Hello Ben.
Tonight I want to ask you about
emotionalism
and in particular fear.
I believe in freedom
and I believe fear is the antithesis
and can be compared to a panopticon
of the mind.
For example my father Barry Neufeld
has taken a stand against SOGI 123.
Rather than debate his stance
rationally.
[APPLAUSE]
Rather than debate his stance
rationally the B.C.
Teachers Federation
and Canadian Union of Public
Employees
have opted for the fast track to
section 318
hate speech code
and sue him into silence.
A move I believe is motivated by
fear
and goes far beyond causal
conversation.
What can individuals
and communities do to combat
creeping emotionalism
and restore conscientious reason to
discourse
in this country.
Well I mean I think that the first
thing that has
to be done.
Is there does have to be a mass
movement
against the use of the government
gun to silence
people that you don't like talking
to.
That has to stop.
And it's why I opened the speech by
ripping into
the B.C. Human Rights Code.
I don't like hateful speech any more
than
anybody else does. But I am not
willing to give
the government the power to shut
down speech that
I find offensive
or hateful simply because I don't
like
it.
The other thing we have to do is we
have
to we have to aknowledge speech
is linked with action otherwise
known care
what anybody else had to say.
But to equate speech
with violence which is really what
so many
members the left have done these
days.
If i make an argument that means
that you now have to go
running to the sexual assault center
because
somehow I have assaulted you.
It's nonsense
and it's counter-productive
and it leads specifically to the
argument that because
my speech is violence you can use
violence to silence
my speech speech
and violence are completely
different.
And unless you are openly inciting
violence against
somebody your speeches ought to
be legal.
Last night you mentioned
the Cartesian duality
and that piqued my interest.
And that has me thinking.
How much do you think this is a
problem.
How do you how much do you think
that's linked to actual
mental illness?
And so I mean the argument that I
was making
last night I spoke last night at the
Vancouver
Hebrew Academy and I was talking
about somebody asked
a question about transgenderism,
even though the speech was about
anti-Semitism.
And the.
And I was talking about this this
bizarre idea that you have a female
mind inside of a male body.
And I suggested that this was a
kind of reversion to Cartesian
duality.
This idea of the ghost in the
machine that your mind
exists separate from your body
and that your body has nothing to do
with your mind and your genetics
and your and your brain workings
have nothing to do
with who you are as a person
and therefore you know you can
create weird TV shows about people
switching
minds everything is freaky friday
and it seems to me
that a lot of what is being argued
right now which is that the mind is
completely
separate from like completely
separate
from the body
and therefore all you have to do is
change the body to meet
with the mind wants it to be
is rooted in certain illogical
precepts about what Biology
is and what reality is.
And again it's it's
gut churning to talk about these
sorts of topics
publicly particularly when you
know you're hurting people's
feelings.
Like I actually as much as I don't
care about people's
feelings.
I actually kind of do like I don't
spend a lot
of time talking about people's
feelings because I
feel like people use their feelings
as a way to shut down debate.
But the last thing that I want to do
is to have people
walking out really upset about
things.
I think that that's why I prefer a
society
in which we all grow a thicker skin.
But it is true that that a
movement back to a sort
of nearly pagan
association
with subjective truth is not good
for anybody including folks who are
suffering from mental
