037 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 037

Air Date: January 17, 2008

Host: Bob Metz

Station Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this program are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Clip (Star Trek: The Next Generation S01E13 “Angel One”)
William Riker: No power in the universe can hope to stop the force of evolution. Be warned. The execution of Mr. Ramsey and his followers may elevate them to the status of martyrs. Martyrs cannot be silenced.

Bob Metz: Well, good morning London. It is Thursday January 17, 2008. I’m Bob Metz and this is just right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now until noon. No, no, not right wing. Just right.

Welcome to the show on this fine Thursday morning. It’s kind of cool out there. Still dry before the snow comes. 519-661-3600 is the number you can call if you’d like to call in and join in on the many subjects we’ll be talking about today. And I’ve been asked to remind you as well that you can also email us at justrightchrw@gmail.com to give us your opinions, suggestions for shows, anything you like on that level.

Today on the show, Suicide Atheist Bombers. Something wrong with that picture? Well, that’s almost the image I get given some of the editorial attacks on atheists lately. Now there’s a turnaround. We’ll take a look at that a little bit later.

Are religious people more virtuous than non-religious people? Now there’s an interesting question. I saw some coverage of that in the paper as well, kind of related to the other subject. We’ll be looking at that as well. And of course, coming up very shortly in the show, we’ll be talking about developments continuing a subject I began last week, and of course as early as November on Marc Emery, when we will be hopefully joined long distance by Lawyers Karen Selick, who wrote an open letter to Canada’s Minister of Justice in the National Post just a couple of weeks ago.

But first, just wanted to conclude one item that was sort of left over from the last week’s show, where I was getting into some of the things that I was saying were just wrong, not just right, but just wrong in terms of what I see in the papers. Now this one’s already getting a little bit of a dated type of article, just at the end of the year, December 27th from the London Free Press. And I’m not sure whether my objection or what I feel is wrong with this has more to do with subject matter or more to do with the actual journalism involved.

Let’s see what you think when you hear this. Here, maybe you saw this article, December 27th article by Pat Maloney, and the headline reads, London Teen Dedicated to Peace. Martin Schoots-McAlpine is at the helm of a group protesting military recruiting in local schools.

And here’s basically what the article says in a summary. A teenage London activist wants you to join his campaign to end in school recruiting by the Canadian forces. Martin Schoots-McAlpine a student who has protested the practice at London South Secondary School, is looking for teens from across the city to be part of a group that will hold similar demonstrations at other high schools.

So it sounds like the story might stick with us for a while if they follow through on this. We need to be extremely critical of the people that are in charge of the military, said the 18-year-old, whose group is called the Student Network Against Recruitment in London, which is the acronym is SNARL, S-N-A-R-L. Now, through the social networking website, Facebook.com, he started SNARL, attracting about 100 members so far, and some fierce criticism. Another London student apparently considers SNARL a cyber-shot across the bow, and in response has started his own Facebook page, the Student Association for Respecting Our Military. The page includes a rebuke of Schoots-McAlpine and his views on the military.

If you were smart and knew how to debate what you claim you do, and knew how to present a problem well, you would show both sides of the story, the pages administrator wrote. Why are you covering up the good side of enlisting? And Captain Holly Brown of the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group is quoted as saying, we’ve been busy going to schools for years and years and years. We’re just going in just like any other employer to offer career options. We’re not actively recruiting. We’re not signing anyone up.

And a caption under a photo of Schoots-McAlpine describes him as, quote, a student against military recruitment in high schools who has a Facebook page dedicated to peace. End quote. So that’s basically the outline of the article.

Now, this article, as published, I think has so many inherent flaws that it’s almost what I think is a showcase example of how so much print media can leave you a little frustrated and just feel like you’ve been a little disserved to say nothing of the issue involved. So let me describe this for you. The headline and photo, number one headline and photo description have nothing to do with the text of the article.

Now, I know they’re written by different people and I’ve met Pat Maloney. Nowhere in his, our actual report is the word peace mentioned, not even once, nor does the article have anything to do with peace or any dedication to it. I would suggest that someone, fundamentally opposed to a voluntary military and recruiting in high school is not necessarily an advocate of peace, but perhaps even a dangerous threat to it. It also implies that anyone opposed, to these kinds of views is not in favor of peace and therefore kind of falsely polarizes the issue. Like, if you’re in favor of the military, you’re a warmonger. Well, that’s utterly ridiculous.

Number two, while the article goes to the trouble of letting us know that there are other students opposed to this movement, even to the point of quoting another quote, London student, end quote, he or she has left unidentified for some unknown reason. I don’t know why.

And the third point that kind of struck me was that although the article suggests there’s a controversy and debate between this unidentified person and Schoots-McAlpine, as a reader, I was not offered one example or substantive issue or argument, leaving me, if I was remotely interested or anyone who is interested in this issue, would have to access the internet to get any information at all. And some people still don’t have the internet. Some don’t want to go that far. And if you want to get someone interested in the story, you certainly have to put a little substance into it. And I’ve been reading a lot at the Free Press how they’re planning to, make you depend more on the internet.

Well, what does that mean? Just give us the teasers and we go online for the news. I’d like to see a little of the news and print. Otherwise, why bother printing?

And the fourth issue was that, it seems that, well, reporting insults is, of course, very important. Quote, if you were smart and knew how to debate, blah, blah, blah, you know, to which I can only respond. If the London Free Press was smart, it would be more objective in its reporting. State the facts, report both sides of the story. Put a headline on the story that actually has something to do with the story, you know.

And the fifth thing was that, the article ends, so, watch what you’re wishing for. You just might get it.

Now, of course, I understand he’s only 18. And, I remember being a complete moron politically at that age myself. I actually used to vote liberal for heaven’s sakes and was a big Trudeau fan.

This is actually true. And, but I just wasn’t thinking about politics at that time. Like most kids today, I really didn’t have much information, not much direction, not much guidance in the political realm. That’s, of course, and a lot of misinformation, misdirection and propaganda under the guise of all these altruistic and benevolent causes that generally turn out to be anything but. Well, it’s like the old saying, if you’re not a lefty when you’re young, you haven’t got a heart. And if you’re still a lefty in your 40s, you haven’t got a mind.

And that’s about the whole summary of it. Well, that’s it for that issue. We’re going to take a quick break now. And when we come back after this break, we’ll be discussing what’s been going on with Marc Emery and the developments since we covered this last week.

Clip (Stewart Francis)
Stewart Francis: I have a dog named Seque. Speaking of dogs. Parents have differing views when it comes to dogs. When I was a kid, my parents said we could get a puppy. If we hated it, we could just abandon it. My foster parents, however.

Marc Emery: One of the key things we’ve tried to do too is teach everybody how to make money. Because one of the things about cannabis activists is that they tend to be socialist at first. But socialism is a hard road to go if you actually want to both convince someone of your case and raise money to finance your case. Socialists are terrible with money.

That’s why they’re socialists. They fear it. They don’t respect it.

They’re frightened of it and they don’t understand it. So the key thing I have done, our organization does through pot television, through the Cannabis Culture Magazine, through the marijuana party, which we’ll be doing to the public, is encouraging people that not only is making money a good thing, but it’s essential to make money in order to get people to take your ideas seriously. You need money to get out to the public. You need to make money so that you don’t get burnout. You need to make money so that you, in fact, can be a free, happy individual because money gives you options.

They say money doesn’t buy happiness. It’s all wrong. Money buys you a lot of happiness. For example… Money buys you options. Money buys you choices. Money gives you opportunity. All those things will make you much happier. You look at an activist without money. He’s working a lot harder for the same result of somebody who’s an activist with money.

Now, the only problem is, of course, is that a lot of people who got a lot of money decide that’s when they don’t want to be activists. Because, of course, once you get comfort, you feel like, well, I don’t want to lose that comfort. Comfort’s good. The more money you get, the shyer you are. I find that a lot of people are activists when they are broke because they have a nothing to lose kind of feeling about life. The key thing is to have that same feeling when you finally get rich one day.

We all really should get rich. Probably most of us have the germ of a good idea and the wherewithal to work it to make money. And that’s one of the things we teach our activists, is that you have to get out and make more money. Whatever you’re making now, you’re not making enough. You’ve got to go get more.

If only to give to lawyers to help people out, if only to give to prisoners to help people out, if only to give to the party…

Bob Metz: Welcome back. You’re listening to Just Right with Bob Metz on CHRW 94.9 FM, where you can call in at 519-661-3600. Last week, you may recall, I featured an open letter to Canada’s Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, written by Belleville lawyer Karen Selick. The letter asked that the minister prevent the possible extradition of marijuana seed seller Marc Emery to the United States and to consider Marc’s long history of idealistic activism, quote, in assessing whether Emery fits the pattern of criminal whom we would normally have no hesitation about extraditing.

But of course, since last week’s show, the circumstances appear to have changed with respect to Marc Emery’s face-off with the American Drug Enforcement Agency, otherwise known as the DEA.

Karen Selick, a courageously outspoken writer whose columns seem to be popping up more frequently in the pages of the National Post of Late, and whom I have had the privilege of knowing for many years now, joins us now live from Belleville to discuss some of the latest developments in Marc’s case.

Good morning, Karen. I can’t hear, Karen.

Karen Selick: Hi, Bob.

Bob Metz: Oh, hi there, Karen. I hear you now. Okay.

Okay, how are you doing?

Karen Selick: I’m fine.

How about you?

Bob Metz: Oh, not too bad.

Those National Post columns will be approximately every two weeks from now on, by the way.

Karen Selick: Oh, is that right? Well, that’s good to know. And by the way, if anyone would like to check your website out, it’s www.karenselick.com. Is it not?

Yes.

For a host of stuff.

The National Post stuff is actually posted on fullcomment.com, which is a National Post website. And if people want to actually get into a dialogue there, or actually more than a dialogue, there’s many people that comment there. The website allows people to post their own comments.

Bob Metz: Excellent. Excellent. Well, I know you might not have heard last show, but I did mention last week, actually, the last time that you, myself, and Marc Emery were probably in the same room together, was right here at the University of Western Ontario in the summer of 2000. Is that Ring a Bell with you?

The ISIL conference, I guess.

Karen Selick: That’s correct. Yes. So, well, welcome back to London, Karen.

Figuratively.

Bob Metz: Yeah, figuratively. Putting aside my outrage, disgust, and contempt for those who would do what they’re doing to Marc, my first reaction to the recent developments in his case was sort of mixed feelings, you know, relief on one hand and a little bit of disappointment on the other. I think my relief was knowing that Marc would not be serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison. And maybe I was a bit disappointed knowing that Marc’s day of reckoning before Canada’s Minister of Justice may never have had a chance to play out. That might have been, maybe, Marc’s fastest road to freedom and having the impact he wanted to have. And you think I’m way off track here?

Karen Selick: No, I actually share your views to a great extent. I was thinking about that this morning, that it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had, you know, had he had his extradition hearing and then forced the Justice Minister to make a decision as to whether to surrender him or not. Because I don’t think that all the people who still have something to say on this issue have spoken yet. I think that there would be quite a few very interesting exchanges in the political realm. A lot of people don’t want to see him surrendered to the U.S. And a lot of people of various political stripes would have stood up and wanted some good reasons from the Minister of Justice about why he was being surrendered.

So I’m kind of disappointed that that won’t happen, although actually it still might. I understand that the deal that he’s made is tentative only. It’s not on paper. And the latest thing that I read earlier this morning was that, you know, the trial is still going ahead as scheduled on Monday morning. In fact, the lawyer for one of his co-accused, Michelle Rainey, I guess, said, you know, I’m still preparing for trial on Monday morning.

Bob Metz: Oh, so that hasn’t been canceled yet?

Karen Selick: Well, because the deal hasn’t actually been signed.

Bob Metz: Gotcha. Okay. Well, that’s an interesting thing to know. I guess, well, that they’re even talking about this means obviously something must be going on. You know, judging by the editorial responses, even the National Post was yesterday or the day before, and certainly in the even in the London Free Press here, article editorial by Paul Burton, the incarceration of Marc Emery under American, not Canadian, laws not going over too well with the media. Marc seems to have their support on this issue.

Given the deal he’s making, supposing it goes that way instead of going what we expected before, could this mean that Marc has either lost his state admission or has he won it anyway? Because he’s getting this attention. It kind of surprised me to be honest with you. I didn’t think they’d give that much attention to a deal being made rather than the actual confrontation, if you know what I mean. But the fact that the interest is there tells me maybe Marc was on the right track from day one.

Karen Selick: There was one phrase that you used that he had lost his something, and I didn’t hear what it was.

Bob Metz: Oh, his state admission, the way he, well basically that he wanted to, you know, almost be a martyr as some people are saying, you know, or get his day in court to confront the authorities in the manner that he would have wanted to.

Karen Selick: I just thought of this in a sort of practical lawyer’s way. I know that he was getting a lot of advice from his lawyers that he should take this deal, and I thought, man, if I were the lawyer on this case, which I’m not, thank goodness, what would I be telling him to do? Because to tell you the truth, I’d be shaking in my boots about what would happen to him, you know, if we weren’t successful in getting the political decision to not send him by the Minister of Justice.

So I’m sure that he was getting a lot of pressure from a lot of different sides that, you know, that probably induced him to finally accept this deal. He will actually have to spend some time, possibly six months, in a U.S. jail, and then they’re going to apparently send him back to Canada. And he is going to have to be convicted in both Canada and the U.S. So I don’t know to what extent Canada is on side yet, you know, to what extent the Canadian authorities have agreed to this.

Bob Metz: Is the Canadian government, the federal government, going to be able to sit out of this one, not even have an opinion, as long as they leave it in the justice system? Is that what’s going on here? Maybe they don’t want to be judged on this?

Karen Selick: Well, I’m sure that they’re very relieved if this deal goes through, because that will eliminate the possibility that they’ll have to make a political decision. So I’m not sure who in Canada he would actually be discussing this with, presumably a police force in British Columbia where he is, maybe the Vancouver police.

You know, people who never charged him before all those years are now being asked to charge him, and he’ll plead guilty to that, and that’s the way it’s going to be dealt with if it goes ahead.

Bob Metz: You know, it’s interesting. I was actually talking to my daughter the other night about this, and she asked me or posed a very strange scenario here how she put it. She saw it as the U.S. government kind of using Marc’s virtue against him, and she said they’ve got this mob approach, you know, it’s a mob approach to justice.

I won’t kill you, but I’ll kill your family. And this is why I’ve been so curious about charging the other two people that were charged with him. This is part of the reason that Marcus said he does not want to, you know, go through with his original plans, right, because they’re talking about also Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams, who apparently, if they do this deal, will be completely spared doing any jail time.

Karen Selick: Right, that’s my understanding too.

Bob Metz: Right, and so…

And she has Crohn’s disease and…

And is smoking marijuana as something to deal with it, of course. Now, is there some truth to that? Is that what they’re doing? Are they using those kind of bully tactics to get what they want? Because you almost think that they’re afraid of Marc Emery because they have to do this and deflect his attention to something else.

Karen Selick: Well, I think that they definitely targeted Marc not just because he was selling marijuana seeds to U.S. citizens. You know, if that had been their sole goal, then there are lots and lots of other people who should have been charged as well.

There are still people, if you Google marijuana seeds on the Internet, there’s all kinds of people, some in BC, some in Ontario, all over the world who are selling marijuana seeds over the internet. So there’s lots of people they could go after. I think they went after Marc specifically because of his attitude, because of his self-proclaimed goal of legalizing marijuana and getting rid of the prohibition, the war on drugs.

And there’s some really good evidence of that too. There is a press release that came from the U.S. Department of Justice in July 2005, right after he was busted on the very day that he was arrested, in fact.

And they say in their press release, today’s DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.

Bob Metz: Yes, believe it or not, that very point was highlighted both by, I think, 60 minutes in the U.S. and by the CBC here in that special. And we actually aired that and talked, I’ve given a complete history. A lot of people don’t know Marc Emery’s background, they just know that he’s a pot seller quote, end quote. And they’d have no idea of what kind of character this is.

And I mean, not ha-ha character, I mean a man of character.

Karen Selick: Right.

Bob Metz: And, you know, the fact that the U.S. is targeting him, and I think it’s pretty self-evident, everyone agrees, a media sees it, everyone sees it. There’s an element here, oh, how could I put this?

Could a lesson be taken from all of this that if you’re politically effective at rocking the boat or persuading large numbers of people, that the ultimate penalty is some kind of punishment by the state? Or is that something we already knew?

Karen Selick: Well, I think when you oppose the state, you have to realize that it has infinite, virtually infinite resources compared to the most private individual. So if the state decides that it’s going to oppose you, you know, you better be careful.

Bob Metz: Oh, well.

You can do huge damage.

Karen Selick: Oh, sure. And of course, Marc was always aware of this. He spoke about it constantly.

Bob Metz: Yep.

Made people around him that he was aware of the fact that he was aware, you know what I mean? The other issue here as well is that the severity of the crime, a 10-year sentence with minimum five years, no parole, et cetera, et cetera, might even be worse. But in many situations, this is a punishment that is far worse than what is needed out for many violent offenders.

Karen Selick: Yes, a lot of people have remarked on that.

Bob Metz: I agree. Yes, and what’s even more ironic, and I was just thinking about that as I was coming into the station this morning, I wish I had thought about this one before. You know how we hear so often from US courts and Canadian courts, they place all this emphasis on the value of truth, you know, Martha Stewart, she was put in jail, not because of what she did, but because she lied to the authorities, right? Well, here they’ve got a guy. You know what I’m getting at here?

Karen Selick: Yep.

Bob Metz: Marc Emery, completely open, no evidence, just his testimony. There was actually a guy on 60 Minutes from the DEA saying that we’ll convict him on his testimony, okay? He has no weapons, no money, no drugs when they got him, not even seeds, because he sells them on the side, but that’s all he deals with, and never ever associated with violence or anything like that, any of Marc’s activities. He just wouldn’t tolerate that kind of thing.

So aren’t we getting a mixed message here again? Well, I’m going to lie to the government every time they ask me anything, because it’s not going to do me any good to tell the truth. Is that a lesson we’re learning here?

Karen Selick: Well, I don’t know.

Bob Metz: That’s an interesting point.

I’m being a little…

Karen Selick: I haven’t thought of it before. I mean, I always like to think of Marc’s openness as sort of the way of the future. Like, when we finally do legalize marijuana, which may be 100 years from now, but I’m sure that someday we will come to our senses and say, this is not working and it’s not helping to keep it illegal. And when we finally do that, then Marc is the way of the future. That is the way that marijuana will be sold when it is no longer under the stigma. It will be sold like coffee.

Who was it that said to me the other day? It’s like, you know, you go into a store and you see all these different brands of coffee, and some of them are advertised as having this virtue or that virtue, and you can choose. And that’s the way he does things. He’s trying to get the best possible product to people. He tries to guarantee good quality and customer satisfaction. And surely that is the way we want to have marijuana sold, not in little secret alleys and people passing bags of stuff that might be oregano and who knows what.

Bob Metz: Sure. I mean, I have often stated on this show how prohibition almost fuels the whole crime aspect of drugs. I don’t think drugs themselves would necessarily lead to criminal activity, but I think the issue of actual harm and or whether a drug is healthy or harmful is, at least to me, irrelevant as to whether it should be legal or not, or in terms of prohibition.

Karen Selick: Yep, I agree with that.

Bob Metz: And however, aside from the quote, drug and quote issue, I guess the big issue everybody’s talking about is one of jurisdiction, legal jurisdiction.

Karen Selick: Yep.

Bob Metz: In a way, we’re turning Marc into a political prisoner, are we? And for the Americans even, and we’re going to keep them in our jail for them? Do we have to pay for that as taxpayers or do the Americans pay for that?

Karen Selick: I guess we’ll be paying because he will be convicted here. So he’ll be part of the normal Canadian justice system, and Canadian taxpayers pay for the guys in our jails.

Bob Metz: Well, so we’re going to be fine along with this as well. I just see more money going into nothing. In a way, I kind of feel sorry for some of the prosecutors and law officials who will have to be faced with Marc because he’s so open and candid. A lot of them are going to have trouble sleeping nights. I’ll tell you, I’ve seen him doing this.

Now, Marc’s clearly attempting to change a law.

Karen Selick: Yep.

Bob Metz: And I’ve stated many times on this show that if they legalized marijuana tomorrow, Marc would be on to the next issue. And jail is not new to him.

He’s been in jail for Sunday shopping even here in Ontario. And so, and that law changed in keeping with his broader view that the way you change laws is by breaking them. You know, Morgentaler proved it. The Suffragette Movement proved it. You know, all kinds of movements have demonstrated that. Now, that he’s doing this as a purposeful conscious act, you know.

But he’s dealing in a legal environment with a moral argument. Does that ever work? Is this a futile approach? You’re in the legal profession. Is that just a waste of time? Or is his real court outside the court?

Karen Selick: Yeah, I think it is. You know, the judges feel constrained by their oath of office to apply the law as it exists and not to, you know, not to just sort of go off on frolics of their own. Because if they do go off on frolics of their own, then, you know, there’s always an appeal court that will sort of slap them down. And, you know, even though there are no consequences to them of having their decisions overturned, no consequences in terms of, you know, no loss of income, no loss of, you know, job security or anything like that, I think that as a matter of pride, it’s considered, you know, among your fellow judges, it’s not considered very good to have your decisions overturned by an appellate court.

So, you know, I think judges are very hesitant to sort of step outside of what the law has been and, you know, step outside of what’s been done by prior judges. So I do think that this is a case where eventually the law will get changed because public opinion will sway the politicians into doing something different.

And I think in many ways, if not the law itself, at least the application of the law, certainly in Canada, has changed dramatically over the past years.

Bob Metz: That’s why he was free up until the time that the U.S. DEA managed to persuade Canadian authorities to help them arrest him. Right. Because we didn’t care much.

You know, coming down to the bottom of the hour now, just to, in summary, was there anything that we haven’t discussed that you might want to make sure people are aware of with respect to this case?

Karen Selick: Hmm. You shouldn’t ask a question like that.

Bob Metz: I’m giving you kind of the last word here, you know.

Karen Selick: I’m sure that after I hang up, I’ll think of all kinds of things. I mean, you know, I haven’t heard your prior shows, but, you know, I just sort of want to add that in my view, and there was quite a debate on this in response to my National Post article, in my view, Marc is a heroic figure. I’ve said that for years, and not just about this fight. I wrote a piece about him in my Canadian lawyer column 10 years ago, calling him heroic for what he had done on Sunday shopping and, you know, obscenity laws and all the various issues that he has tackled. And, you know, that’s what he lives for. He lives for, you know, making change happen. He doesn’t get rich from what he’s doing, and I think it’s actually quite hard on his health.

I know that he has told me in the past about, you know, feelings of almost being close to nervous breakdown and having difficulty sleeping and stuff like this. It’s hard to do what he does, and he’s a very heroic man.

Bob Metz: Oh, I know. That’s for sure. Well, thank you so much, Karen, for joining us today.

Karen Selick: You’re welcome.

Bob Metz: And we’ll have you back sometime in the future, maybe talking about some other issues related to the state intruding upon our lives. Thanks very much, Karen.

Karen Selick: All right.

Bob Metz: And when we return after this break, we’ll be talking about the atheism’s ultra militant movement. And we’ll be back right after this.

Marc Emery: In the last six months we’ve sponsored a lot of class action suits against the U.S. government. I think this is great. I can’t believe it. We gave $20,000 to sue the U.S. government in Philadelphia to make Medical Marrow 1 available to patients. We have given endless number of prisoners in jail money and money to their lawyers. That’s one of our most important things. We also encourage prisoners to call from their prison to pot television and get on the air and tell us their stories so that they don’t feel so isolated, don’t feel lonely, and that they feel they can also do some good while they’re still behind bars.

That’s the great thing about the modern technologies. They can call out, collect from the prison and give us a call and we can put them on the air. We’ve given prisoners, lawyers, class action suits, three or four class action suits going on against the Canadian government.

That’s about three. Most ballot initiatives. There’s the PRA 2000 in Michigan that did not succeed, but we gave money to that. We’ve given about $4,000 or $5,000 to the Free Hemp in Alaska ballot initiative which legalizes marijuana, which is on the ballot in Alaska this fall. All the ballot initiatives along the West Coast we’ve contributed money to. Substantially, that’s what we do. I see my job is to raise money to give it away.

Clip (TVO’s Steve Paikin with Richard Dawkins)
Steve Paikin: I want to start by quoting an excerpt from your book, in which you actually quote somebody else, and it goes like this. When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called religion. Why is it appropriate to call religious people delusional?

Richard Dawkins: I think because it’s wrong, and because it’s the same kind of error as people are quite used to dealing with, when it’s something like a fairy story, a Hans Anderson fairy story, and you believe in magic spells and frogs turning into princes and things. If anybody really believed that, you’d call it a delusion.

And what religious people believe is pretty much the same, but because millions of people believe it, we don’t call it a delusion, we call it a religion.

Steve Paikin: Don’t stop at millions, billions. Billions believe it. Billions.

Richard Dawkins: I believe it.

Steve Paikin: Have you, in which case, do you know of any individual who has read this book in particular, or perhaps any of your previous writings, who believes in God, who has read your work or heard you speak, and thought, you know what, this guy’s right, I’m changing my mind, I’m no longer sure.

Richard Dawkins: There’s a section of my website, Richard Dawkins.net, called Converts Corner, and there are lots of them there, you can go and look them up.

Steve Paikin: And why do they convert?

Richard Dawkins: I think probably they hadn’t really thought about it very much before, and I don’t think I’ve converted any really deep, dyed-in-the-wall religious people, but I think there are people who haven’t really bothered to give it very much thought, they’ve got better things to do, and then they discover when they read a book like mine, not just mine, but other books like that, that actually they don’t believe it, and they are not in fact religious.

Although, I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s right to call you a full-blown atheist, given that you do allow for, you do say in the book, I allow for the possibility that God may exist.

It’s not reasonable for a scientist to say, I absolutely know anything like that. So, you know, I’m an agnostic about fairies, and so are you, but we don’t really separate ourselves from somebody who doesn’t believe in fairies. In practice, we don’t believe in fairies.

Steve Paikin: Are you hedging your bets a bit?

Richard Dawkins: Not at the least. I mean, I’m doing, well, no more than you are when you say you don’t believe in fairies. Do you believe in fairies?

Steve Paikin: Not today.

Richard Dawkins: No, no, be serious.

Steve Paikin:Do I believe in fairies?

Richard Dawkins: Yes

Steve Paikin: No.

Richard Dawkins: No. You don’t. But I mean, technically, you’re agnostic about fairies because you can’t disprove them, and that’s exactly the sense in which I’m agnostic about God.

Bob Metz: Welcome back to Just Right. I’m Bob Metz, and this is CHRW Radio 94.9 FM, where you can call 519-661-3600 if you have some comments on today’s subject. What you just heard was TVO’s Steve Paikin interviewing author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, on a program here at oh, about a year or so ago. It was accompanied by all sorts of fanfare and debate. And, of course, books on atheism have become extraordinarily popular thanks to him and others like him over the past, especially past couple of years, and certainly 9-11, I imagine, was an event that precipitated a lot of interest in another look at religion.

Well, you had to expect it to happen. Of course, a lot of religious people are now going on the offensive and actually attacking or if you want to use that word, I don’t like to use it, but going after the atheists themselves. And I could not help but be totally surprised when I opened the pages of the National Post of the January 7th edition, and there was this huge two-page article written by a fellow named Damon Linker, identified as a senior writing fellow at the Center for Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. And the headline reads, In Godless Books, Mindless Arguments, Far from Shoring Up the Secular Political Tradition, Atheism’s Ultra-Militant Movement is Championing a New Form of Intellectual Totalitarianism.

Well, now you know why I was thinking of, you know, Suicide Atheist Bombers. That’s almost the image that comes to mind when I was reading that headline.

But here is what its author basically says. Why Dawkins refuses to take his idea to its logical conclusion? To say that raising a child in a religious tradition like other forms of child abuse should be considered a crime punishable by the state is a mystery, for it does follow directly from the character of his atheism. Journalists have dubbed this combative style of challenging religious belief as, quote, the new atheism. Socrates may have been the most celebrated martyr to atheism, but many other philosophers and scientists, before and since, have faced political persecution for their insistence on subjecting religious beliefs to skeptical scrutiny.

And then, of course, he lists a whole list of people who fell under that scrutiny, including Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant are just a few, of the writers who faced hostility, some of it violent. Fear of such persecution led many atheists to express their view, with a tentativeness quite unlike the bold declarations of today’s unbelievers, who write and think in conditions of political freedom.

You know, that is a big change, isn’t it?

But the cautious intellectual style of those atheists also flowed from the self-limiting character of their skepticism. As we know from elementary logic, it is impossible to prove a negative. An unbeliever can never be certain that divine beings do not exist. The most thoughtful atheists did not go out of their way to act as missionaries for unbelief.

The thinkers, whose ideas formed the backbone of the Enlightenment, did not seek a godless society. They publicly promoted not atheism, but liberal Christianity. It was only in the final years of the 18th century, in the late fanatical phases of the French Revolution, that a wholly politicized form of atheism, let’s call it ideological atheism, fully emerged. That the first ideological atheists were found on the far left is historically interesting, but theoretically irrelevant. Friedrich Nietzsche, a figure who would become associated with the far right, soon joined them in pronouncing the death of God. What both factions shared was an irresponsible loathing for liberalism, which permitted citizens to continue worshiping their gods in peace, protected by state power from persecution.

In nearly all cases, the form of belief, whether Deism, Unitarianism, Pantheism, or John Dewey’s religion of democratic common faith, has been perfectly compatible with liberal government. Activist Madeline Murray O’Hare, who leapt to prominence in the 1960s by advocating a uniquely vulgar and hate-filled version of ideological atheism, did not hold mainstream appeal. Only now, during the past few years, have books espousing the illiberal form of atheism attracted such widespread interest. In describing atheism as illiberal, I do not mean to imply that the new atheists are closet totalitarians. On the contrary, as is interesting he says on the contrary, all of them understand themselves to be contributing to the defense of freedom against its most potent enemies, at home and abroad. Yet the fact remains that the atheism of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens is a brutally intolerant, proselytizing faith out to rack up conversions.

Yeah, just like religions, isn’t that interesting? Consider, for example, the sloppiness displayed by all of the authors in discussing their political aims. Do they seek to defend the secular politics favored by the American constitutional framers, or do they have the much more radical goal of producing a secular society? It is inexcusable that each book leaves the readers guessing which objective its author favors. Convinced that, as Hitchens puts it in his subtitle, Religion Poisons Everything, today’s atheists feel perfectly justified and dispensing with such moral luxuries as tolerance and civility. Indeed, the tone of today’s atheist tracks is so unremittingly hostile that one wonders if their authors really mean it. When they express the hope as Dawkins does in a representative passage, that quote religious readers who open the God delusion will be atheists when they put it down.

Exactly how will such conversions be accomplished? Rather than seeking common ground with believers, atheists prefer to skip right to their refutation. Liberalism is a philosophy of government, not a philosophy of man or God. Why does it matter what a handful of writers have recently, that a handful of writers have recently sold a lot of books? The rise of the new atheist is cause for concern among those for whom the defense of secular liberalism is a high priority.

The last thing we need is a war of attrition between two mutually exclusive, absolute systems of belief, yet this is precisely what the new atheists appear to crave, and the rest of us must be committed to neither dogmatic faith nor dogmatic doubt, and thereby to ensure that liberalism prevails. That was not the whole article, definitely. It was a huge two-page article. I just pulled out what I thought were the main focus of what the article was about. Of course, there was a lot of reaction to this article. I’ll go through some of these opinions first before I toss my two bits in on it. Of course, an article like that is bound to produce some kind of responses, and here are some of them as they appeared in the National Post again, under their letters of the day, January 9th, Patrick O’Donnell of Ottawa. He says, congratulations for publishing such a wonderfully intelligent article. I believe in God and in an afterlife.

There, I’ve said it. One thing which affords me some comfort besides my faith is having a good look at those on the other side, when in the fullness of time Mr. Hitchens and I come to shuffle off this mortal coil, I fully believe that one of us is in for a great and nasty shock, and it can’t possibly be me.” Well, how true, but not for the reasons that I think he thinks he’s going to be in not get a shock. Lena Nikolov of Toronto says, this article strikes me as a huge non-sequitur. Damon Linker seems to believe that atheism advocates have a political agenda, when in fact they don’t. They have a rational one, and that’s exactly true.

That’s all it’s about. Dan Mailer, here of London, Ontario. He says, Damon Linker was right on the Marc when he exposed virulent atheism as a form of bigotry and intellectual totalitarianism.

The strength of the West has been its continual, socratic search for truth and commitment to tolerance. Boy, there’s a set of contradictions right there, right? What are these people doing? They’re just writing books.

Where’s the virulent atheism and bigotry and the intellectual totalitarianism? They’re mixing ideas with forms of using physical force. That’s what they’re doing here, and they’re trying to equate the two, because of course that’s what religion used to do. I can’t ever recall an atheist movement doing this, although the idea is that if you’re an atheist, you’re rational. Just not believing in religion doesn’t make a personal rational. There’s a lot of people who are atheists who aren’t rational either. It’s not what you don’t believe that makes you act a certain way.

It is what you do. I’ve said that many times on this show. Another fellow from Medicine Hat, Alberta, John Stadalka says, Have a look at the inflammatory language Mr. Linker uses to describe the atheist camp. Virulently anti-religious, bellicose, brutally intolerant, unremittingly hostile, making their arguments with furious certainty. For an alleged critical thinker, Mr. Linker certainly is a hostile fellow. Jeff Brandwein of Toronto says, Linker implies that atheist Richard Dawkins is saying there’s some sort of moral equivalence between the damage caused by Catholic pre-sexually abusing children and by the damage caused by generally raising children as Catholic.

This is disingenuous and the extreme. And then Doris Ranch Eisler in St. Albert, Alberta says, Pushing the increasingly accepted view that atheism is itself a belief system confirms his bogus status as any kind of philosopher. And then here was one that was a little more personal by Ralph Fetima of Toronto, who says I was raised by loving parents who were fervent believers in Christianity and received eight years of private religious schooling. I learned that sin could be committed not only via one’s physical actions, but also as a result of one’s thoughts. As well, I learned that what constituted as sin was extensive and highly variable. I cannot begin to describe the many years of mental anguish and needless guilt this education caused until I finally freed my mind of religious indoctrination and control decades later. To instruct a child that not only their actions but their very thoughts could result in eternal damnation is indeed child abuse.

I assure you this instruction caused far more needless pain and suffering for me than any spanking I ever received. So that was just some of the reaction to that, but it didn’t stop there. The attack on atheism continues. And here’s one again from the National Post, someone whose stuff I’ve read before with total support.

Don’t know that I support this one, but this one’s by Michael Coren and it was titled, Their Disbelief is My Strength on December 24th. He said, atheists showed me the way God blessed the little devils. And he’s basically arguing that, quote, my Christian faith has been profoundly encouraged by those most eager to smother it. Put simply, I was helped along the road from indifference to belief by the banality of atheism, the standard God-hating manifesto.

Belief is under attack in the first place precisely because it is true,” and quote says Coren. Then he goes on to focus on what I think are three totally irrelevant arguments about atheism. And he said, one, if God were good, he would make himself obvious. Two, yes, but even people who believe in him often suffer and look at the pain in the world.

And the third point was, but Christians are sometimes hypocrites and awful things have been done in the name of Christianity. Well, I have to say I’ve never really known many atheists who sit around bothering to ask questions about the quality of a being in which they do not believe. You know, like atheists don’t talk about whether God was good, whether he likes this or whether he’s into suffering or they don’t talk about God at all in that sense. In fact, the questions that Coren is putting here as challenges to belief by atheists are the questions I’ve always heard believers asking. That’s the kind of question believers go to ask.

You know, if God were good, why would he do this? To ask that question, you’ve got to be a believer. And while both Hitchens and Dawkins did look at these questions, they certainly don’t make the crux of their argument and discuss them only in the context of dealing with the unresolvable questions posed if one does believe in a deity.

But Coren’s fourth argument I think is revealing in the extreme. He says, quote, you’re weak. God is a crutch invented by sacred and threatened, scared and threatened people. And the more we know, the less we believe, end quote. And he says, could be sure God could be an invention.

Then again, absence of God could be an invention by scared and threatened people who are too weak to follow his laws and are terrified of judgment. Be careful with the notion that knowledge means wisdom. He says it was popular among rationalist thinkers in the late 19th century to assume that advances in textual analysis, archaeological discovery and scientific breakthrough would disprove the Bible.

But not quite virtually every time we find out something new in these fields, it supports rather than challenges scripture. Well, I don’t know. This is just patently not true. I don’t know. He doesn’t give an example of this, but just read Charles Darwin and a host of scientists on the issue. I don’t think that that’s exactly the case. But says Coren, opposition to faith to me was as unappealing and bland as faith was appealing and thrilling. It’s funny he says that.

I think exactly the opposite. To me, what’s thrilling and exciting is figuring out how the world really works. I read astronomy books and physics books. And if you want to know how what’s making that universe out there click, you’re not going to find that in any religious tracks. In fact, religion is a fixed thing. It’s doctrinaire. You can’t change it. There’s no future to it. It’s fixed. It’s not like science. It goes on and on and on and you always adopt your views to the reality as it’s presenting itself to you.

But nevertheless, Coren carries on. He says, just recently the tarnished old arguments from the flimsy and transient were republished in new editions by the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. And we were all supposed to run away and hide. So I read them and then began to laugh. Nothing new here.

Nothing clever or challenging either. Clever old God. Must remember to thank him next time on my knees. Thanks for all the non-believers, the God haters, the atheists. Yes, it’s the greatest joke of all. End quote.

Well, I was looking at that and I was thinking, my goodness, that’s almost blasphemy if you could call it that. But against reason and morality, I think, and knowledge and intelligence and certainly against reality. And again, you hear this hatred of knowledge. Quote, the more we know, the less we believe. End quote. You know, doesn’t he believe what he knows? Is that how it works? You know, does knowledge have nothing to do with wisdom? So ignorance combined with belief is wisdom? That’s the alternative. If there’s a third choice, please let me know what it might be. But of course, he won’t talk about that.

You know, even though there are thousands of religions who differ on everything from the nature of existence to the nature of humanity, even though some believe in afterlives while others do not, even though some have deities while others do not. You know, there’s a single thing that all of them have, whether they’re recognized or not recognized, like cults.

They all share one thing in common, and that is their mutual contempt for and opposition to reality and rationality, and basically to knowledge and choice, the two sources of morality, ironically. You know, good is what is true and real. Evil is what is untrue and unreal. And we often express them as rationality versus irrationality. These are not religious concepts, but moral ones.

And most religions, I think, at the metaphysical and at the epistemological levels, are profoundly anti-moral in some ways. And I think religious mythology itself confirms this. You’ve heard of the tree of knowledge, you know, original sin was knowledge. You rate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Even Lucifer’s considered the light, not the dark.

It’s like, sometimes it’s almost all backwards. But you get the idea. The attack is on, and it continues as well. And on the other side of this break, we’ll be talking about the contrast between religion and virtue.

Clip (Stephen Colbert with Ayaan Hirsi Ali)
Stephen Colbert: Let’s talk about these ideas for a second, because you’ve, you know, I have my own problems with radical fundamentalist Islam that’s bent on the destruction of the West. It’s my pet peeve. But what is your perspective on Islam? Certainly you’ve been critical of fundamentalist Islam that’s been politicized. What do you think about moderate Islam? Certainly that’s okay.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: There’s no modern Islam, yes. I make a distinction between Islam on the one hand as a set of ideas, and Muslims on the other hand as individuals. And I say Islam as Muslims, we have been taught, is defined submission to the will of Allah. That’s in the Quran, and it’s in a number of books called, where the example of the Prophet and his deeds and his sayings have been compiled and put together.

Muslims are varied, and you have fundamentalist Muslims, you have moderate Muslims, you have people like me who have become atheists. But the doctrine itself is one, and it’s very much fair to criticize that.

Stephen Colbert: So the idea of submission bothers you?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The idea of submission bothers me. I don’t want to submit.

Stephen Colbert: You don’t submit?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: No.

Stephen Colbert: Well, is that why you became an atheist?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Part of, yes.

Stephen Colbert: Well, because submission is also part of the Christian tradition too, you know, our father, you know, our father who is having a hell by the name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth that is in heavan. It’s not our choice, it’s what God decides.

Clip (Bruce Pott)
Bruce Pott: I guess, you know, some of us, maybe we get to the end of our lives or get older and we find religion, a lot of people. My neighbor just became a Jehovah’s Witness, you know. Which is fine, you know, that’s his choice. You know, who knows, they might be right. You never know. He used to say, but he wouldn’t let his son go out for Halloween anymore, you know. I thought it was part of the religion, but apparently the Jehovah’s just don’t like it when strangers go up to their doors and annoy them.

Bob Metz: And I guess a lot of religious people don’t like it when atheists go up to their door to annoy them with books that refute some of the things they might believe in. Here is an article that caught my attention just recently, although it’s not that new. It was in October 11th’s National Post. And it’s an article, not an editorial, written by Charles Lewis and the headline read, Social Virtues Linked to Faith. And it said the following: A new survey has found that believers are more likely than atheists to place a higher value on love, patience and friendship. In findings, the researchers say could be a warning that Canadians need a religious basis to retain civility in society. The reason for this is that those who are involved with religious groups are being exposed to a whole range of values that are not being propagated well by any other major source. And by the way, I agree with that very strongly, folks. That’s why even a lot of atheists, believe it or not, put their kids in religious schools rather than in a secular, non a school that teaches everything is equal to everything. That’s what the difference is.

But to carry on here: people who are believers are encouraged, whether by a desire to please God or because of the fear of God to adopt these values. Researcher Professor Bibby asks, if you don’t have that as a major source in the culture, then what will be the source? He acknowledged it, however, that many non-believers still place a high value on morality and ethics, but says that some of that is a legacy from previous generations who held deeper religious views. In the realm of forgiveness, which is a core value of many major religions, particularly Christianity, the difference 32 percentage points becomes stark.

Now that’s the end of the quoted part. Now the article is accompanied by three charts, two of which show stats on believers versus non-believers, which is not really news. But the third chart appears under the question, and here’s the question, which on the list below are very important virtues? And then it shows two bars for each virtue, one representing believers and the other one non-believers.

Now in general, they follow the exact same pattern all the way down, with non-believers always being a little bit lower than believers in every category, but the pattern is the same, except for that one that they said 32 percentage points that was a little bit wider than the rest. But I looked at the virtues and I discovered a problem, none of them, well maybe one, but at least 11 of the 12 listed virtues are not virtues at all. At best they could be values, they could be qualities of character, but at worst they could even be the most destructive, un-virtuous characteristics of all.

So let me give you an example of what I mean. Here’s the 12 virtues that they listed. Honesty, kindness, family life, being loved, friendship, courtesy, concern for others, forgiveness, politeness, friendliness, patience, generosity. But you know these things folks, these are not virtues, for the most part, they’re almost fuzzy feel good desires that associated with vague feelings, none of them can serve as a guide for what is the right thing to do, and that’s called morality. Even honesty, which is possibly the only virtue listed there, by itself is no guide to the correct and proper action to follow. You can’t just be honest and always make the right choice.

Plato described the cardinal virtues as justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude, and they were described by Plato as the four types of moral excellence, and not one of those words appears in the list it’s given. In fact, even the word virtue, which is the quality of moral righteousness, I see not even the word morality is in that list.

So, you know, I think that what kind of, what were they really studying? Each of the so-called virtues listed in the study could as equally have been considered unvirtuous, say in the light of justice, which is a real virtue. Being loved is not a virtue, that’s a desire or a value. Some people have behaved very unvirtuously, I have to say, to be loved, or even to foster a friendship, the thing some people do for friendships may be very unvirtuous. Family life, similarly, is not a virtue, for heaven’s sakes, it’s a desire and a value that some people might quite rationally not value it. And consider this, a family life, quote, per se, is a virtue than any single person, or person who’s not in a family, or surrounded by family, is, what, we consider him unvirtuous? This is ridiculous to me.

Let me take it a step further. For example, forgiveness, okay, is it virtuous to forgive the guilty while condemning the innocent? Is it just forgiveness, a virtue? I think that would be a gross injustice and would be very unvirtuous. Is it virtuous to be concerned for other, which, you know, in practice means altruism and self-sacrifice, to those who are not virtuous? Or is it unvirtuous to be concerned with oneself?

In fact, if you want to see any of a lot of these questions really discussed and detailed and answered with ease, I really suggest you read Ayn Rand, well, what else? The virtue of selfishness, in which she vividly demonstrates how so many of the so-called virtues enumerated above are actually not virtues and are destroying our civilization, while the virtues that advance knowledge and civilization are systematically being condemned and being hidden from discussion. I think if these charts prove anything, it’s that atheists can be as unvirtuous or as irrational as believers, but as a rule, their percentage is consistently below the believers, which at least indicates that they think a little more about the issues.

And, of course, there’s a bottom line. Atheism is not and cannot be a belief system or even any system at all. Atheism describes an absence, not a presence.

And it describes what someone does not believe in, not what they do believe in, which is always the motivating force. And I think absences and nothings motivate the same thing. They motivate nothing.

Of course, religion is not the only form of mysticism or irrationality, and many non-believers in God turn their belief to other causes, like global warming. I spent a whole show identifying exactly why we have a global warming religion, which has no deities behind it, of course, but which in every other respect is founded on the same metaphysics and epistemology as religious belief, even to the point of arguing that the debate is over and no more discussion should be allowed on it. There’s a first sign. I think we should put that as number one.

I defined every element of this when I hosted a show last year for Jim Chapman, actually, on Left, Right, and Center. I just might repeat the principles on the next time I visit the global warming issue on this show, but you get the general idea. The best thing about living in a free society is having the right to disagree.

So let’s us continue having that right and expressing our right to disagree on future episodes of this show. We hope we’ll join you again next week when we continue our journey in the right direction. Until then, be right, stay right, do right, act right, and think right. We’ll see you next week. Take care.

Clip (Megan Mooney): A lot of my friends are starting to have children now.

Let me ask you this. Have you ever known someone for so long that when they tell you they’re pregnant? You don’t even know how to react appropriately. You’re just like, ugh. Yeah, we thought it was a bad idea you guys got married, but we didn’t want to say anything because it was open bar.