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Left, Right & Center – A re-definition
Left, Right & Center – Bans
Left, Right & Center – Environmentalism
Left, Right & Center – Political correctness and discrimination
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The Forest City Institute:
Civic Governance In The City Of London, Ontario
PLEASE NOTE: Due to a technical difficulty with the broadcast server approximately 2 minutes of the program was not archived.
Human Rights Commissions vs Freedom of speech
Affluence represents the solution to environmental challenges rather than the problem. We confront daily the absurdity of a global warming cult that demonizes prosperity while excusing the greater pollution of poverty and subsistence living. Mysticism replaces science as ancient dances and emotional appeals substitute for evidence, all while natural forces like the sun receive no credit for climate variation. Wealth creation through technology and industry offers the genuine path to a healthier planet, yet envy drives calls to punish success and regress to need-based existence.
This same impulse manifests in anti-war protests that demand troop withdrawals without addressing the realities of confronting violence or achieving lasting peace. Protectionist arguments against free trade similarly ignore how open markets and capital investment elevate living standards for all, including labor. Unions and politicians peddle restrictions that ultimately harm the very workers they claim to champion by undermining the prosperity that depends on voluntary exchange and accumulated capital.
Locally, schemes to license landlords expose government overreach, transforming property rights into privileges granted by the state and burdening tenants with hidden taxes. Ownership demands the freedom to rent, lease, or use one’s property without permission-seeking.
When reason and individual rights prevail over envy, control, and collectivism, the direction taken stands Just Right.
Polls expose a curious public confusion between fact and fiction. Many in Britain insist Sherlock Holmes walked the streets of London as flesh and blood, while dismissing Winston Churchill as mere legend. Such blurring of reality and myth reveals how powerfully stories shape perception long after events fade.
We see the same dynamic play out in contemporary policy debates. Canadians celebrate an MRI scan that costs only a parking fee after seven months of waiting, as if this represents some triumph rather than a rationed system’s quiet cruelty. The satisfaction with mediocrity masks the invisible costs borne by others denied timely care.
Political figures receive similar mythic treatment. John Tory garners praise as the ideal conservative leader despite a record of equivocation and electoral failure. Talk of principles clashes with actions that mirror liberal instincts, leaving voters with no clear choice.
Meanwhile, advocates for human rights commissions invoke ‘hatred kills’ to justify speech restrictions, citing tragic cases while omitting inconvenient details like the ideological motives behind certain crimes. The impulse to control expression under the guise of protection echoes ancient myths used to maintain power.
Ideas endure far longer than the individuals or events that spawn them, whether drawn from ancient legends or modern political narratives. Distinguishing the symbolic from the factual remains essential in every age. Only in this way do we discover what is Just Right.
Downtown visionaries promise to transform London’s core by banishing vehicles from Dundas Street and creating pedestrian paradises. Yet these schemes reveal not liberation but another layer of control imposed upon those who actually own and operate businesses there. Task forces and associations funded by compulsory levies dictate visions while property owners foot the bill and lose autonomy. The pattern of superseding private plans with collective mandates repeats across issues. Forced business associations extract extra taxes from owners already burdened by high rates, all while claiming to speak for the community they conscript.
The same coercion surfaces in Quebec’s language laws that criminalize unilingual signs and force bilingual packaging, perpetuating division under the guise of equity. Official bilingualism in theory grants equal status; in practice it imposes penalties on those who choose otherwise. Politicians and planners assume superior wisdom over voluntary exchange, whether reshaping streets or dictating words on private property. Even political parties blur into indistinguishable tax-and-spend options, abandoning any clear ideological anchor.
In every case, individual rights and voluntary association yield to elite direction. When the powerful elite replace personal plans with their own, freedom erodes one gradual step at a time. It all comes down to Just Right.
Our philosophical journey through love reveals its ancient power as both cosmic unifier and destroyer of reason. From Hesiod’s primordial eros that unnerves gods and men to Plato’s heavenly and earthly forms, where the lover—not the beloved—gains virtue through pursuit of ideal beauty, love emerges as a force that shapes religions, institutions, and governments. Aristotle grounds it ethically and psychologically while linking it to the unmoved mover that later influences Christian concepts of divinity. Judaism and Christianity shift love from irrational passion to a voluntary attitude that can coexist with reason, yet the tension persists: emotion versus rational control.
These insights sharpen our view of today’s battles. Human Rights Commissions weaponize “hate” to silence debate, as seen in complaints against Maclean’s for publishing Mark Steyn, demanding forced publication rather than open rebuttal. City Hall pushes symbolic gestures like Earth Hour, low-flush toilets, and sustainable-energy surveys that treat conservation as virtue while ignoring the need for production, property rights, and expanded energy to meet rising demand. Sentencing inconsistencies expose a justice system more concerned with deterrence messages than individual fairness.
A listener’s thoughtful email on religion and virtue prompts reflection: morality springs from rational codes of behavior, not mere belief or professed faith, echoing Richard Dawkins’ point that religion deserves no special immunity from criticism. Comedy clips and external voices underscore the absurdities without becoming endorsements.
Reason prevails when passions earn their place and facts trump fear. That balance is Just Right.
