as guilty, by definition. And, if the alleged victim of a crime is female, CBC Radio substitutes the principle of due process for the progressive notion to automatically “Believe Women.” This faith-based system of justice allowed CBC Radio and other morally vacant media outlets to shame Toronto police and prosecutors into charging Jian Ghomeshi of crimes for which evidence was lacking.

CBC Radio’s anti-due process sentiment is especially evident in sports where the broadcaster has signed onto the baffling argument that athletes accused of crimes should be suspended by their teams without proof of guilt. (As I wrote in THE SEPERATION OF WORK AND PLAY, I’m opposed to athletes being suspended even if they are found guilty of crimes, but I’ll settle for a moratorium on suspending employees on accusation alone.) In fact, the NFL has suspended several black athletes accused of violence against women in the last couple of years. But strangely neither BLM nor CBC Radio has raised a finger of concern.

3. FREEDOM OF SPEECH

In the last year, several NFL players endorsed BLM by kneeling during the American anthem before games. Ever shy, US boss Donald Trump then criticized those athletes, stating that it would be grand if NFL owners would fire them for their anthem antics.

Consequently, numerous NFL players and many pundits argued that the president was threatening the players’ freedom of speech. I’m not sure if Trump’s customarily brash argument was technically suggesting a limitation on freedom of speech. When one is at work, one is not necessarily free to express anything one likes in the same way that one is when off duty. Nevertheless, as a free speech fan—who has become worried lately about this vital resource—I was pleased to hear free expression discussed and defended in the media, including on CBC Radio.

Nevertheless, I once again noticed that CBC Radio only seems willing to positively discuss free expression when the speaker in question is supporting an ideal that CBC Radio already favours. Far from Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s ideal, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” CBC Radio apparently prefers to think of free speech as a conditional. If a citizen says something CBC Radio deems worthy, the speaker can have all the speech they like; but, if the speaker crosses CBC Radio’s righteous opinion, then he or she must accept the suppressing consequences.

For instance, a few months before Trump ascended to his thrown, Canadian singer Remigio Pereira—a member of the group The Tenors—added the phrase “All Lives Matter” to a pre-game anthem performance in the US. This was clearly intended to contrast the “Black Lives Matter” argument. While I didn’t object to Pereira’s dissent, I also had no quibble with his bandmates firing him for making such a controversial statement during a performance without their consent. They were hired to sing the national anthem, not to make a political argument while on the job.

But I notice that CBC Radio—who currently claims that it is paramount to allow pro-BLM athletes (and now pro-BLM anthem singers) the right of free expression even when they’re at work—felt no inclination to defend the opera singer’s right to sing his mind. Quite the opposite: they cheered on his fall from the podium as the karma-inflicted consequence of his “racist” utterance.

As with all of my examples, I’m happy to hear arguments that suggest a distinguishing factor between these cases. But I am ever dismayed by CBC Radio’s apparent lack of awareness of these seeming contradictions.

I recognize that CBC Radio has gone too far down the rabid hole to be neutral on these issues, but, if they would consider acknowledging a smidge of complexity when commenting on ethical quandaries, maybe they could find a way to bring some enlightenment to the moral questions of our time. And that’s a principle that even CBC Radio could stand behind.


CBC, NOW PRINCIPLE FREE SERIES:

I: CBC RADIO CELEBRATES PRE-FORMANCE ART

II: CBC RADIO ENDORSES EXCLUSIVITY POLICY

III: CBC RADIO DECLARES MORAL BANKRUPTCY (you were just here)

IV: CBC RADIO HONOURS THE ROBIN HOOD OF RACISM

SELF-AGGRANDALISM VI: How To Avoid Questions And Influence People

In the face of difficult questions, the most talented egos use impeccable sleights of language to rebrand their behaviours to seem heroic. This series is dedicated to those rhetorician-magicians.

SELF-AGGRANDALISM SERIES:

I: NEVER LET THEM SEE YOU CARE

II: IF YOUR CRITICS DON’T BELIEVE IN YOU, NO ONE WILL

III: WINNING MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY

IV: POET KNOWS BEST

V: HUMILTY IS AS HUMILTY DOES

VI: HOW TO AVOID QUESTIONS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE (you are here)

VII: IF YOU CAN’T BULLY ‘EM, ACCUSE ‘EM


Congratulations! I understand you’ve decided to go into politics. It can be a lot of fun for your pension, but tedious for your brain and ego. Whereas in the outside world, the truth allows for shades of grey and humility, when you are a politician, you must pretend—with every inflection of your tone—that your way is always 100% the right way, and that your opponents are not only wrong, but embarrassingly so.

To achieve such focussed confidence in a world of nuance, you must think of yourself as a politician-magician. When you see a question you don’t want to answer, your duty is to distract the audience with sleights of language, so that you can replace the question with one you do want to take on. This may sound daunting, but you will not be on stage alone: utilizing the following easy-to-learn techniques from many great prevaricators before you, you too can become your society’s Confuser in Chief.

1. ELOCUTION, ELOCUTION, ELOCUTION:

No matter what the question or quandary, never let them see you ponder. Instead, make your body language and tone tell your audience that you are self-assured and party-assured in every subject under your jurisdiction’s sun. Show us that there is no question too big for you by smiling and nodding thoughtfully during the interviewer’s question (use “Mmm-hmm”s if you’re on the radio) as though you think it’s a great question, even if (especially if) you’re about to sidestep it. Stay calm. No matter how wildly you avoid a query, if you sound relaxed as you’re doing it, the less likely it is that your audience will think you’re doing it on purpose. At worst, those nit-wits will just think you misunderstood the question.

2. NEVER ANSWER A QUESTION YOU DON’T LIKE:

Now that you’ve got your tone in place, you’re ready to start waffling. The first thing to keep in mind is that the questions your interviewer attacks you with don’t always comport with your campaign slogans. The interviewers are trying to trick you into going off your key messages. Don’t let them manipulate you! Think of their questions as first drafts: your job is to edit their queries into something you’d prefer. For instances:

A. THE TICKLE AND TANGENT:

Start by complimenting or humorously acknowledging the question, and then zipping into your talking point. Try this:

INTERVIEWER: What’s your position on Eco-1000-dusters? Are they doing more environmental harm than good?

YOU: That’s a great question; in fact, I think the level of dust in our air is a cruical question of our time—one which my opponent routinely ingores! For me the first order of business is making sure we support everyone in our community who’s ready to make a positive contribution to improve our air quality.

See how you’ve acknowledged the question by both complimenting it and showing how your opponent has no answer for it. That tickle was all you needed to prove that you could discuss the subject. Now you can freely segue away to empty phrases without any obligation to join those dusty depths, yourself!

B. THE FLIP AND QUIP:

When asked a direct question about your plan that would prove daunting for you to handle, remember these simple words, “I’ll tell you what we will do…” of better yet, “I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do.” The directness of your words hides the indirectness of your answer. Watch this:

INTERVIEWER: So does that mean you’ll be increasing the fine for tree-eating even though you once said that tree-eaters were getting a bad rap?

YOU: I tell you what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on police services trying to catch tree eaters. However, the (evil) purple party will.

Or:

YOU: I tell you what I am going to do. I’m going to plant 1000 more trees a year, especially in parks where children play.

C. THE HYPOTHETICAL-ANTITHETICAL:

Hypotheticals can be the best of questions, and they can be the worst of questions. But the neat thing is you only have to answer the ones you like because the “Hypothetical Convention of 1901” states that politicians can always have sanctuary from hypotheticals by simply pointing them out. So, when you hear an “If” or “Would you” contemplation that your party policy can easily handle, great! Answer away. However, if the hypothetical question isn’t so digestible, then simply say, “I/we don’t answer hypotheticals” or “I/we don’t deal in hypotheticals.” You see, because the hypothetical convention was signed by all political parties (and hockey coaches, for that matter), it is considered bad form for the interviewer to try to press you on it. On the rare occasion that they do, simply re-assert your right to plead the hypothetical convention, then apply the FLIP AND QUIP (see above).

D. THE POLITICALLY CORRECT MISDIRECT:

Regardless of what era in history you are reading this, there will always be particular groups that are seen as more in need of consideration than others, and so when you refer to them, you gain points for compassion. And the neat thing is it doesn’t matter whether what you’re doing for that group is actually helpful or ethical: once you have said something in celebration of that group, it’s hard for anyone to criticize you because you can immediately imply that they don’t care about said group if they do.

So, when questions get tough, point out that your concern for X group (if in doubt, go with children) won’t allow your conscience to consider such a course of action, “but…” and now get to your talking point, or better yet, tell a story about a child you met on the campaign trail who motivated you to do more on this particular issue. This is a segue that’s hard for an interviewer to crack, because—if they try to re-direct you when you’re emotionally describing your concern for children—they’ll likely be seen as callous.

HINT: To get extra credit for your anecdotal interaction with such a citizen-of-significance, include a location that will impress the voters, such as meeting the person on transit, at a firefighter-saving workshop, or a single mom convention.  For instance:

“I remember talking to Cindy Lou, a single grandmother of eight, while on the bus to her subsidized housing complex. She doesn’t like my opponent either. She, like me, was concerned about the state of children in our society.”

E. THE DISTRACTION-REACTION:

If there is an issue that has on its poles two politically unpalatable positions, try to let your opponents hash out the unwieldy terrain. Be patient. Let them get some good shots in. Then, once they’ve wounded each other with hard-hitting criticisms, refer to their fight as a distraction from a much more important (i.e. less politically contentious) topic. In fact, now would be a good time for a Politically Correct Misdirect (see above). Give it a try:

OPPONENT 1: We must invest in more arsenic-testing of our soft drinks to save lives.

OPPONENT 2: Arsenic-poisoning is so rare, but the expense of such testing will cost the economy billions of dollars.

OPPONENT 1: So you’re saying Let people die?

OPPONENT 2: No, I’m saying Don’t let the economy die.

YOU: All of this bluster is a distraction from the fact that neither of you has a policy that will keep strychnine away baby kangaroos. Today, I met Gilda, a single mother of a baby kangaroo, and she told me that her daughter…

F. THE COMPLEX AND FLEX:

Before your interview, review your thesaurus and any complicated statistics that you happen to like. When you’re backed into a corner, bring out the big words and numbers. Most people won’t look them up; and most interviewers won’t want to admit if they don’t understand them, so, if you can confuse them, they will move onto the next question to avoid looking like they can’t keep up with you.

HINT: If you’re worried the interviewer might be able to follow your train of distraction, combine several big words and numbers and roll them out as quickly as you can to keep even the fastest of minds from following you.

G. THE RE-DIRECT DEFLECT:

And, finally, sometimes you’ll be dealing with one of those mean interviewers who will point out that you haven’t answered their question. Do not panic; do not blink. Stay on your redirect message, and reassert your irrelevant answer. Most interviewers will move on after one re-try, but if not, then try saying, “I’ve already answered that,” (given that you’ve now been talking about the same question for a while now, most of your audience won’t remember whether you’ve answered it or not), and then help your interviewer escape the stumble in the conversation by segueing into a FLIP AND QUIP (see above).

If you can master these techniques, you will be a politician, my friend. Remember, politics is not about who has the best plan for your society: it is about who can sound like they do.


SELF-AGGRANDALISM SERIES:

I: NEVER LET THEM SEE YOU CARE

II: IF YOUR CRITICS DON’T BELIEVE IN YOU, NO ONE WILL

III: WINNING MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY

IV: POET KNOWS BEST

V: HUMILTY IS AS HUMILTY DOES

VI: HOW TO AVOID QUESTIONS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE (you were just here)

VII: IF YOU CAN’T BULLY ‘EM, ACCUSE ‘EM

MARKSISM

It has come to my attention from a student-Canadian teammate of mine that an instructor at a well-known Vancouver-based college is utilizing her students’ self-assessments to assist her in building their grades for her course. That is to say, a portion of the candidates’ grades will be derived from the marks they claim to think they deserve on an assignment. I understand this was a popular marking technique in the 60s and 70s, but I had hoped it had expired with its cousin, the bellbottoms.

If grades matter, then allowing students to assist in deciding them means that students who have a false sense of their own achievement, and/or a strong sense of willingness to lie for the sake of a better results, will have an advantage over the humble and/or honest candidates.

I don’t want to betray the type of material being graded, but I can disclose that it is neither a business course (where perhaps the ability to overvalue one’s product is an essential part of the occupation), nor a self-esteem-inflation workshop where the students’ ability to think well of themselves is being evaluated.

Instead the skill allegedly being measured is in no way related to opportunism or narcissism. Thus, I call upon any proponents of this dilapidated marking philosophy to reconsider. You are paid to measure the students’ aptitudes! I understand that you believe that your students know themselves better than you do, but surely there’s a possibility that some of them are better at knowing themselves than others, and so, through factors unrelated to the skills being measured in your course, some students will be aided, while others will be hindered, by this policy.

Moreover, even though you may truly believe that all students know their aptitudes better than their teacher, and thus can best assess themselves, what makes you so certain that they will tell you the truth? While some students may feel obligated to be honest in their self-marking, others might be less ethically inclined, and so may feel a greater psychological connection with giving themselves the best score they can.

In general, the over-confident and self-promoting already have many undue advantages over the under-confident and fair-minded in the Western workforce; we don’t need to give them the additional favour of unearned grades.

QUIT PLAYING GAMES WITH OUR HEARTS

Today, in the wee hours, the BCTF and the BC government reached a tentative deal to start the schools up again for the 2014-15 season. SethBlogs doesn’t want to take all of the credit, but this past Friday, SethBlogs, two SethBlogs siblings, and one SethBlogs spouse, started a petition gently asking the BCTF (whose rhetoric we found to be annoyingly self-celebrating, and emotionally manipulative) to focus on the facts of bargaining. Apparently, our request worked! You’re welcome.

In the meantime, as both sides head to their neutral bunkers to discuss whether tentative should become definite, I think our petition remains relevant to keep the incindiary discussions from catching fire again. For instance, I just heard CKNW quoting teachers as relieved to be going back to work after they’ve been “without a paycheque for months.” Such language (uncriticized by CKNW) suggests that the teachers have missed months of pay for their cause, when of course, most teachers are paid for the summer in advance, and so would already have been compensated for that timeframe, and so really were out a salary for weeks. Certainly not an easy position to be in when one has bills to pay, but I think most dictionaries would back me up that “weeks” are not the same thing as “months.”

Thus, for your consideration, I present the petition created by the SethBlogs Society. Check out the link for reading/signing, and/or you can view the entire content here. Said us:

We call upon the BCTF to stop using emotional and misleading arguments in the current dispute with the BC government.

Dear BCTF, Mr. Iker, and supporters of the teachers’ side of the labour dispute:

While we acknowledge that the government may also have some unfair language to answer for, we find that the BCTF and their supporters have more often engaged in unreasonable rhetoric. They seem to position themselves as a collection of infallible representatives of truth, integrity, and the rights of our children, while simultaneously portraying the government as uncaring misers set on destroying our education system. We find this contrast to be based largely on red herrings and emotional mischaracterizations of contentious matters.

The following is not meant to be an exhaustive list of controversial issues in this dispute, but a collection of arguments by which we feel the BCTF and supporters are distracting us from the issues at stake in bargaining.

1: Binding Arbitration:

Binding Arbitration has its virtues, and may still have a place in the current dispute, but please stop insisting that the government’s refusal to go this route at the present time is somehow immoral and unreasonable. It is not necessarily in the best interest of the taxpayers (by way of the government who represents us), to put our collective chequebook in the hands of a third party, who could easily settle on a figure that is beyond what we feel we can afford.

Moreover, binding arbitration may settle on a middle figure between the two sides’ positions, which sounds reasonable in theory but in practice could have an unfair result. For instance, one side could purposely ask for the stars so that they could settle for the compromise of “just” the moon.

2: Provincial Comparisons:

The suggestion that BC teachers should get a raise because they make less than the national average is a red herring. Just because another group in another province has a better deal does not define ours as unfair. The provinces have different priorities in terms of how to spend their money (as determined by elections); as well, they may have a lower supply of teachers (which, we understand, BC has in abundance). The notion that all workers must make more than the national average creates a perpetual raise policy; that is, every time a province leapfrogs above the average, another province will be pushed below and will thus be expected to make their own leap.

Please keep in mind that we, the electoral majority of the citizens of BC, voted for this government. We believe the voters of BC were fully aware that this labour dispute was approaching. If the electorate had wanted teachers to receive a more significant raise, perhaps we would have voted for the NDP. Elections and voters matter.

3: The Importance of Teachers:

Please stop asserting that the importance of a job definitively justifies a high level of compensation. As much as we may wish it were otherwise, we are not living in an economic moral meritocracy. In our current economic structure, our society does not compensate based on virtue. Otherwise Red Cross workers would be millionaires and Justin Bieber would be a pauper.

4: The Poverty Argument:

We find the claim that teachers “don’t go into teaching to make money” (implying that making a teachers’ salary is difficult financially) to be disrespectful to the women and men of this province who make less than teachers and don’t have access to their generous benefits packages. We don’t know the motivations of all teachers; many may indeed have chosen teaching to benefit society. That is admirable. However, the implication that teachers (who average $71,000 per year in salary, plus impeccable benefits) are in a low-paid field is difficult for many of us to fathom. (And, that doesn’t take into account that this salary is based on ten months’ work: over a full year, pro-rated, it would be $84,000.)

5: The Poverty Argument, Part 2:

Similarly, we find the claims from some teachers that they “have to take a second job during the summer to cover [their] bills” to be disingenuous. Teachers receive their summers off and, for the most part, are paid over a 10-month period rather than 12 months. In other words, they have access to their full salaries earlier than the average worker.

Thus, suggesting they don’t have employment and are not paid over the summer months is misleading. If anything, the two months are a rare benefit, in which teachers have many options, including vacation time (perhaps with their kids, who are conveniently off at the same time) or the choice to bump up their salaries by teaching summer school or taking other jobs. How many other occupations have this kind of flexibility?

6: Ignoring the Benefits:

We feel that, when making direct comparisons to the compensation of other workers, the benefits inherent to these public sector positions need to be factored in. Teachers have a high degree of job security, good health benefits, and generous defined pensions usually not available in the private sector.

7: “It’s not about money”:

We’re dismayed by the common assertion that teachers aren’t striking for the money; instead, they claim, they’re striking for the students. Maybe that’s part of their motivation, but, a casual look at their contract proposals indicates quite clearly that they’re looking for a substantial boost in compensation as well.

8: “If you host the Olympics, you can afford to pay teachers more”:

The argument that, because we invested in big projects such as the Olympics, the construction of the new convention centre, the BC Place roof upgrade, and Christy Clark’s trips to Asia, we can afford to pay teachers more is fallacious. Our province has a right to different priorities than those of the teachers, and not all taxes are collected just to pay for public sector employees.

9: The Money Saved From the Strike:

BCTF advocates argue that savings from the strike should go back to the teachers. We find this strange. The argument seems to suggest that there should never be a consequence for workers when they go on strike, and that they should always be retroactively paid for the time off.

10. The $40 “Bribe”:

Some people have been “incensed” at the government for offering $40/day for children under 13 to help cover childcare costs. While we agree that there may be a politically motivated angle to this offer, we feel there is also a reasonable justification: assisting parents who may be struggling during this strike. Dismissing this offer as a “bribe” is elitist and not respectful of people in a more difficult financial position.

Moreover, when teachers say to parents, “school isn’t daycare” (in response to parents complaining about having to adapt to the strike), we feel the teachers are missing the point. School’s primary function may not be childcare, but since it nevertheless has the effect of performing that role during the school season, parents have appropriately adapted their work lives to fit. Thus, it can be daunting to suddenly have to find childcare when the teachers are on strike. That doesn’t mean that it’s only teachers who are to blame for the sudden change, but when they complain about the $40 going to parents instead of themselves for work they’re not doing, they seem out of touch.

11: The Signing Bonus:

During the summer, the teachers were offered a signing bonus to avoid a strike in the approaching school year. Some teachers called this a bribe. Now, while on strike in the school year, they demand a much larger signing bonus. We don’t mind if the teachers eventually profit from the strike through their raise, but we think it’s important that there be a serious initial consequence to striking; otherwise, what’s the disincentive? Signing bonuses ought to avoid long-term strikes, not to reward them.

12: The Arguments of Children:

Please stop appealing to the alleged opinions of children to push your cause. A child holding a poster calling on the government to open up the schools is a vacant argument; children are not well informed on the issues, and will likely take whatever side their parents (or teachers) tell them is correct. Such use of earnest six year-olds oversimplifies while attempting to tug at our heartstrings. Again, it is a standard marketing (i.e. manipulation) ploy, one which has no place in this important debate. Let’s keep the discussion of this issue between adults, shall we?

13: Assuming that the Government Doesn’t Care:

The suggestion that the government doesn’t care about kids is an unfair accusation without evidence. The government is accountable to all parents in the province, but also to all people wanting to access health care, the roads, and the criminal justice system. Sometimes, the government has to make tough choices; this doesn’t necessarily mean they are indifferent to the needs of students.

14: The Government’s Right to Appeal a Court Decision; The NDP’s Right to Share in the Blame:

While at this point it looks like the government broke the law when they quashed the last NDP-BCTF contract, they—as with any other person or party—have the right to appeal that ruling. Please stop suggesting that the government is automatically playing the role of dictator when they defend themselves (i.e. the taxpayers) in court. Moreover, even though we disagree with the government if they broke the law, we feel the NDP should share some responsibility for setting the teachers up with that “sweetheart” deal. They left the Liberals to choose between accepting an untenable (ie: “sweetheart”) deal or breaking it.

15: Class Size and Conflict of Interest:

While we agree the teachers are in a valuable position to understand the challenges with class size and composition, we argue that they are acting in a serious conflict of interest due to the fact that they stand to gain personally from smaller classes and more teachers/aides. As such, we propose independent third parties be responsible for defining optimum class sizes and composition. The teachers’ oft-claimed dearth of resources to deal with their special-needs-heavy classes is hard to authenticate based solely on their own, potentially self-serving pleas.

CONCLUSION:

We are not arguing that the government is without fault in this dispute. However, we feel they have done a better job of keeping the debate focussed on facts as opposed to rhetoric. We call upon the BCTF, Mr. Jim Iker, and the many people in support of the teachers’ position to focus on the facts of bargaining rather than the fallacies of emotion and misleading characterizations.

ANIMAL WRONGS

Recently (as the current story goes), an Abbotsford dog walker left six dogs in a vehicle, under the cruel supervision of a hot west coast day, and returned to find them dead from heat stroke. Consequently, she dropped her victims off at a local ditch, and told the police and the owners of the deceased that the animals had been stolen.

This story will cause most compassionate humans to shudder. Along with my own participation in this collective sadness, I’m also troubled by the human-centric language that has arisen from this story on talk radio. Consider the following:

(1) Many people calling themselves dog lovers have phoned in saying that their hearts break for the owners of the dead dogs. I have no objection to such compassion, but I’m perplexed as to why their first concern goes to the animals’ friends and not the animals themselves, the beings who suffered the most.

(2) One of the owners of the animals (along with many radio callers who were imagining what their feelings would have been in the same situation) said that they could have forgiven the dog walker for her mistake if she hadn’t lied about it. This baffles me. Let’s look more closely at the competing crimes:

(A) A professional caretaker neglected her primary duty to ensure the well-being of the animals she promised to watch over, and left them in a dangerous situation to the point that they died suffering.

(B) A professional caretaker realized that she could get in trouble for betraying her duty to her clients, so she lied about it to protect her own hide.

It should be obvious—when comparing these two ethical breaches side by side—that the pain of the animals is far worse than the indignity experienced by the humans who were lied to about it. The crime of neglecting sentient creatures (especially as a professional who surely knows better) is ethically deplorable, as it demonstrates a preference for one’s small convenience over the resultant suffering of creatures under one’s care; in contrast, lying about one’s crime to protect oneself from punishment is at least understandable. Most people—even good people—will do a lot to avoid prosecution, whereas no good person with a patch of compassion would leave animals in a car in the hot sun. I’m not saying that lying to the police, causing vital resources to be wasted, is okay; that was selfish and immoral, and it should be punished by the law; nevertheless, it is understandable, given there was no longer anything she could do for the animals, while her career and reputation was in a precarious position.

The fact that so many humans are more worried about humans being lied to than deadly animal neglect is, I think, a symptom of how we under consider the experiences of our fellow earthlings.

(3) Several people have said that they feel that we should show compassion for the dog walker; after all, her life is now ruined because of an “accident.” I’m all for kind consideration even for the most vicious in our society; however, I think we must be clear on the terms of this compassion. This was not an accident. It was cruel act of negligence that any professional dog walker should have known was dangerous or at least painful for the creatures in her care. That’s not a simple error that anyone could make; it’s a crime of indifference.

Perhaps our society and justice system could use more compassion for its offenders, but so long as we live in a culture that demands justice from those who mistreat humans, I see no reason why we should not expect the same from those who tread so cavalierly on the experiences of animals.

THREE JEERS FOR NEW YEARS: FOR THE LOVE OF ALCOHOL

As one of alcohol’s top nights approaches, I would like to take a shot at the arguments in favour of giving booze a freer lifestyle. That is, there are calls for allowing the most popular intellectual immobilizer to be sold in grocery stores, consumed in parks, and so on. Whether or not these or other alcohol rights projects will do us harm, I have no idea, and so I am open to being persuaded by academics and social planners who have evidence on either side. And/or if someone has in their possession an ethical argument that the right to unimpeded access to their favourite mind-number is more important than the needs of the rest of us to be protected from the effects of over use, then I am once again ready to be convinced.

However, I would like to do battle with three arguments commonly presented by alcohol-admiring pundits and callers to talk shows, not because I’m necessarily opposed to the free exchange of alcohol, but because I think their dogmatic and charasmatic stylings are allowing them to supplant good argumetns on both sides.

(1) Prohibition didn’t work (so it’s time to open up our liquor store borders).

The appeal to the flaws of prohibition, I believe, is to remind us of organized criminals such as Al Capone as though prohibition and the gangsters it provoked are equally culpable on a moral level for the violence that resulted. Ending prohibition was probably the right choice because the restriction had the effect of giving gangsters a moist underground economy in which to make dirty money (just as marijuana prohibition does today in Canada), but this does not mean that prohibition is intrinsically immoral; it may just be unfeasible because of our flawed society which will produce and buy from mobsters if we don’t get what we want from lawful means.

The fact that full prohibition provokes gangsters doesn’t mean that the “Free Alcohol” crowd gets to help itself to the notion that any restriction on alcohol will yield a comparable increase in organized crime. It doesn’t seem to be the case that partial limits to alcohol consumption cause the mob to compete with legitimate alcohol-selling businesses. Mobsters were an unintended consequence of prohibition, so if we have found a way to restrict alcohol without increasing our organized crime levels, then we can now ignore the major problem that made full prohibition unfeasible and decide whether particular restrictions are harmful or helpful to society.

(2) We’re behind other countries in modernizing our alcohol policy.

Once again, if there is evidence that improving access to alcohol in countries of similar culture and infrastructure to ours does not increase violence, drinking and driving, etc, then maybe it is the correct choice. However, the appeal to “modernization,” much like the notion that what is natural is always best, is baseless. That is, what is new in public policy is not by definition always better (even if it is much of the time). The politicians of these countries may be “updating” their policies not because it is best for their citizens, but instead because it is best for their chances of getting re-elected.

Thus, the argument that other countries are doing something new, so we should too, is empty. Instead, the question should be: how are they doing as a result?

(3) We need to be treated like grownups capable of handling our alcohol.

It’s unfortunate when laws and bureaucracy and locks on our doors are put in place because of the behaviours of the least civilized in our society. Nevertheless, the fact is that alcohol has the potential to make fools of nice people and violent psychopaths of jerks, so even if the majority of us can handle our alcohol, this does not necessarily mean that a wider entrance to our metaphorical saloon is the best option for our country.

The willingness of alcohol rights advocates to sacrifice (or at least not consider) the greater safety of all of us for their own personal alcohol-consuming convenience reminds me of the right-to-guns culture in the USA. In both cases, it seems to me that the proponents are so passionate about their right to their preference that they are opposed, on principle, to asking whether those rights have serious ethical consequences worth adding to our policy considerations.