Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Make Democracy Behind The Scenes

00:00:00.000 class is in session hey everybody and welcome to unlearn 16 class is in session guys today i'm

00:00:10.160 going to take you back to school today i've been thinking hold on i got to adjust the camera

00:00:16.080 that's anna's clothes for she just stacks them up here to get ready for a trip

00:00:20.960 i've been thinking um first of all how does my hair look

00:00:24.160 that I'm going to do some segments, or I might switch all together and do a whole other line

00:00:33.180 about classroom lessons, and I'll go through my politics curriculum, my history curriculum.

00:00:39.000 Literally, I'll just teach you lessons on here.

00:00:42.600 Today, I'm going to start with one, and I'm going to see how you guys like it,

00:00:45.900 so feel free to chirp me in the comments. 0.60

00:00:48.880 Chirp is Canadian for make fun of me. 0.79

00:00:52.460 FYI.

00:00:54.240 I'm going to talk today about the existence and the creation and the, I guess, linear process of becoming a democratic country.

00:01:06.080 And what I mean by linear is everything is on a scale.

00:01:10.440 You know, if you think of any country having 100% democracy, it doesn't exist, right?

00:01:16.840 There's always elements where we can do better.

00:01:19.120 There's always elements where we become more free, more representative, more all of those things.

00:01:24.440 No matter what you can imagine in your head, there's trade-offs.

00:01:28.600 And so what I want to talk about today in a very real way, because obviously we're struggling with this right now.

00:01:35.960 We're struggling with what does a democracy look like?

00:01:38.620 We're struggling with how much freedom should we have?

00:01:42.780 should there be any limits, how we balance representation versus interest, and all of those

00:01:50.060 kinds of things. So I'm going to go over the indicators that make up democracies, and I'm

00:01:58.060 going to then talk about their limitations. And then if you want me to dive into each individual

00:02:04.160 one, maybe do a whole podcast about it, I can do that as well. All right, so first and foremost,

00:02:10.160 I am going to talk about indicators of a full democracy. The funny part right now, just so you

00:02:17.740 know, it's like I have my school notes right on the left here and I can talk to you guys here and

00:02:23.020 I can read over here. Number one, are you with me? First indicator of full democracy, majority rule.

00:02:30.860 Now here's the funny part. Most people's dead stop there. Most people go majority rule. That's all

00:02:38.840 it's about, whatever the majority wants goes. But that's only one of eight indicators. Now,

00:02:46.580 this is very simple. If 51% of the population or of the voting population, because that's also

00:02:53.880 an issue, right? Who gets to vote? Who doesn't get to vote? 51% of the voting population wants

00:03:00.540 a certain thing, they should get it. Now, philosophically, that makes sense. Completely

00:03:06.900 makes sense. Unless 51% of the population, you know, wants to enslave the other 49%. 0.99

00:03:14.340 I'm going to get to the limitations in a second. In a democracy, it is genuinely, generally

00:03:22.780 understood that a 51% or more want one, something. You know what? Somebody's going to correct me and

00:03:30.020 say, it's not 51%, Joanna. It's 50 plus one. You and your math. Stop it. It's not, you know,

00:03:36.220 It's not the point of this video. Well, it's a little bit of a point, but you get carried away.

00:03:42.040 51%. Now, here's the key. Number two, you have to support and protect minority rights.

00:03:50.680 So, in order to have a democracy, 51% of the population can actually voice their opinion

00:03:55.860 and get what they want as long as it doesn't interfere or infringe on minority rights,

00:04:03.740 whether they be language rights, religious rights, sexual orientation, gender rights,

00:04:09.520 it doesn't matter, okay? That 51 doesn't get to weaponize its power in order to enslave in any

00:04:17.760 way, shape, or form other parts of the population. I know all of you guys are sitting at home going,

00:04:22.360 oh my God, Joanna, but what about this? What about this? I'm going to get to limitations,

00:04:26.200 okay? This is the nice list. This is the Santa list. We'll get to the naughty list later.

00:04:31.180 Number three, rule of law. In a democracy, you have to have rule of law, which means you have the creation, a constitutional framework that you have created that is the actual supreme and final judgment of the nation, right?

00:04:52.500 And this rule of law ensures that everybody is equal under the law.

00:04:58.640 As soon as you have inequity under the law, as soon as that happens, you pull from democracy.

00:05:06.420 So rule of law, everybody is equal under the law.

00:05:11.260 It applies equally no matter who you are or where you stand.

00:05:14.660 I know, I know, your heads are good.

00:05:16.620 Just walk with me for a second.

00:05:19.420 All right?

00:05:19.880 Rule of law is incredibly important.

00:05:21.640 Now, of course, that's incredibly important because if you don't have rule of law and you don't have this basis of application of law, then very, very quickly it degenerates, right?

00:05:33.040 I need to be able to, you know, and as society still stands, I get a lawyer, I get my day in court.

00:05:40.060 The law as it applies is supposed to sort of be, you know, blind from all of those other things.

00:05:48.440 It is not supposed to be classist.

00:05:51.640 I can barely get that out. It's not supposed to be sexist. It's not supposed to be racist. There are not supposed to be these foundational underpinnings. And if you find those issues within the legal system, the laws are supposed to be rectified.

00:06:02.880 number four interest groups a lot of people hate interest groups but and and they'll talk about

00:06:10.780 the rising power of the interest group like for example the nra the only time they talk about

00:06:15.500 interest groups in a negative way is when they don't like the interest group right but interest

00:06:20.080 groups are incredibly wide-ranging you have things like the wwf not the world wrestling federation

00:06:29.680 But the WWF World Wildlife Fund, you have Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They got mad. You have obviously groups in the United States like the NRA. You have environmental groups. You have women rights groups. You have racial justice groups. You have all of these different interest groups, animal rights advocacy groups. You have all these different interest groups.

00:06:50.400 And what these interest groups are trying to do and how they add to the democracy is it's giving a voice to every particular interest that goes on within that society.

00:07:03.400 Now, on the face, having a multitude and a diversity of interest groups only adds and magnifies levels of democratic freedom and a democratic voice.

00:07:14.560 So your vote that happens once every four years is then, not supplanted, that's the wrong word, but it's bolstered and you get to use your voice throughout in between election periods using these interest groups.

00:07:33.540 Do they have too much power? How much power is too much power? That's all a question of how they get implemented and how they take effect.

00:07:42.080 But again, this is the nice list. So let's focus right now about what is democracy. And everybody loves to talk about people's interest group. Why do you talk about that? This is more important. Why do you talk about that? You should be talking about this. Here's what I'm going to say about an interest group. Start your own in a democratic form, right?

00:08:00.280 There is no limit to interest groups being able to be formed within a society in order to argue for and support different new pieces of legislation, in order to create public awareness, in order to raise money to help the cause externally to government as an NGO, a non-governmental organization, in order to better understand issues that are facing society.

00:08:26.940 I think if more people got involved in the things they were passionate about,

00:08:33.200 stopped complaining about what everybody else is doing,

00:08:36.240 we'd all get a lot more done and there'd be a lot more voices at the table.

00:08:39.640 A lot more voices at the table means more democratic representation, right?

00:08:45.260 Democracy is very simply, I didn't even define it,

00:08:48.120 heaven help me, I'm not a very good teacher today,

00:08:50.680 the will, right?

00:08:52.560 The majority and the will of the people, however, democracy, in order to have a level of freedom, a level of access, a level of diversity of thought, you need all of these different things in place in order to manage and balance all of those opposing forces.

00:09:16.360 So, interest groups, incredibly important.

00:09:19.160 Number five, judicial independence.

00:09:22.560 uh this one's clear the judges whether they be in canada provincial or or federal level judges

00:09:32.120 of the supreme court or whether they be different levels within the united states the point of these

00:09:38.320 judges are to be independent in personnel and in in um power to the legislative executive

00:09:47.920 branches of government. If they're not separate from power, then they cannot function to do one

00:09:55.740 of their primary function, if not the most important functions, which is, I'm going to

00:10:00.640 sneeze in one second, please stand by. I like the hesitation there. You know, it says you can look

00:10:08.880 at lights and it stops you from sneezing. It's never worked for me a day in my life. So you have

00:10:13.400 have an independent judiciary because their sole job is to keep the government in check the supreme

00:10:19.720 court's primary job well they have two primary jobs deal with inter-provincial or interstate

00:10:26.200 issues who has jurisdiction where and what they should be allowed to do and not be allowed to do

00:10:30.760 in the way government runs and they are to protect the civil rights of the citizenry from who you

00:10:38.760 you might ask, the government. So their job is to put the government in their place,

00:10:44.860 whether it's via an executive order of the executive branch in the United States,

00:10:49.280 whether it's a law that's been created, they all go through and get funneled through and can be

00:10:54.020 challenged through the Supreme Court. That is the final say right there. And if they weren't

00:11:02.060 separate in power and and personnel obviously you could then have an onslaught of um a specific

00:11:12.700 mandate and a political mandate getting pushed through the legal system again we're talking

00:11:19.500 in utopia land right this is an indicator of democracy also please it's fluid right it's a

00:11:26.940 range. It's a percentage. There is nowhere that has 100% democracy. None. Zero. You can't even

00:11:33.000 think of one. And I'm going to explain all the ways you can in a second. Number six, civilian

00:11:38.020 control of the army. The army is there under the control of politicians who are elected

00:11:47.140 representatives. And what they do and how they do it should always be made available to public

00:11:55.480 criticism and control. We need to know what's going on because if they are using, if the

00:12:02.760 government is utilizing our military in an unjust or aggressive and illegal international fashion,

00:12:13.400 the public should have the right to say no more. Now, obviously we get things like

00:12:19.960 it's national security. I mean, those two words are the most asinine words that are thrown around 0.93

00:12:25.740 left, right, and center to make sure that the public doesn't actually know what's going on. 0.65

00:12:29.660 That would be a limitation. I am not at that list yet. Number seven, politically diverse.

00:12:37.480 You don't have a democracy if you don't have a diversity of candidates standing in front of you

00:12:43.560 with a diversity of ideas, of ideologies, both economic, social, political, environmental,

00:12:51.340 you need choice. If you don't have choice, you don't have a democracy. That's why I would argue

00:12:57.820 the two-party system's a complete and abject failure. There's not enough choice, right?

00:13:04.040 I would also argue that in Canada, even though we have choice, right, because we have first-past-the-post

00:13:11.300 system, which again, I can explain later. If you want me to compare the US to the Canadian system,

00:13:15.800 I would love to do that in another podcast. But when you have that, a lot of minority parties

00:13:22.740 that should garner some degree of control and say empower, they just get completely shifted out

00:13:29.520 and thereby eliminating the benefits of having a multi-party system. Now, is there such thing as

00:13:37.580 having too many voices in the room? Sure, but that goes the other way. But you need to be able to be

00:13:42.020 politically diverse. The funny part is we consistently pretend as though other countries

00:13:48.000 aren't politically diverse because they're all, let's say a lot of people love to condemn China

00:13:52.600 because they all have to be a part of the Communist Party of China. Well, the hilariousness of it all 0.93

00:13:57.560 is every party running in the United States and Canada, they're capitalist. Do we have any

00:14:02.700 Communist Party members? No. Some people are going to say we did. But at this very moment,

00:14:08.660 right, our economic options, even though some might be pushing to socialism, are still capitalist

00:14:14.780 based. And number eight, and here's the hard one, individual civil rights. Freedom of information,

00:14:21.480 freedom of the press, expression, religion, everything. Individuals in a true democracy

00:14:28.780 should have as wide of limits as conceivably possible they are our civil freedoms should

00:14:38.620 push as far as they push until my freedom interferes with yours until what i want starts

00:14:47.640 interfering then there has to be a natural um limitation right you are free to have a house

00:14:56.140 You are free to buy a car. You are free to practice whatever religion you want. You are free. You cannot go take somebody else's house. You're not free to do that. You should be as free as you can be as long as your rights don't interfere with somebody else's rights or somebody else's safety.

00:15:12.500 Now, this gets mucky, right? This gets very confusing very quickly, especially when we start talking about parental rights over their kids' rights, when we talk about the battle between faiths within one particular civil society.

00:15:30.420 it can get very, very tricky. Again, this list of democratic features or indicators

00:15:39.480 are giving you the 100%. If we could do this, we'd have close to 100% of democratic freedom.

00:15:49.220 Now, when you throw people in, let's be honest, we muck up all good things.

00:15:54.700 so now let's talk about uh limitations of full democracies

00:16:01.660 number one the benefit of the rich as soon as we have a capitalist system you are going to have

00:16:09.540 people with a lot more money as soon as you have a wealthy class they are going to have more power

00:16:17.240 and i'm and i'm not just talking about oligarchs okay i'm just talking and i'm going to get to that

00:16:22.300 in a second. I'm going to talk about what having money, not even crazy money, but what having money

00:16:28.460 in a democratic society, how it will skew democracy. For example, I teach at a private

00:16:34.600 school. The kids that can afford and the parents that can afford to send their kids to my school,

00:16:40.440 not just my school, although I do think it's pretty amazing, they will have an inherent

00:16:46.620 benefit, right? A kid in a smaller class sizes with more attention, with more access, with more

00:16:55.340 technology, with more travel, all of those things will give that student an inherent benefit to

00:17:02.300 start off life. The more money that people have gives them the ability to run for elections.

00:17:09.720 A lot of people, a lot of my students have asked me why I don't run. And I jokingly say, well,

00:17:13.860 can't quit teaching for a year who's going to pay my mortgage but that is part and parcel of the

00:17:18.580 issue right who can run for government and then you start looking at the united states and you

00:17:24.420 look at who gets like big donations and who can really give it a run and what happens when you're

00:17:30.500 against the side of the super pack how do you get do you get crushed do you still have a shot

00:17:36.900 right when when you see benefit of the rich being able to access healthier foods being able to

00:17:42.420 access, doctors and more medical treatments and more access to information, let alone

00:17:50.820 education, you start to see that there's a group of people.

00:17:56.020 And again, I'm not talking about the ultra rich right now.

00:17:58.400 I'll talk about oligarchies later in my list.

00:18:00.500 But you start to see a group of people that are disproportionately benefiting from a system.

00:18:07.640 And then you might say, well, they've earned it.

00:18:10.160 Yeah, but the next generation hasn't.

00:18:12.420 right? If democracies are supposed to be inherently based on merit, that's fine for

00:18:18.280 first generation. Is it fair for second? As soon as I can transfer my wealth to my children or to

00:18:26.000 whoever I deem important enough or have value enough to transfer my wealth to, don't they then

00:18:32.820 start with a huge, huge step forward? And once they start with a huge step forward, I am now

00:18:39.940 interfering in the basis of, am I judging by merit or not? That gets blown apart. You have a

00:18:48.220 kid, and a lot of people talk about this because they hate things like affirmative action or they

00:18:52.680 hate things like quotas in universities. However, I have a kid that works 25 hours a week at a

00:18:57.980 part-time job in high school and they get an 80 average. And there's another kid who stays at

00:19:03.100 goes to private school has tutors has all of this extra help and gets like incredibly it does

00:19:10.380 incredibly work works incredibly hard i'm not taking any value away from either student but

00:19:14.940 this student has the potential of spending 110 of their time i hate it when people say under 10 i

00:19:20.620 mean 100 on the subject matters at hand in order to garner the highest marks and the greatest

00:19:26.620 understanding, let's say, 80, and this kid, let's say, gets 90. I'll even do a 10% difference.

00:19:33.060 Who is smarter? Who is better? Who deserves to go to university? Who's going to do better

00:19:37.740 at university? Even more so, who's going to do better in the real world? All of those things

00:19:43.080 come into play because we've created the illusion, the pretense, that education is somehow objective,

00:19:50.100 That skill and capacity and potential, we can measure it objectively, which we cannot.

00:19:58.580 And the more money you throw into that pile, the more you can no longer judge objectivity and merit within that particular ball.

00:20:08.040 Number two, not everybody can vote.

00:20:10.900 Listen, guys, I have 15-year-olds that know more about the Canadian electoral system than most people I know who are 50.

00:20:17.760 they can't vote why not somebody who is homeless can't vote

00:20:24.100 the the the one person that is facing the most significant and most horrific problems that our

00:20:34.840 society has to throw at a person and they can't even vote for policies that might help we're

00:20:43.280 constantly asking wealthy people how to fix the homeless situation. Meanwhile, they've never been

00:20:48.540 homeless. Right? A lot of people, and I'll go another step further, I realize you're all

00:20:55.340 supposed to get three hours to vote. We know perfectly well that doesn't happen. Please stop

00:21:00.340 it. If I'm having to work, let's say two jobs to make sure my family's taken care of, there's a lot

00:21:05.880 less ability for me to step away from that in order to go vote. And we have no idea where I'm

00:21:14.000 working and where I'd have to go vote. I know there's early voting. It also separates, right?

00:21:20.300 There's this disconnect between working class and very hard working class individuals and voting.

00:21:27.260 And the more we can separate that, the more that people with money in the upper middle class tend

00:21:33.120 to vote. Number three, this is a doozy. Multinational corporations have power lobby groups.

00:21:41.360 So I said interest groups are incredibly important. What happens when these interest

00:21:45.740 groups have more money than governments? We have interest groups donating hundreds

00:21:54.040 of millions of dollars because they've created super PACs under the illusion of this donor

00:22:00.380 sort of campaign money. And by the way, even if, because one of my goals is to take money out of

00:22:06.660 politics, but it's really frustrating because I can take all the money I want out of politics.

00:22:11.380 I can say that you cannot donate more than a hundred dollars to any politician. There's no

00:22:16.600 more super PACs. You cannot donate any more money in a company, any company from Nike to Tesla

00:22:24.720 to um you know i don't know nbc it doesn't matter what company any company with a boatload of money

00:22:33.380 or with somebody with hundreds of millions of dollars can create social media channels can

00:22:41.980 create podcasts hell they can buy social media apps and they can wield them however they choose

00:22:49.960 to because they purchased it and when you can purchase that much power right and initially

00:22:56.040 we're talking about big corporations but when you can purchase that much power and you can purchase

00:23:01.720 that much influence and that much air time you really do attempt to negate or eliminate

00:23:09.720 the way a democracy can actually function um and that's a huge problem number four

00:23:17.720 elections don't always represent the public the united states and canada alike there tends to be

00:23:25.240 a difference between the popular vote and how many electoral college uh votes that a president got

00:23:32.120 or the popular vote in canada and how many ridings the politicians or the the uh political party

00:23:38.840 actually won right there's a difference there we're not doing it's it's not straight representation

00:23:45.880 it sure as heck's not proportional representation and there's reasons for that and the only reasons

00:23:52.060 i can see for that is in order to mitigate and in order to to mitigate smaller groups from gaining

00:23:58.820 any power and to maximize and consolidate power in the hands of old school political parties

00:24:07.400 and old school political ideals. Right? I mean, in 2000, everybody talks about January 6th and

00:24:17.380 that thing. And everybody talks about how Trump won this time after Musk was saying,

00:24:22.160 and then don't worry, we don't need to worry about the votes. Don't worry, guys. We got the

00:24:27.040 votes weeks before the election. And you're kind of like, what do you mean? And he'd say things

00:24:31.540 like, Elon really knows computers. What? Let me be very clear. Fraudulent elections have been going

00:24:38.980 on since the dawn of time, right? Everybody and their brother, we love to talk about JFK and

00:24:44.800 elevate him to the heights of kings. However, everybody knows his dad who was a criminal

00:24:51.480 bought him that election. That election was fixed. If you were around in 2000 and you saw Gore

00:24:57.980 versus Bush. Gore won the popular vote and Bush won with a couple hundred thousand votes in

00:25:04.880 Florida. By the way, in Florida, guess who the governor of Florida was at the time? That's right,

00:25:10.500 Jeb Bush. George Bush ends up winning because they challenge every ballot because on the ballot

00:25:18.280 in Florida, instead of marking an X beside the person's name, they put a hole punch through a

00:25:23.300 piece of paper beside the person's name. The hole punch, by the way, the hole punch that falls out

00:25:29.020 is called a chad. If you weren't around in 2000, you don't know this, but if you were, it's forever

00:25:34.520 ingrained in your head and people holding up ballots to the light to see where people have

00:25:40.140 punched that hole through. So there were some ones where there's some ballots where they didn't

00:25:45.200 punch it through and it just indented. They didn't count them. Well, they fought it in court. There

00:25:49.960 are other ones that they punched it through and kind of half was hanging in there. They didn't

00:25:54.380 count that. That wasn't all the way through. Another one they punched and it's dangling. It

00:25:58.600 was the dangling chat. What do we count that? Another one, they punched it and it wasn't

00:26:03.700 perfectly lined up. If you ever tried to use a single hole punch, it never works out the way

00:26:07.820 you think it's going to do. Anyways, all of these votes were contested. All of them. They refused

00:26:14.140 to do a new vote. They should have had a new election in Florida. And in that election,

00:26:19.500 it came down to florida whichever presidential candidate won florida would win the presidency

00:26:26.220 and it came down to florida and a dangling chad to indicate who gets to have that particular

00:26:35.340 state and win the presidency of the united states and shocker not to ruin the end of it

00:26:40.460 but bush wins what a coinkydink that his brother's the governor what a coinkydink that his brother's

00:26:47.420 the one that nominated the judges i mean it's all very very but you can understand how incredibly

00:26:52.780 frustrating that is and and gore gives up he doesn't challenge he he concedes the election

00:27:00.700 and now you have you know challenges for every election donald trump still says he won 0.71

00:27:08.620 When he obviously lost even after people stormed the freaking Capitol

00:27:15.820 But elections don't represent the public

00:27:19.300 And the more that we believe that

00:27:23.500 And the more that that is found to be true in a significant way

00:27:27.740 And the more that we're, it's very, very hard to contest

00:27:31.220 The more frustrating it becomes

00:27:34.360 Because if you really poke at it too hard

00:27:37.380 if you really push it too far and we say well no election's perfect and there's always fraud why

00:27:45.700 would we ever believe another election again if we can't believe another election ever again how

00:27:49.520 the hell can we ever have a democracy do we all do it on computers do we all do it by hand well

00:27:56.340 if we all do it by hand who's counting it who's mandating who's somebody's videotaping all of

00:28:00.740 that who's going to go through all those all of those ways what about ai as soon as you put

00:28:05.400 It all gets very, very confusing

00:28:08.320 And very, very fraudulent

00:28:10.500 From the hop

00:28:12.000 Number five

00:28:14.320 This is an interesting one

00:28:15.280 You can't compete

00:28:17.860 With globalization

00:28:19.300 Now I know the United States is really trying

00:28:22.940 Right?

00:28:23.800 Super, super high tariffs

00:28:25.280 But the mere fact that you have to put super, super high tariffs

00:28:28.440 And you have to threaten your allies

00:28:30.280 And you have to talk about taking over more land mass

00:28:33.240 And you have to talk about

00:28:34.580 pulling out of this alliance and going into this alliance. And what does that alliance mean and

00:28:38.500 stopping them from using their own dollar? The more you're doing that, the more you're proving

00:28:42.420 that you don't control your own sovereignty unless you try to attempt to control the world

00:28:47.760 because the world is interconnected. Economically, we are interconnected. Culturally, we are

00:28:53.100 interconnected. Environmentally, for the love of God, we are interconnected. The more that

00:28:58.540 individual countries try to pretend as though there's a nice little bubble over top of them

00:29:02.620 and they can do or not do any sort of environmental legislation 0.90

00:29:06.860 and it's just going to affect them is ridiculous.

00:29:11.420 Canada has been trying to push forward a healthy environmental piece of legislation

00:29:16.300 and a way of life in Canada.

00:29:20.700 But let's be honest, we live beside one of the biggest producers

00:29:24.440 who in this administration say they don't care.

00:29:28.200 What are we doing?

00:29:29.340 Can we put a bubble over top of them?

00:29:31.120 What happens when there's a strong gust of wind from Michigan?

00:29:37.760 The world now has a say.

00:29:41.700 And you can pretend as though you can go about your day.

00:29:45.340 But if there's an international global recession or depression, it will affect us all.

00:29:51.780 You can pretend as though it doesn't.

00:29:54.500 But we are all interconnected.

00:29:56.440 And that interconnectivity should be emboldened and strengthened and balanced rather than

00:30:02.500 pretend as though, rather than ignored.

00:30:05.100 Because the more we ignore and pretend as though whoever's in charge of our country

00:30:09.080 has full and complete control and sovereignty, the more we will be victims of that external

00:30:14.560 power and those shifts and those earthquakes, if you will, both real and metaphoric.

00:30:22.800 Number six, discrimination against minorities.

00:30:25.180 Look at what's going on across the world

00:30:27.720 Democracy doesn't get to happen

00:30:31.880 It doesn't even come close to full democracy

00:30:35.040 When you allow the majority rule to be mob mentality

00:30:39.680 That's it

00:30:41.940 And Aristotle always argued against it

00:30:46.320 Right?

00:30:47.300 You would have a polity

00:30:48.520 And then you would have the degenerate form

00:30:51.200 Which is democracy

00:30:52.240 Which he always thought would be mob rule

00:30:55.160 And that mob rule doesn't have to be educated

00:30:58.520 It doesn't have to be aware 0.96

00:30:59.960 It doesn't have to be right

00:31:01.480 It doesn't have to be just

00:31:02.760 It just is the majority of people

00:31:04.800 And if the majority of people want something

00:31:06.740 They should get it

00:31:07.760 As soon as that's your mentality

00:31:09.620 You've destroyed democracy

00:31:11.200 Because you're not protecting the people

00:31:14.880 Within the society

00:31:16.180 That deserve protection

00:31:17.820 And their own civil rights

00:31:20.440 Number seven

00:31:22.960 Limits on freedom

00:31:25.140 This is a hard one

00:31:28.020 And this is the one that I find the most interesting to discuss and debate

00:31:35.280 And again, any one of these

00:31:37.040 You guys want any one of these to be its own podcast

00:31:39.080 Because I could go on for a very long time about each individual segment

00:31:43.960 Of both limitations and indicators

00:31:45.820 Just put it in the comments

00:31:47.040 Limitation on freedom is really, really difficult

00:31:50.300 There have to be limits

00:31:53.420 I'm allowed to sit, and we know the rational ones, right? Freedom of expression. You're not

00:32:00.240 allowed to shout fire in a movie theater, metaphorically and literally. That my words

00:32:07.880 have power and there have to be limits to that. So then we start talking about things like

00:32:14.220 censorship. What are you allowed to teach? What are you not allowed to teach? What are you allowed

00:32:19.200 to speak to what are you allowed to say what are you allowed to encourage how am i allowed to relay

00:32:25.280 my ideas to other people which other people am i allowed to speak to now both sides both sides have

00:32:34.480 limits to this right i don't care if you're talking about the left or the right i'm definitely more of

00:32:42.080 of a believer of let them talk. If all other things being equal, okay, people would stop

00:32:49.260 buying social media sites and skewing algorithms. If all other things being equal, I am a huge

00:32:54.940 proponent of let them talk. Write the book, make your argument, stand on that pulpit and let society

00:33:02.140 judge you because I do believe that in an educated, that's a big, big expectation, in an educated,

00:33:09.320 empathetic intelligent society better ideas win however those better ideas can only win when

00:33:18.120 everybody's playing on the same level when everybody has you know the ability and the

00:33:25.640 capacity to have the same dogs in whatever race but once you start pouring billions of dollars

00:33:33.240 from this side or billions of dollars from that side and you skew that public form and you skew

00:33:40.440 what's capable or what people are capable of saying and how they get their voice out

00:33:45.640 and how many more voices and what they get to do with that mob mentality well then you get

00:33:51.800 something different i think everybody would agree that that we should not be using our voices to

00:33:58.280 promote violence where we disagree is what kind of verbiage and what kind of voice and

00:34:04.840 what kind of ideas are actually promoting violence you have freedoms but you don't have complete

00:34:16.280 freedom if i'm and you start to get into conversations of this if i i am a particular

00:34:23.320 religion and i don't believe in blood transfusions but my six-year-old just got into an accident

00:34:28.280 that six-year-old is not going to make it without a blood transfusion does my religion get to

00:34:32.920 supersede their right to life they haven't chosen my faith they're not old enough to know but they're

00:34:38.920 my kid well if they're my kid is that my property or do those children now have inalienable rights

00:34:45.160 upon them that supersede what i believe you see how messy this gets these are all great

00:34:50.760 conversations to be had if people would stop trying to win and start trying to get to better

00:35:00.380 answers, myself included. Myself included. It's also in this gauge that the government loves to

00:35:09.040 use their two most favorite words, which are national security. Stop it. I don't want to hear

00:35:13.980 those words. I'll give you an example. Canadian government, or the Canadian military with our

00:35:22.000 airborne division, our airborne division is similar, let's say, to the United States Marines.

00:35:26.160 It's our top ranking, very elite militarized force. They are there to go lots of places

00:35:32.100 internationally and do some pretty hard, horrible things that the military is asked to do. Well,

00:35:37.760 this group was tapped when we were all out of peacekeepers to go to Somalia and act in a

00:35:42.540 peacekeeping manner. Now they're not trained peacekeepers. They're actually quite the opposite,

00:35:49.540 but they were sent anyway. And they secured sort of an area within Somalia in order to operate a

00:35:56.200 base in Somalia to operate from. And what they found very quickly is things were getting stolen

00:36:00.440 from the base, not guns, not tanks, not planes, tools, things that had value. Why? Because poverty

00:36:07.820 surrounded the base. And people would come in, predominantly young kids, and steal something

00:36:13.220 and get out. Well, they caught a kid. And they caught a kid and they tied him to a chair. And

00:36:18.780 in order to send him a message, and this was given from the top down, as we all know, that's

00:36:22.540 the way the military works. Nobody does anything without being given an order. They tied this kid

00:36:28.060 to a chair. And over the next four days, they decided to beat him to the point where he lost

00:36:34.020 his life at that moment the airborne division was called back to canada and put on trial but that

00:36:42.940 trial wasn't public of course that was now a military trial and as and as the the the responsibility

00:36:50.720 was going higher and higher and higher and up the chain of command it all of a sudden was shut down

00:36:56.400 altogether the airborne division was was completely torn up and by the way they just created another

00:37:02.500 division in another different way they were all disavowed they were all fired it was all the but

00:37:07.700 and then these kids in the airborne were like 20 21 years old they were all they were to blame it

00:37:12.740 was all gone but somehow it didn't go all the way up the chain of command and everybody shut it down

00:37:19.060 what how can we have democracy without control of the army how can we have control of the army if

00:37:25.620 we're not allowed to know what the army is doing because of national security see my problem

00:37:29.460 And finally, the last one I'm going to talk about today

00:37:34.740 Is the oligarchy of the wealthy

00:37:36.800 And this is a different level

00:37:41.240 When you can

00:37:43.360 Buy social media agencies

00:37:47.720 When you can buy a team of lawyers

00:37:51.580 The justice system works differently for you

00:37:57.240 When you can

00:37:58.520 donate millions of dollars and sit at the right tables and know the right people the system works

00:38:04.680 differently for you and it's as soon as the system works that differently for a small finite group of

00:38:10.820 people that small finite group of people end up running the show and everything else everything

00:38:16.620 else about democracy ends up being puppeteering because those individuals are the ones that are

00:38:22.180 going to get you elected get you re-elected those are the individuals that are going to allow you to

00:38:26.120 do anything you want to do. Those are the individuals that have big government contracts

00:38:29.980 and corporate contracts. Those are the individuals that have connections all across the world

00:38:36.660 that make having national democracy incredibly problematic because they're all sitting 0.68

00:38:43.740 metaphorically, of course, at one very big table for the 0.01% in this world who are really running 0.99

00:38:51.180 all of the show. When I look at this picture, a lot of people will say, well, Joanna, you just

00:38:59.580 hate capitalism. They're not wrong. They're not wrong. I get it. I get what it's brought us and

00:39:06.100 people are going to say it's brought more wealth and education. I get all of that, but it's gone

00:39:11.440 to a very, very bad place. If it ever was in a good place to begin with, I really have no idea,

00:39:17.100 But I do know that it is capitalism and it is an oligarchy and it is the acquisition and the accumulation of mass, mass amounts of wealth at the very, very top end of this spectrum.

00:39:28.460 And it has changed over the course of the last 50 years to to shrinking the middle class, eliminating that mass body of people who feel want to know why voting turnout is so small.

00:39:41.720 That's because we've destroyed the middle class. We've destroyed them economically. We've destroyed them emotionally and culturally. We've destroyed them because they all know in somewhat of a gut that that oligarchy is pulling the strings. And if they're pulling the strings, what the hell are they going out to vote for?

00:39:57.960 And everything about that shrinking of the middle class and that economic power, as it's been shifted to the upper ranks, in my opinion, is the most destructive aspects that face democracy today.

00:40:22.300 we can't have a system that is under the pretense of the people when the people don't even come

00:40:33.000 close to having the same power as the oligarchs however i will end on this

00:40:39.940 i really like that movie ants have you guys ever seen it cartoon movie right the ants work for the

00:40:49.020 grasshoppers and the grasshoppers get very nervous and they say, whoa, hopefully the ants never

00:40:54.980 realize that the only reason we have what we have is because they keep doing the job the way that we

00:41:00.820 think and we tell them to do the job. Thank God they don't talk to each other. Thank God they

00:41:06.360 don't revolt. Thank God they all don't put down their jobs for the day and put down their tools

00:41:12.880 and put down everything, all the cogs in the wheel they let go

00:41:17.380 and say, today we're not doing it, because it would all crumble.

00:41:23.100 And if those ants realized the power they have

00:41:26.280 and the revolution they would start,

00:41:29.360 it would change the world and reset all of the ideas

00:41:35.780 that we once had idealistically of what democracy could bring.

00:41:42.880 And on that note guys, have a great week. I'll see you next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat channel.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - March 25, 2025

The One Where I Make Democracy Behind The Scenes

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