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Just Right

Just Right is a weekly shortwave radio show. Hosts, Bob Metz and Robert Vaughan analyze issues from a viewpoint of individual rights, freedom, and capitalism.

553 – Manufacturing hate – The social disease of the Left

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Apr 262018

On April 6, a tragic highway accident claimed the lives of 16 people associated with the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team on their way to a playoff game in the town of Nipawin, Saskatchewan. The outpouring of international support resulted in a GoFundMe campaign that raised millions of dollars for the families of the victims.

So it is understandably beyond the understanding of most people why anyone would express ‘cynicism’ about the “maleness, the youthfulness and the whiteness” of those who died. Yet that’s exactly what left-wing activist and journalist Nora Loreto posted to her Twitter account in her ostensible effort to promote “justice and more for so many other grieving parents and communities.” But when one considers that Loreto’s past tweets include comments like “White men are the worst beings that orbit the Sun,” it is clear that she is not motivated by any sense of “justice” for “other grieving parents.”

That Loreto is a racist and a sexist is undeniable – by any objective definition of those words, and by the comments and actions of Loreto herself. But racism and sexism are mere symptoms of a greater social disease: thinking of individuals as mere members of some subjectively pre-defined collective who all think and look alike. Continue reading »

552 – Guest: Salim Mansur – Free speech to free trade

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Apr 192018

In attempting to live up to the ideals of free speech and free trade, the complexity of achieving each soon becomes apparent. That’s because in practice, neither of these ideals literally exists – even in the Western nations that rightly hold them as high virtues.

Given the best of intentions, it is highly doubtful that Mark Zuckerberg’s recent grilling before a US Senate hearing committee will actually pave the way towards any guarantee of ‘free speech’ on Facebook. His hauntingly welcome acceptance of government regulation on ‘privacy’ issues that would affect how he runs his Facebook business model may well open the barn door to the entrenchment of regulated speech – by government.

Said Zuckerberg: “Our position is not that regulation is bad. I think the Internet is so important in people’s lives and it’s getting more important, the expectations on Internet companies and technology companies overall are growing. And I think the real question is ‘What is the right framework for this?’ not ‘Should there be one?’” Continue reading »

551 – Still negative on ‘affirmative consent’

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Apr 122018

What do ‘affirmative consent,’ ‘indigenous knowledge,’ and the trial of Bill Cosby have in common? In addition to being our discussion topics of the day, each controversy revolves around an epistemological war of words.

It’s a battle of definitions, as efforts to change or affect the social and political environment stretch beyond the political sphere. From the world of TV fantasy, monsters, and superheroes, to the real world that sometimes seems more unreal than the fantasies, the promotion of anti-concepts like ‘affirmative consent’ has already produced a host of real world injustices, not the least of which have been those directed at Bill Cosby.

Just as ‘social justice’ is not justice, so too, ‘affirmative consent’ is not consent.

And so too ‘indigenous knowledge’ is not ‘knowledge,’ particularly in the context of being used as an argument that ‘scientific knowledge is offensive.’ Nor are ‘indigenous’ rights true rights accorded to the individual. Yet these are the very things being asserted by Quebec’s indigenous leaders, at least two Quebec cabinet ministers, and several university law professors. Continue reading »

550 – Guest: Andrew Lawton – Unpacking the Left and Right

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Apr 052018

On the heels of an unexpected departure from CFPL AM 980 radio in London Ontario, radio broadcaster Andrew Lawton joins us in a compelling discussion that unpacks many of the political controversies of our day.

As everyone knows, political ideas and philosophies come with labels that can be ascribed to either the ideas themselves or to the people who hold those ideas.

However, when everyone defines these terms in different ways, we often find ourselves in a political Tower of Babel that prevents the issues, the ideas, and the players from being objectively, or even just consistently, identified.

It is in this political climate and context that Andrew Lawton joins us to unpack the ideas and to illustrate how these ideas manifest themselves in our daily lives or in the news.

As Andrew notes, to add to all of the already-confused political labels, the Left continues to introduce anti-concepts like ‘normalization,’ ‘micro-aggression,’ ‘censorables,’ and even uses the term ‘unpacking the ideas’ as a means of stopping debate and stifling free speech – not as a means of encouraging it.

Even when it comes to freedom itself, the Left and Right have opposing views. By unpacking the ideas behind everything from the inequity of Canada’s Summer Jobs Program to the myth of Margaret Mead’s sexually liberated cultures in the south seas islands, our conversation about freedom leads us, as always, in the direction that is Just Right.

549 – The social metaphysics of social media

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Mar 292018

The term ‘social metaphysics’ was coined by philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand to describe the philosophy of those who regard the consciousness of others as superior to their own – and to the facts of reality. Fascinatingly, the term ‘social media’ appears to describe much the same phenomenon.

Having passed away long before the evolution of on-line social media, Rand could never have guessed just how literal and visibly explicit her description of a social metaphysician would become. “It is only a social metaphysician who could conceive of such absurdity as hoping to win an intellectual argument by hinting: ‘But people won’t LIKE you!’”

Our experience with posters to Just Right’s Facebook page regarding our past two shows offered us a glaring illustration of just how impossible it is to have any meaningful dialogue with social metaphysicians – in this case, with Progressive Conservative and Doug Ford (‘Ford nation’) supporters. Their blatant (and proud!) dismissal of unequivocally accurate facts, of history, and of ideas goes a long way in explaining many other negative observations increasingly being made about social media.

The recent controversy involving Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook’s database to spread false news to millions of people during election periods is merely one of many scams made possible thanks to social metaphysicians. Continue reading »

548 – Inconvenient truths about Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party

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Mar 222018

Driven a Ford lately? Most Fords are capable of being driven in any direction, but the Ford being driven by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party (PC) is only capable of steering Left.

Doug Ford is a likable character to many on the right, but the party driving him has a clear and consistent history of making Left turns only. The very crisis that conservatives blame on Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne’s ruling Liberal Party was in fact created and continues to be fueled by Ontario’s PC party. Under the PC banner, Doug Ford can now be counted upon to continue this Progressive tradition.

For example, within the span of but a single day following his election as PC leader, on the issue of the upcoming legalization of cannabis in Ontario, Ford switched from saying ‘Let markets dictate’ to ‘Let’s dictate the market.’

Making it clear that he himself does not support the legalization of cannabis, Ford later attempted to reconcile all of his contradictory statements with his pledge to “Start off in our controlled market, eventually I believe in the free market.” Continue reading »

547 – Conservatism’s big tent of conflict

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Mar 152018

As the new leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative (PC) Party, Doug Ford is symbolic of conservatism’s progressive disintegration.

It’s one thing to woo the vote of differing and competing groups during an election, but it’s quite another to invite them into your own party in a manner which allows others to determine your party’s direction. Such has been the ‘big tent’ strategy of the PCs in the past, and it is the primary cause of all of the internal corruption and conflict that has become a public spectacle over recent months.

For decades, the PC Party has been a conflicted association of ‘fiscal conservatives,’ ‘social conservatives,’ ‘libertarians,’ ‘red Tories,’ ‘blue Tories,’ ‘Christian conservatives,’ plus the usual association of ‘hammer-head’ voters and those who simply seek power for its own sake.

To this Doug Ford has already announced intentions to expand his ‘big tent’ party to include even more disparate groups, including the NDP, Liberals, and Greens, in whose interests he has promised to speak. Progressive, yes. Conservative, no. Continue reading »