Balancing Freedom and Safety in Public Discourse

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The speaker highlighted the ideological nature of the debate on freedom of speech by sharing an experience on a British program. They expressed their belief in allowing the president to speak publicly, which was met with disapproval. The opposition's immediate endorsement for having the safest internet displayed a shift towards prioritizing safety over freedom. The speaker emphasized the importance of accepting some harm as a consequence of freedom, stating that until this perspective is adopted, the conversation cannot advance. They critiqued the current narrative that overly emphasizes safety, warning that it leads to increased tyranny. The speaker identified a failure in their UK context to uphold the value of balancing freedom and safety in public discourse.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down in-person with Canadian lawyer Bruce Pardy and podcaster Konstantin Kisin. They discuss Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Bill C-63 (aka The Online Harms Act), what powers it gives to the government, what rights it strips from citizens, and why even Americans should be concerned.

Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe, a law and liberty thinktank, and professor of law at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He is a lawyer, academic, columnist, and outspoken critic of the illiberal managerial state, fighting at the front lines of the culture war inside the law. Bruce writes for the National Post, Epoch Times, and the Brownstone Institute, among others, and serves as senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He has taught at law schools in Canada, the United States and New Zealand, practiced civil litigation in Toronto, and served as adjudicator and mediator on the Ontario Environmental Tribunal. The legal ground, Bruce has written, is shifting beneath our feet. The individual is losing to the collective. An ever-expanding bureaucracy regulates life from cradle to grave, including private behavior and speech, in the name of common good. The law has become discretionary, arbitrary, and unequal. The end of Western liberal civilization, as we have known it, is conceivable.

Konstantin Kisin is a Russian-British satirist, social commentator, and co-host of the TRIGGERnometry Youtube show. He is also the author of “An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West,” a Sunday Times bestseller. He has written for several publications, including Quillette, The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, and Standpoint, on issues relating to tech censorship, woke culture, comedy, and other topics, but he currently publishes articles on his popular Substack. Kisin made headlines in 2018 when he refused to sign a "safe space contract" to perform comedy at a British college and again in 2023 when he participated in an Oxford Union debate on the motion of "This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far." His speech at the debate received viral attention and has been seen by over 100 million people around the world.

- Links -

2024 tour details can be found here https://jordanbpeterson.com/events

Peterson Academy https://petersonacademy.com/

For Bruce Pardy:

On X https://twitter.com/pardybruce?lang=en

Rights Probe: https://www.rightsprobe.org/

For Konstantin Kisin:

TRIGGERnometry Podcast / @triggerpod

Substack https://konstantinkisin.substack.com/

Twitter https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin?r...