everyone is contributing way but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenges the response has been massive so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we're in it together. you cannot be both with yeah you're right.

hello and welcome across the uk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle is anyone safe in that era of the wrong conservatives are the platform the monetized and shadow ben those were the easy ones now the mob is turning on its own wrong thing demands conformity and does not bring a sense is freedom of speech now only for the walk. there's got to this and more i'm joined by my guest david freiheit in montreal he's a practicing attorney and you tube and in washington we crossed like rico's risk he is an adjunct professor of legislative politics at the george washington university

and the health care law originally cost up close and i mean in germany. ok let's go to david 1st in montreal very broadly speaking you know we've been seeing a lot of deep plot forming democratisation so the plot forming all kinds of things going on and we can talk about some of the specifics but is this a cultural revolution that we have a cause a cultural revolution or had. i don't know that it's a cultural revolution is a is a loaded term it's a big term i hear people using it i hear people comparing this to the french revolution so the fall of rome a lot of sort of i won't say exaggerated talk a lot of lofty talk whether or not it's that serious there's definitely a pendulum swing and it's definitely swinging very far to whichever side just to use example but it's swinging hard to one side right now where people are getting punished i think excessively for what some would feel to be minor indiscretions but

they're always characterized as you know severe indiscretions that warrants cancellation on social media the platforming etc there are strong examples where it's still even arguable but then there are strong examples where it's totally not arguable but just a question of excessiveness but you know it's a revolution it's definitely a current a tendency and it's the pendulum will swing back sooner than later because i can sort of get a feel for it from from the silent majority that nobody likes the way it's going to be feel safe and it's going to swing back the other day sooner than later yeah i wish people wouldn't be the silent majority i wish they'd be more talking we can talk about that here whether because same question to you is this a cultural revolution because a lot of a lot of lives have been destroyed here i thought we came from a culture of redemption and forgiveness ok i mean some of the infractions are just absurd ok and then to see in the mainstream media 247 mine intelligence and

sense of morality is insulted all the time by a lot of neo liberal propaganda but that is that's just never touched us because it's part of the normans part of the coals my friend in washington so i agree with david hicks that i don't think that this is a cultural revolution that i dare i say that if you were if we were to use that term cultural revolution then i think you know we have had moments. in history both in the states and globally where we have seen sort of these moments arising from the people so to speak but i think the retaliates is that there is a bit of an oppression of revisionist history and there's a fine line between intimidation public shaming you know economic rowing to. 2 words that are being placed in the public square versus the cancer culture and that is currently what we have particularly i think almost bill sides right so it's not just liberal such as conservatives i think both sides are are contributing to

this that where we are seeing it particularly from the progressive left is this rise of a question of revisionist history and so i think it's calling really to the stage but issues and histories we have not faced up to our own up to and a past where we're also seeing this on the right even if we look at settling we know that we have conservative right wing conservative leaders that are bialek across across the world and so there is polarization on both sides said i think that we have to ethnic we have a conversation and bring that conversation to the public square and it's late but soon after midnight there already is silence where is the public square where is the marketplace of ideas because if the destruction of statues destroying memorials that's not a conversation is it now it's not a conversation i think that we need to talk i am i was

a trained historian and then you know what i focused in on it but mostly it was history i'll give you the philosophy of history exactly what we're talking about right here but you don't go burn books and have people fired if you want to really understand or reinterpret history that's a healthy thing here david you know go ahead and jump in on that because i am it to my core fascinated to have conversations particularly with people that disagree with me because i. learn to hit i mean i mean i obviously totally agree with that i have a youtube channel where we touch on you know political stuff from the legal sense and i don't delete comments i don't deter discussion to the extent to remain civil and nonviolence that the tearing down statues is an interesting thing or let's call it the removal of statues to avoid slanted toward a better deal if you hear a noise in the back and my dog i've got really don't worry about it there and. it's something i think it's totally counterproductive to to remove the statues it's sort of the orwellian memory hole in that age you don't learn anything from history

because you tend to forget it but b. and this is my major point right sort of take flak from from the right to some extent is the statues were not directed to celebrate the flaws of the individual they were erected to celebrate the successes or at the very least the defining actually of the individual and so bring that to the the george floyd protests where you have people the same people by and large tearing down statues because of the bad things the person did but directing murals because for george floyd because of the way he died and i say i agree with the murals because you're not arresting a mural to george floyd to celebrate his flaws or his wrongdoings in the past you're wrecking it to celebrate what he represents now and that's that holds true for the statue and so you've taken down 8 you have no longer a discussion about what they are the bad things that they have may have committed and throughout history you you lose that debate and you also lose the history of what they did in fact contribute to the very society in which let's yeah i think we're going to see i mean it again going to stay with the statues here i mean the

most horrific period in american history was the civil war and i really want every generation to know that because that was the defining moment of what made the country we have now and the. after the war particularly the south that was imperfect and that and that's an understatement ok but that it's a learning experience and you know and i am agreement. even here i mean so many people think of history as something to celebrate actually it's something to ponder and think about the mistakes that have been made in the problems that need to be a result of this day but because well peter let me ask you do you believe in ghosts because i do ghosts we know are meant to disturb we know that ghosts are meant to disrupt a nerve and to hot relief and hayden said something i think that's particularly germane to this conversation he said the only thing we learned from history is that we were nothing for fish and so memory is

a classic street in memory if history are not the same and so there's a and there's a national memory at least in the states of the ghosts of yesteryear that have somehow it again emerged in 2020 writes a memory of an america that was great a memory of america that was not troubled by people who looked like me and had my hair style as it were seen really other girls of the days of the women that are rearing their ugly head again and i don't necessarily agree with the removal of statues understand why people are caring for statues so if you're going to have a civil war talk about the civil war we don't need a monument to do that that is why we have textbooks if you free books but if you are going to tear down don't work remove these monuments that i do say you wrecked new monuments and statues to people who are who have contributed to all of

humanity should give individual statues. and you're diverse you would need to have a consensus about that person and the date of the act if that person committed in the past ok i'm all for that ok but you can't can't you shouldn't cancel out things that make you feel uncomfortable history is not about feeling comfortable histories about learning something david every single culture. creates miss about themselves ok because it brings together a society gives them common meaning and i think that a well deeply the civil the the civil war the civil rights movement those are those are defining moments in american history and if you take the physical culture and dispense with it i don't think books and receipt memory is enough i think it's physical culture is very important that well very 1st of all it's only a matter of time once you answer i'm not even calling it

a slippery slope anymore it is affected we have free fall once you accept that you can willy nilly or even at large remove monuments it is only a matter of time before you censor books before you before you pull them from the book shelves like we've seen in hong kong it's only a matter of time because that's invariably where it goes when i sort of i don't take issue with it i think it's the wrong perspective to say that we have to tear down certain monuments in order to erect others at the into the city of who to whom we pay tribute doesn't require the removal of things which have been for hundreds of years which are part of someone else's history some person else's lore and the counter-intuitive aspect about it is if the entire goal of this is unity and sort of bringing together society you're not going to do that by. literally tearing down someone else's history regardless of whether or not you take offense with that history and soak it in dividing society more by taking down these monuments which been up for hundreds of years sometimes as opposed to let's just let's you know

let's change the money let's put another face on the money like we've done in canada let's a rectum one of your let's let's let's be more inclusive not by eliminating but by adding and i think at the end at the end of the day it's absolutely going to produce the exact opposite reaction to this action whether it is if you work at the george washington university should it be renamed. eyes. i think in some cases they do but i'm asking it the reason i'm asking is because it's the that's the the ultimate conclusion i mean if this is continued to be pursued then washington jefferson the whole lot of them have to go i mean where do you draw the line right you draw the line in telling the truth history memory again are not the same but they are related you need very good constitution is written in this country and when it comes to history in the states for that matter we have to tell the truth and that i think it's part of the problem here is that we're not telling the truth about a lot of

a lot of people who these monuments and the statues are ready to yes george washington was a great man he was founder he was one of the founding fathers of america he was our 1st president under our current structure but he also was a slaveholder right that is often left out of the huge st george washington so to your question so the university changes say absolutely not i don't necessarily think that it should but what we should do is tell the complete florida history and well the reasons why we still have the terrible race relations in the states is because we have not told the true history we like to hide we like to have a revisionist history a sort of telling a fool and i think using a better way to truth about what happened to these individuals and what they stood again i think that's fair enough but i don't think it's a secret that the they've many of the founding fathers had were slave owners i mean i grew up i was brought up in the public school system i knew that and it was it

was the reason why it was pointed out because our current sensibility tells us it's very very wrong but if we. were going to break that 10 seconds i interrupt week we still have textbooks in the state of texas that are teaching students that a civil war was not an issue of slavery that was an issue of states' rights well that's simply gone right gentlemen i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after national or. we'll continue our discussion all day.

we go to work for you straight home. during the vietnam war u.s. forces also bombs in neighboring laos it was a secret war. and for years the american people did not know. how much anticipation mounts every back country per capita all human history millions of unexploded bombs still in danger lives in this small agricultural country jordyn wieber. even today kids in laos full victims of bombs dropped decades ago is the u.s. making amends for that tragedy and what help to the people need in that little land on.

welcome back to cross the we are all things are considered i'm here labelle to remind you we're discussing wrong things. ok let's go back to david you know we had last few days very wise. up and energy are over at the new york times. and she left with a. very strident resignation letter and all and she's getting some praise i don't praise her i think she's part of this problem of this cancel culture and this very strident partisan. media environment that attacks you basically your character is destroyed because you have a different political view and it seems to me that she's the platform because the mob was coming after her and she knew when to get out how do you feel about it is the revolution itself in the area police and people tend and this is where i see

the pendulum is going to swing when people say hey but i like that person or he but that person was actually nice i know that i was reading an article i will not remember the name of it but as a left wing the left wing writer saying that but this individual that they're now accusing of racism i don't personally is not racists and that's invariably when people start to realize it's easy to pick on the characterized individuals like alex jones like miley not list it's easy to pick on them but then when it becomes i see more nuance for others then people start realizing where does this end and they realize it's not going to end ever and they will invariably find themselves in the proverbial guillotine because of something that they tweeted a while back or because they no longer a son has the right to lease or they don't assault the right police hard enough. and yet it's all a system and i think people even on the left are realizing it and say i don't like categorizing less than the right on this and i do tend to equivocate it but people say well it's much more on the left and on the right and that is true only because

the media by and large is massively leftist compared to what is what is there right it's on both sides it's just massively more on the left and now the left is targeting their own alyssum allow knows the leftist some twitter they and they're going to do something that gets them into trouble and then people realize this is going to you know that wind it's go back to washington i mean i'm he see no value in these purity teta tests whatsoever. because who is actually peer and who differ who determines what is purity i mean if this is a fool's errand it's very very destructive and unfortunately unfortunately i actually pride myself on not mentioning the president's name in this a my program because everything is about trump which i think it's not and i think that's the problem here the problem is always invoking the bad orange man which distorts everything and you know again going to this bar and rice me she just needs her everything from said the administrations that he she's against ok that's not very nuance and not very intelligent is not very great i go ahead peter i think you

said something that's really important here is not very nuanced right people in our society unfortunately whether it's the right or left they don't like complexity they don't like the great area they don't like new arts and just this gets to an issue with that and the human condition generally speaking and that is human frailty we don't understand human frailty right comp short and so we have to be very careful whether it is the right or the left about our past and how they sort of emerged and how their helmets to those standards just speak out in the wrong way is violence and not to speak out it's violence but we have to be very clear on what that definition of silence is and what that means the reality is a lot of the lives that we live particularly in the public square and in the political environment is great it's nuance it's complex it's messy and we have to get into that messiness we have to delve in that new wants to really understand the

complexity of individuals as we should not beat kathleen now unless of course the words are surely inflammatory or truly violent but that's not the case then we need to let people be human and that is you mate. ok look you know you david but again who determines the rules this is what really bothers me all of the time because you know you said you don't like these labels and i don't either i consider myself a conservative but it doesn't mean i'm against universal healthcare for example ok because my conservatism comes from looking at the interests and needs working people and families that's where my conservatism is all about i don't worship capitalism that's the ideology ok l.a. and always this invoking that socialism with the right always does right doesn't really know what socialism is all about they invoke it in a way they try hard on people. this is again going back to these purity test here

is that if you have to be in a certain category and if you deviate and this happens also on the right but primarily i see it on the left they didn't then your challenge didn't sometimes cancel. the purity test it's a symptom of social media we're talking about nuance and i've always made this joke that twitter is the only place where you get further by being short on character and literature because if it isn't a place for nuance nobody wants you know that i will steal that's all i want if copyright because i said it publicly i think it's no joke it's like you succeed on twitter by being short on character by being inflammatory by being like i follow james woods on twitter i don't like to see it all the time but i follow it see you know it is the stuff that gets popular on twitter is the black and white cut and dry evil versus hero a mentality in social media is contributing to the problem there's no room for nuance there's no room for compromise there's no room for genuine understanding

because you don't literally have the room for it and nobody's really interested in it doesn't sell and so i think social media contributes to the problem but what do you weaponize for whatever the object is whoever the target is of the day and that is the very problem is you don't know it because there are no there are no objective rules are the objective criteria. you don't know if you're going to be the one with your head in the guillotine tomorrow. and i think you know i sort of hedge my bets if only in terms of being courteous in discussion i think that's the only way you can guarantee or at least the interest of it up but that's considered weakness compromise to consider weakness of k. and then when you compromise they move the goalposts again ok i dare i've come to that conclusion over the last few years that cavanagh saga. hit me i'm out moving the goalposts constantly moving it ok and destroying a man's character humiliating him in front of this family that has to stop here

could because there's something you know everybody knows i live in moscow and i'm i'm a historian of eastern europe you know russian history and during the soviet era you know it was kind of it was a joke that you know the future is certain but not the past ok because the you can wake up one morning in the mix and so ideological tenet has changed ok and you better get in line or all you become called the deviation this is happening in america. j'sbeil and understood that history is always present with us we have to understand that history is always present with us the people don't understand history so builders and history they don't understand you want they don't as they complexity. today it's going to really like beings black and white and simplistic when it comes to compromise in the body of politics. politicians lawmakers cosi makers have to compromise that is the crux of what politics is the pulse of the city state so you can deposit the city state or social media does not contribute

well to the humanity of our culture when it comes to lawmakers have to compromise as well as reflect the constituencies to which they represent and that i think of what we're really seeing and that is the breakdown that is the abdication of leadership in this country and the states and particularly around the world so when it comes to who determines the rules i think this was a rules just a lawmaker which of course i left in the by the people that they that they represent ok well you know i mean that's kind of opening up another can a can of beans here i mean like i 2 things popped into my head the the body politic if you look at poll after poll they're against these foreign wars and interventions and changes you look at poll after poll most people want someone with some kind of universal health care but nothing changed say fail they vote for and then some are now of these opposite holders it never happens again because they're not willing to

. return but you've got other. no know that because both then there's no that there are no parties once he gets up to that level ok this special interests they we're ok david i want to stay with this you know look i didn't really disgusting ok what do you need elections for that the politicians will do what they were elected to do ok david where is this going i mean what is the slippery slope that we're on a slippery slope here are we get a can we have a moment where like when. joe mccarthy was told to finally stand down ok and things started to come down are we anywhere close that calling out the mccarthy moment when what might my fear is that or my fear my concern or thought is that too many people are making too much money by driving this and so can we have that moments not until legacy media mainstream media decides that if that moments or are replaced by something that decides that it's that moment and that sort of from

a personal level that's sort of what i'm trying to contribute to is bringing you know bringing the discussion together and not continually dividing and like i've said this many times on my channel and videos the problem is to court because point about compromise the same thing with apologies compromising apologies now have been themselves weaponize as elements of weakness and not elements of progress and i think politicians are driving that but i think above all else mainstream media is driving that if they are they are it is continually good versus evil and evil compromises it's not a question it's not an indication of their of their benevolence it's an indication that they've been defeated by good a good test when harder and harder and they've they've pitted one side versus the other good versus evil quite literally in terms of jargon and they don't seem ready to give up yet they might be turning but they i think they're making way too much money off of the division they've been profiting way too much off of the crisis the last 6 months and i don't see them giving up anytime soon until they are placed by

something more responsible but because i'm well you know what. we started talking about statues and we can maybe tell me black lives matter and and the the the assault on a traditional of values and history and traditions here how is all of this benefiting people of color in the united states well this is particularly probably . i don't favorable opinion i don't really believe the removing of these confederate mind your minutes or symbols of hate really do anything to advance the cause of justice it doesn't do anything from a policy or economic perspective and i view it does again nothing to move the needle just as particularly when the wealth gap between the lights and asked by south americans is 10 times that i'm out we know that 171000 dollars net worth of it's a white family versus $17000.00 of its black family in the gaps in the wealth between blacks and whites also reveal of course the economic inequality that has long

existed and discrimination so if you're going to talk about removing statues the same private or public funds better that is being used to remove these monuments are just saying private or public funds that can be used to its public education that can be huge concerns out there on that note i completely agree with you let's move the needle about inequality and not wait wait that's all the time we have gentlemen i want to thank my guests not trio and much in one of our viewers watching us here are you see you next and remember. during the vietnam war u.s. forces also bomb to neighboring laos it was a secret war. and for years the american people did not know. how much was the case

and carry back to the country per capita. consuming history millions of unexploded bombs still in danger lives in this small agricultural country jordyn wieber thing going to continue to happen. even today kids in laos are full victim to bombs dropped decades ago this is the year. making amends for the tragedy in laos built to the people needed in that little. poverty. if you're born into a poor family you're born into a minority family if you're born into a family that only has a single parent that really constrains your life chances people die.

generational poverty. by every day you meet your needs and the needs of your family. in the headlines this friday the 17th of july russia rejects britain's claims of. the foreign secretary described as almost certain election meddling in last year's general election we also people in london for their thoughts. you know just for a smoke screen you know just to warm you know distract us from what's really going on i don't think it's. coming before a plane groceries months off for a delivery driver dogwood french police restraints are going to choke hold during a routine traffic stop now 3 officers are indicted for manslaughter his father says it's clear who's.