Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦@Nick_Decap
If you haven't listened to Aaron Pete and Tim Thielmann's debate on reconciliation, I highly recommend it. A few thoughts:
First, @timthielmann and @Aaronpete_ both deserve praise for modeling respectfully and constructive discourse. They engaged in good faith, they didn't employ the logical fallacies, misdirection, and outright lies that is so common when people with genuinely opposing views come together to debate. This didn't feel like opponents trying to 'win' a debate by making the other guy look bad (Dave Smith/Douglas Murray comes to mind) this actually felt like ideas being tested. Steel sharpening steel.
I don't like to think of things like this having a winner. When you have a good conversation, everyone wins. But in terms of whose ideas withstood the test of opposition, Thielmann's arguments clearly carried the day.
Thielmann's premise is that colonization brought indigenous people into modernity, on balance that has been good, and the way forward is not to rewind history but to implement total equality. He makes the case eloquently.
Pete concedes that reconciliation has many problems, but believes the negatives of colonization have caused harms and accrued a debt owed to indigenous people. He wants to see a form of reconciliation that remedies those harms. He made a few good points, but overall he failed to make his case. In fact it wasn't clear what his case was.
Pete's problem is that he genuinely is acting in good faith. He steelmanned Thielmann's arguments, he didn't lob ad hominem's or draw false equivalencies. Stripped of these tactics, the argument for race-based reconciliation becomes so threadbare as be functionality invisible. You can see why ideologues don't want these topics debated.
Pete's strongest point was that it's very well to ask people on reserves surounded by addiction and poverty to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but in reality it's very difficult, and society has a role and responsibility to help. I agree, but that's an argument for poverty reduction and addictions treatment, not-race based reparations.
Ultimately, I felt like Pete is a man trying to hold onto long-held views but struggling to find any intellectual grounding for them. There are two paths most people take in this situation.
They can resort to fallacies, emotional reasoning, and lies, which Pete seems to have too much self-awareness and integrity to do.
Or, they can change their mind.
I'll be interested to see what direction he ultimately takes.
Anyway, highly encourage everyone to listen for themselves.
