Ezra Levant and Dr. Mark Milke critique Canada’s cancel culture, exposing how Parks Canada’s rebranding of Sir John A. MacDonald’s home—led by a "slavery studies" speaker—ignores his pro-Indigenous voting rights, women’s suffrage funding, and anti-slavery contributions like Dundas’s governance reforms. They contrast this with Churchill’s 1929 Alberta visit, where he championed oil and democracy, and warn against D-Day vandalism akin to Taliban iconoclasm. Meanwhile, Levant speculates on Klaus Schwab’s successor, favoring global leaders like Finland’s Sanna Marin over Trudeau, framing the debate as a clash between historical truth and revolutionary revisionism. [Automatically generated summary]
Is it possible to put up a statue of a dead white male like Sir Winston Churchill?
I mean, they're tearing those sorts of things down.
Well, talk to someone who's fighting back against cancel culture and who's involved with the putting up of a new statue.
That's ahead.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month, and we need the money because we don't take a dime from Trudeau.
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All right.
Here's today's podcast.
Tonight, what should we do about people tearing down statues of John A. MacDonald?
It's May 23rd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious boobug.
This video that my friend Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun took over the weekend, it was.
It was in something called Belleville House, which I don't know anything about it, but it almost doesn't matter where it is because it was the home of our founding prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, the man who cobbled this country together and then led it as our first prime minister.
I should tell you that John A. MacDonald has fallen out of favor in the last few years, particularly under the Trudeau regime.
He was stripped off of our $10 bill, you might recall.
Liberal Compromise And Canadian Slavery00:08:25
And it's not just on Trudeau.
That would be unfair and partisan of me to blame him.
I note, for example, that at Queen's Park, which is the provincial parliament of Ontario, under the leadership of allegedly conservative Doug Ford, there is a statue of Sir John A. MacDonald that has a coffin built around it.
That's the only way to describe it.
You could use a fancy word like sarcophagus.
They have built a coffin around the statue of Sir John A. MacDonald, in which he has been imprisoned for years.
So don't let me get away with saying that it's merely a liberal thing.
Let me play for you now the video that Joe Warmington filmed.
There's a liberal MP in the background.
This is a Parks Canada reintroduction of this home of Sir John A. MacDonald.
And look who they got there to basically denounce the man.
This was the Liberal Compromise.
Sure, they want to grudgingly open Sir John A. MacDonald's home to the public, but not before denouncing him at length.
Take a look at this.
And it was also a time when many people of African descent were coming to Canada via the Underground Railroad and through other ways, not only to escape enslavement, but to live freely, create communities, and just live in peace with their families.
However, upon arriving in Canada, people of African descent quickly came to realize that they were not welcome and that Canada, like the United States, was steeped in racism, colonialism, white supremacy, and other legacies of enslavement.
I believe there are widespread myths and misconceptions, views, and ideas that some Canadians have, that we are somehow better than the United States, that the United States had enslavement and we here in Canada did not, that we here in Canada are immune to racism and that we welcomed and still welcome people of African descent with open arms.
However, these inaccurate views and ideas are traced back to not knowing our Canadian history and that these histories were not and are still not in many cases being taught in classrooms across the country.
Many people still do not know that Canada had enslavement for over 200 years from the early 1600s all the way to when it was abolished in 1834 across the British Empire.
Now, it first was under the French.
Canada was then known as New France.
And then it was under the British, and Canada was known as British North America.
That's actually a lie.
Slavery did not start in Canada under the French.
It started centuries before that.
The Indian tribes that covered this country had slavery as an integral part of warfare and economics.
Not just the Mohawks in the Ontario and Quebec areas, but in the West, the Haida.
Slavery, of course, existed on every continent in the world other than Antarctica.
Slavery has touched every society, but it was the British North American land that when the British Empire declared slavery to be illegal, Canada abolished it as well.
And when that happened, there were more aboriginal slaves and slaveholders than there were of any other sort.
In fact, I recall looking up at a census at the time.
Around 200 years ago, the black population of Toronto was 16, not 1,600 or 16,000, 16 people.
So to portray Canada as a racist place, as a place of slavery, and to imply that it only started when the Europeans came here is a lie.
Now, I had never heard of that person before.
Shanyon Oyenaran is her name, and I've Googled her.
And she has a degree in slavery studies from a British university.
I can only imagine what that's like.
But before that, she was for seven years an administrator and understaffer at an old folks' home.
So she's certainly well schooled in book learning.
She's a damn liar, but the world is full of liars.
She might say I'm a liar.
But her lives were paid for by the government of Canada.
This was their reintroduction of our founding father, our founding prime minister, to hurl accusations at him, but much more importantly, at Canada, to imply we weren't the safe haven for black people.
Johnny is now to talk about this outrage and what he might do about it is our friend Dr. Mark Milke, the boss of a rather new civil liberties-oriented charity in Canada called the Aristotle Foundation.
And he joins us now, Vice Cray from Calgary.
Great to see you again, Mark.
Thanks for having me on, Ezra.
It's great to be here.
Can you imagine that?
I mean, they reintroduce Sir John A. MacDonald and his home.
I guess we should give them some marks for not boarding it up, like the statue at Queen's Park.
But they reintroduce him to denounce him.
I haven't heard the liberal government denounce, oh, let's say the terrorist government of Iran in the vitriolic language that they saved for our founding prime minister.
Just so gross.
Well, it's maddening.
And the clip you just showed of the lady there that talked to this revisionist kind of approach to John and McDonald's home and her claim that blacks weren't welcome in Canada.
Look, I think it's a mistake to romanticize history either way, to see to scan Canada was somehow this pluralistic, liberal in the best classical liberal sense place in the mid-19th century, that there was no racism.
I mean, that would be a denial of the facts as well.
To say the blacks were not welcome when she, you know, when she herself mentions the Underground Railway.
Let me give you another example that I pointed out in one of my books a couple of years ago, The Victim Cult.
And we also touched on this a little bit in the first book for the Aristotle Foundation, the 1867 project, why Canada Should Be Cherished, Not Canceled.
There's a story of how, you know, a cohort of Black Americans came from California to Victoria in 1858.
And they wrote home to their relatives and friends in California to do what a lot of people in Victoria do, not only to brag about the flowers, presumably, but to say this is a really tolerant place compared to California, which was pretty racist, anti-Black, of course, and anti-Asian at the time in 1858.
And this cohort of Black Americans that had arrived in Victoria found that they were welcomed by the governor, by the Anglican archbishop, that they could become citizens and vote after two years and run in the school board elections, you know, in the local municipal elections, so on and so forth.
Now, these black Americans did encounter prejudice over the next few years, in part from some indigenous tribes, the Cowichin up north up island from Victoria, and also white Americans who increasingly also moved to British Columbia, the colony at that point, from the United States.
So it's not like Canada was a place free of racism, but ironically, I mean, Black Americans, and at one point, there were several hundred black Americans in Victoria, apparently, that had moved up there to escape the racism of the United States.
So that speaker that, you know, opened or christened, I guess, this new tour at the John A. McDonald host there at Kingston, you know, lacks facts, lacks nuance, lacks a bit of understanding of the age people lived in and the progress that had already been made by 1858.
You know, Canada, of course, only came into existence in 1867 as its own legal entity.
Before that, of course, it was part of the British Empire, the same British Empire that for 50 years dispatched the West Africa Squadron as part of the Royal Navy.
That sole mission was intercepting black slave ships, capturing the ships, arresting the slave traders, and returning the slaves back to Africa.
They captured well over 1,000 such ships.
It was an enormous effort.
And we've talked before on the show about the British Empire borrowing in today's money a quarter of a trillion dollars to pay for the emancipation of slaves of the British Empire.
Learning From History's Imperfections00:14:26
China didn't do that.
Africa didn't do that.
India didn't do that.
It's astonishing that she would seek, she would learn in her slavery studies degree that she wouldn't learn that Canada, I mean, look, like you, Mark, I won't do it.
It's so one-sided.
Yeah, I mean, was there racial tension?
Sure, there was for everyone.
If you were Irish, if you were Italian, if you were Jewish, but to see Jewish.
Canada is inherently raised.
It's so, so gross to me.
Hey, I want to play the video that you guys made at the Aristotle Foundation.
I want to stop talking for a moment about this disgrace over the weekend that Joe Warmington filmed.
I'm so glad he was there with his camera.
Let's talk about what you guys are doing.
I think you guys have put together a video.
Let's take a look at it now.
Why are some people trying to cancel Canada's history?
You've seen the attacks on Johnny McDonald, Henry Dundas, Matthew Begbie, and so many others.
Mahatma Gandhi These attacks are common, and they need to stop.
Here are three reasons why.
It's unfair to expect people in history to be perfect when some Canadians can't achieve that standard today.
We demand historical figures, hold 21st century views, but based on that standard, future generations will condemn us all.
We focus on all of the bad and none of the good.
For example, British colonialism ended slavery, including for First Nations.
So, instead of canceling history, let's expand our perspectives, especially for those who helped build Canada.
Henry Dundex, instrumental in ending slavery by appointing an anti-slavery governor.
Johnny MacDonald fought for more funding for Indigenous Canadians to fight famine and smallpox and was key to Confederation.
Justice Matthew Begby, an early proponent of native rights and who opposed anti-Chinese racism in British Columbia.
Let's add more facts to our history.
Reject cancel culture, treasure our past, and move Canada forward.
If you agree, share this video and sign our petition to stop canceling Canada's history.
For more, go to aristotlefoundation.org.
Well, there you have it, the aristotlefoundation.org.
Aristotlefoundation.org is where you can learn more about that.
And that's the organization that Mark leads.
I like your arguments there, but, and I think I've seen this video once before, and I think it's good.
Those are great arguments for why we don't tear down statues and why we don't delete the past.
But watching it, I fear that you missed the real purpose of tearing down statues.
I think the purpose of tearing down statues is the tearing down.
It's not even the statues.
You mentioned Mahatma Gandhi.
I mean, who could possibly disagree with him?
He's almost a saint-like figure.
But I think the purpose of the tearing down, the purpose, whether it's the Hamas protests or Black Lives Matter or Occupy Wall Street or so many of these projects, it's the tearing down.
It's the revolution.
As our friend Dr. James Lindsay says, the issue isn't the issue.
The revolution is the issue.
So I think your counter-argument to cancel culture makes sense to me, because I'm trying to understand how do you deal with historical figures that aren't perfect by today's prism.
But I don't think you'll ever convince a terror downer to stop tearing down.
Oh, I don't think we will either.
And part of the goal of the Aristotle Foundation is to start telling the truth, right?
Because it's not being told in Canada.
So, and point out, and you're absolutely right.
Look, a lot of these protests is too mild, but the tearing down crowd, they're nihilist, they're revolutionary, and they're utopian.
One of the arguments we make in the 1867 project, why Canada should be cherished, not canceled, by various authors, and I make it in the introduction to the book, is that you're looking at utopians, utopian revolutionaries, right?
These are people, at least the Marxists in the 20th century, the 19th century, they were looking forward.
They were dead wrong about economics and how to create a prosperous, flourishing, free society.
The Marxists were dead wrong about that, but at least you could argue the Marxists were looking forward to create a utopia, paradise on earth.
Weirdly, you've got people these days when it comes to history that expect people in history to be perfect, as if 39, 40 million Canadians agree in everything today, 40 million Canadians are perfect today.
Like, come on.
So you're absolutely right.
It's a revolutionary impulse.
It's dangerous.
But our goal at the Aristotle Foundation is to start telling the truth, which we've done with this video, which we do with the 1867 project, and move people forward and give people facts and inform history.
Because I think, as actually, the majority of Canadians would agree with you and I that attacking statues of Johnny McDonald, refusing to offer nuance, as Parks Canada has done here, skipping other facts in history is also a mistake.
Let me give you one clear example.
You referenced indigenous slavery.
So, again, that speaker that talked at that Johnny McDonald kind of revisionist ceremony there at McDonald's house there in Kingston.
You're unlikely to see Parks Canada offer a tour in the near future of how Indigenous communities in British Columbia held slaves until the late 19th century over the objections of the British, which didn't have the capacity on the ground.
I mean, British Columbia was a backwater at that point.
There was no way to enforce anti-slavery legislation of the British Empire in what would become British Columbia when it joined Confederation and before when it was a colony.
So, but those are facts that are worth knowing.
Why?
Not because we want to pick on Indigenous Canadians, but to point out: look, everyone's history, if you go deep enough, back far enough, has some flaws in it, to say the least.
And it makes no sense to demonize Johnny MacDonald and then to romanticize Indigenous peoples as if they come from some sort of what perfect utopian non-slave-holding history.
I mean, that's simply nonsensical from the Haida to the Aztecs, you know, to the wars in Ontario among Indigenous peoples before and after settlers got there, European settlers.
I don't like that term, but I mean, using their language.
So, yeah, what we're trying to do with the Arizona Foundation is, of course, provide some facts and informed history.
And that two-minute video, thank you for showing, was our start to say, come on, people, let's get a little more sensible.
I think there's a couple of things going on.
The first is the concept of the noble savage, to use a term from history and philosophy that before our civilization, there was this Garden of Eden-like harmony, and that just wasn't true.
I mean, we both talked about.
Well, I'm not a fan of the term.
I mean, it has obvious possible offense, and I get it.
Rousseau used that term.
I think, yeah, I mean, the romanticizing help.
And the key thing is to get people to unite around good ideas.
And if you trash British, you know, North American history, what you're in effect doing is, as you pointed out earlier, a revolutionary project.
You're trashing the ideas that helped build modern-day Canada.
I mean, where do people think that the notion of the individual came from, that liberalism came from, in the classical sense, not the 21st century, Augusta Trudeau, but the classical sense where people valued property rights, the rights of the individual, the rights of women.
When John Diefenbaker made the case that Native Canadians should have the vote restored, when even Johnny McDonald in the 19th century was advocating for the vote for indigenous peoples and for women, where do they think those ideas came from?
Well, they came from the Anglosphere.
They didn't come from Germany, and they didn't come from Indigenous communities in North America.
That's part of not the debate, that's part of the fact-based analysis that needs to occur in this country.
And apparently, it needs to occur at Parks Canada and within a lot of bureaucratic and educational apartments across the country.
Sorry to interrupt.
No, I'm so glad you said that.
I mean, I think about certain things often that maybe I should move on from, but Mel Gibson, who's a very interesting character and a very political character, made a movie more than a decade ago.
I don't know if you've seen it, Mark, called Apocalypto.
And it was very dramatic, very violent.
It was in dead languages.
I mean, it was a very unusual movie.
It was about life in, I think, was the Aztec Empire right before Columbus would have arrived.
And I don't want to give away the spoiler scene at the end, but that sort of unlocks the meaning of the whole previous 90 minutes to me.
Why would Mel Gibson make this very strange movie?
And I think it was to demonstrate what life was like pre-conquistador, pre-Christian, pre-colonial.
And of course, there was violence and abuses with especially the Spanish conquistadors.
I mean, they were not gentle.
But I think Mel Gibson's point was there was something much more horrific that those conquistadors found when they landed, the endless human sacrifice of slaves.
You want to talk about slaves.
That was the entire economy of the Aztecs.
Chris Champion does a nice job in the 1867 project of pointing this out.
And the old joke from, I think it was Monty Python, what did the Roman Empire ever do for you?
And they talk about the roads, the prosperity.
He applies that.
He applies that to the British Empire.
What did the British Empire ever do to you?
You mean, besides abolish slavery, besides John A. McDonald being instructed by the British colonial office to sign treaties wherever possible and not engage in genocide, which he's accused of, not engage in genocide like some of the American forces did, vis-a-vis, you know, indigenous tribes in that country.
So what did the British Empire ever do for people?
Well, actually, a lot.
The problem when people look at history is they think that somehow, again, it should be perfect or somehow we just arrived here miraculously.
Much of human history is a tragedy in terms of the blood and the blood spilled for idiotic reasons.
And most of human history is tribal.
Most of it is anti-individual.
And we began to get away from that, I would argue, over the last 800 years, starting with the Magna Carta or starting with other influences, Western history, that have now spread around the world.
So, you know, from Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution to the Enlightenment to the notion of the individual, these are developments in Western civilization that have spread around the world.
And it's a good spread.
It doesn't mean our country, our civilization, is perfect.
I mean, there's things I would take from other civilizations that I would apply to Western civilization.
But without going down that rabbit hole, I mean, this is part of what people need to understand.
Civilization is actually very tenuous.
And it's one of the reasons that the Arizona Foundation say we champion reason, democracy, and civilization.
It's an old-fashioned word, but I can tell you what civilization looks like when it's destroyed.
It looks like October the 7th in Israel when Hamas attacks.
It looks like what happens in other words, wars when civilization breaks down.
It happens in civil wars, so on and so forth.
It happens when you revert to a tribal notion of what humanity should operate like on a government level, where it's my tribe versus your tribe, as opposed to, let's get back to the notion individuals should be seen as equal with rights and law and policy.
And that's where we should start and stop.
And we shouldn't be trashing really the oak tree that is Canada that's been built over the last two centuries.
We should remember our history and understand that the oak tree that is Canada, that now shelters 40 million people, came about as a result of conscious choices by British North Americans and later by Canadian founders and Canadian politicians and all of us and all of our ancestors who built this place that said, look, we want a free, flourishing country based on equality under the law, not your tribe versus my tribe, whatever that tribe happens to be.
And if people don't remember that, we are in serious trouble.
You know, there's a saying that every generation has 18 years to civilize the next generation, really.
I mean, you've got 18 years to take a baby from a barbarian that would smash everything in sight to a responsible adult who understands.
I mean, you have to teach self-restraint.
You have to teach being sociable.
You have to impart to them the memory of civilization, of all the bad and hard lessons we've learned over time.
That's why history is so important.
That's why the written language is so important.
We have to learn from what happened before us.
That's why I think history is being destroyed.
And I look at Mao's revolution and their cultural revolution.
And really, the vanguard of that was what he called the Red Guard, which were kids, which were students.
Why did Mao lean on the students to be the most radical to go around with the little red book?
And he had what they called the four olds, O L D S, the four old things, old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits.
Who would destroy those things?
Not someone who's in middle age or a senior who understands the value of them, but a young person.
Young people are wonderful and they're energetic, they're hopeful, they're idealistic, but not to be mean, they're also stupid.
They haven't learned things yet.
They're stupid, it's not the right way.
They're ignorant.
They haven't learned things yet.
And so, like the concept of Chesterton's fence, do you know what I'm talking about?
You acquire some land and there's a fence across the road and you don't know why.
Chesterton would say, before you tear down that fence, understand why it's there.
You don't know what danger that fence was meant to keep out.
And when you entrust young people, the woke young college kids who have learned the least, who have traveled the least, who experienced the least, who still are in this life of youthful privilege being paid for by someone else, that's why Mao used them to smash the four olds.
And that's who's tearing down, I think, a lot of the statues.
Governments and DEI Funding00:09:30
I think so.
And I think we should place a lot of the blame, Ezra, on educators, right?
On the education system, on the education faculties and what's happening in universities.
Ann on Bloom in 1987, talking about the closing of the American mind.
Well, add the closing of the Canadian mind to that and the chaos of the Canadian mind, universities and the education system.
They bear a lot of the responsibility.
You know, it's hard to blame kids to ask them to know what they don't know, what they haven't been taught, when they've been propagandized in schools for K to 12 and then universities in addition.
You know, and it's simplistic, right?
I mean, and this notion.
Thomas Sowell, the great American economist, gives a great example of how fishing fleets around the world historically were dominated by the Italians, not the Swiss.
And to make the mistake of thinking that racism is why the Swiss went into industry is to ignore a pretty salient factor, geography.
The Italians have coastal highs, the Swiss don't.
Same thing with this notion that everything today is due to racism, or somehow everyone in the past didn't think about racist issues.
Well, they did in the 1800s.
They actually thought about how to move from a pretty discriminatory society against Catholics and Jews.
And of course, eventually we got there, especially post-World War II, in terms of getting rid of discriminatory practices and laws and making it illegal to discriminate.
That's what people say in the province of Ontario in the early 1950s based on skin color or gender.
And somehow in 2024, people still think we're institutionally racist, which is also part of what's going on here.
And that lady, again, you referenced in the initial video, not thinking that anything has changed or that we're still some sort of systematically racist society.
It's nonsensical.
It's anti-history.
It's certainly anti-nuanced history.
And it's dangerous to be revolutionary about such things because, again, then you chop down the oak tree that's protecting all of us, the civilization that's been built.
And Edmund Burke, to speak of another dead white English male, or Irish male, I guess, pointed this out on his book in the late 1700s on reflections on the revolution in France.
What you want to do with any country, you know, unless you're talking about Hitler, it's Germany, Stalin, it's Russia, is you want to modify its institutions organically.
You don't want to upset or uproot everything that's been in the tradition of the country.
And your reference to Mao is exactly right.
That's exactly what he did.
And it was a disaster and it led to the deaths of tens of millions of people and repressions of others.
So the revolutionary sentiment is incredibly dangerous and unfortunate.
We see it in a variety of ways in Canada today.
Yeah.
You know, I'm thinking you're so right to focus on the education system.
Money is a big factor, too.
The reason that historian was allowed to spout that disinformation is because she's actually made a good living with a slavery studies degree.
The whole grievance studies industry, I always mocked it as being unemployable.
Am I ever wrong?
In the age of DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, grievance studies is the hot ticket.
She went through.
It's so simplistic, though, isn't it?
It's so crazy to pay someone to ignore parts of history, not give a nuanced balance.
She makes tens of thousands of dollars for seminars and coaching you not to be racist when she's so clearly obsessed with race.
Listen, I know you're not.
I got to tell you, your audience needs to know that so much of what they're seeing in terms of DEI, in terms of this anti-nuanced history approach to history, is funded by the federal government and sometimes provincial governments and municipal governments.
But everything from research grants that go through the federal government to departments in the government that promote DEI, this is driven by the federal government.
And again, like you, I don't want to be partisan.
Look, this is, you know, this happens under various governments.
I mean, you mentioned Ontario's Doug Ford government, sort of government there.
You know, they also had DEI in practice.
They have this notion that somehow we should look back and feel guilty as opposed to proud that Canada got rid of slavery, really beginning in the 1790s.
So there's governments across the partisan landscape that are funding what I think is an egregious attack on Canadian history.
They're literally pouring poison on the roots of an oak tree that is Canada.
And taxpayers and citizens, really, citizens, should be aware that it's their money funding a lot of this stuff, as opposed to an organic approach is the best way to describe it, where we acknowledge the flaws in Canadians' path in Canada's past, but I don't think anybody has never not acknowledged that.
And this is why we changed laws in the 1950s, stop discriminating against black Canadians and accommodation.
So, but you've got a crew today that just looks at everything through the lens of racism.
They call themselves anti-racists, when in fact, you know, they're promoting policy that is divisive, that is illiberal, that is anti-individual.
And there's a word for that, racist.
Yeah.
Last question for you.
Aristotle Foundation, fairly new.
I've been to a couple of your events.
I like it.
You've got an event coming up in Calgary.
Do you want to give us a word about what that is?
It's just coming up in a week or so.
Sure.
Putting on a different hat, actually.
It's, you know, we've got an event for the Churchill Society, which I'm volunteer president of, with the great-grandson of Winston Churchill, where we're going to honor and commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Of course, the famous landings of Canadians, Gino Beach and other allies, who started the fight back on the European continent on June 6, 1944.
So we do have a dinner, which people can come to if they register pretty quickly in the next few days for, on June 6th in Calgary.
But the Aerosol Foundation, which is my full-time gig, we champion Reason Democracy Civilization.
But I would say the quickest way to describe this, we're trying to make people think, is Canada institutionally racist?
No.
Do we have enough democratic practices in this country to push back against bad policy?
I'd say no.
And civilizational issues, everything from the crazy responses after October the 7th on our university campuses in Canada to other issues.
We better think through the kind of Canada we want.
We'd prefer that Canadians unite around laudable ideas like the rights of the individual, a free and flourishing society, that people be able to exercise their rights under the Constitution instead of being suppressed on campus or elsewhere.
That's the kind of country we should unite around, regardless of one's background, indigenous or European, or if you're from South Korea.
So that's the kind of Canada we want, a free and flourishing country in the future.
And that's what Aerosol Foundation is working towards, in part by educating Canadians on our history and our present.
Well, I'm excited about the fact that you're putting up with the Churchill Society a statue of Churchill.
And to me, that's going to be a real litmus test because it's going to attract bad guys.
It's going to attract protesters.
Well, we're hoping not.
We're hoping not.
Look, I hope that by now people understand again.
And what you're referencing is we at the Churchill Society, and I put up my volunteer president at a bad society.
There is a Churchill statue about to be erected that's been underway for a couple of years.
And the sculptor is Danik Mosdensky.
He created Lester Pearson on Parliament Hill, Sir Isaac Brock, jazz artist Clarence Horatio Miller, and one of the famous five suffragists.
He's an incredible sculptor.
It's an incredible gift, really, to the province of Alberta.
It'll be put up in Calgary on June 6th as well or uncovered.
And look, I'm hoping, though, that frankly, you know, this cancel culture has gotten past this notion that they should be attacking inanimate objects as if they're the Taliban attacking Buddhist statues.
Again, Churchill came to southern Alberta in 1929 as part of a North American tour, loved the place, painted some paintings in the Rockies, was very supportive of the oil industry, actually, ironically back then, and was fascinated and loved Western Canada.
He thought it beautiful.
So we're honoring that and his legacy and his pushback against fascism in World War II, but also is his time in Southern Alberta.
So look, I'm hoping, frankly, that on D-Day, the 80th anniversary of the landings at Juneau Beach by Canadians and others, that there will be no nonsense surrounding any statue in Canada anywhere.
We should honor, again, those who fought in the World War II generation and where millions of people died in the cause of freedom.
Listen, I don't think any protesters would be foolish enough to attend on the day of the unveiling.
I'm just saying I know that in the United Kingdom, right there in Parliament Square, outside the House of Westminster, there's a mighty statue of Churchill that's defaced all the time.
And by the way, citizens go and clean it up all the time.
It's become a real center of this debate.
And I'm hoping, and I guess what I'm saying is to put up a statue of Churchill in 2024 is a statement of reclaiming our past and defying the statue topplers.
And that's why I'm going to be there.
I'm coming all the way to Calgary for that statue unveiling.
I want to see it.
I want to mark it.
I want to brag about it that Calgary's got it.
I want others to put up statues and not have the denunciation like we saw at the beginning of our segment where a quack historian was asked to lie about our past.
So I'm excited that that's going up.
And I pity the fool who would take a run at that statue.
And I tell you, God forbid if they do, I hope they're prosecuted to the hilt.
I don't mean to be so dramatic, but I think it is a dramatic thing to put up a statue of Churchill.
It's great to catch up with you.
Why Stay For The Statue?00:03:05
Great to hear about the Aristotle Foundation.
AristotleFoundation.org is the way to check it out.
Thanks for talking with us about this, Mark, and we'll keep in touch.
Anytime.
Thank you, Ezra.
All right.
There you have it, Mark Milke.
He's the boss over there.
Stay with us.
your letters to me next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me about Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum announcing he's going to retire.
Mary Maher says he's a replaceable figurehead.
There's some truth to that.
I'm only in the sense that the World Economic Forum has grown so huge and has such a permanent staff and permanent bureaucracy and other smart, capable people that he can be replaced.
But I think you downplay him.
He was the founder of this thing.
He's led it for 50 years.
He's like a human Rolodex, if you remember that old-fashioned thing, which would have like a bunch of business cards in it.
I mean, he knows probably more powerful people in different spheres of life-business, politics, academia, philanthropy.
He probably knows more powerful people than maybe anyone else in the world other than George Soros.
So I think he is actually much more than a figurehead.
But I agree with you only in the sense that he can and will be replaced.
Lynn Truck Castro Trudeau says, with his family already installed within the organization, nothing will change other than possibly getting even worse.
As I mentioned the other day, his daughter is, of course, involved.
She publishes some pieces.
She's had some modest roles to play.
I think she will stay there as a kind of nepotistic favor to the family, but she doesn't have the charisma, the vision, the intelligence, the authority of her father.
I would be very surprised if she takes over that position.
No doubt she'll stay on in the organization like a barnacle on a ship.
But I think they want someone who has the kind of global vision and name of a John Kerry.
Kerry's pretty old, though.
I don't think he would stick around for even five years.
It wouldn't be much longer than that.
So they might go for someone young.
They would never go for Justin Trudeau.
He's too stupid.
He's too unserious.
He's too flighty.
He's too shallow.
But I think they would go for someone around 50 because they would want to get 20 years of leadership out of that someone.
That's why I mentioned there could be a long shot, someone like Leo Varadkar.
There are other 50-year-old ex-politicians, Santa Marin of I think it was Finland, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand.
I think they're too shallow.
Anyhow, we're all spitballing here, but I think it'll be someone serious.