Michael Muzzin

Canada is living through a real-life version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. We are increasingly expected to ignore what we can see with our own eyes, deny what we know to be true, and repeat things we don’t believe simply because someone in a position of authority has decided they’re the correct things to say. We’ve created a society in which certain subjects are sacred, certain questions are forbidden, and certain conclusions must be reached before the conversation has even begun. We have data showing us where things are going wrong, but instead of getting angry about the problems, people get angry at the data. Apparently, pointing out that the emperor is naked is now more offensive than the fact that he’s walking around without pants. Our institutions have become increasingly obsessed with policing not just what people do, but what they think. Employers demand approved opinions. Organizations enforce approved language. And mandatory training sessions increasingly resemble ideological re-education dressed up as professional development. All of this is presented as progress. But what exactly are we progressing towards? A society where intelligent adults are afraid to ask obvious questions? Where disagreement is treated as a moral failing? Where facts are only acceptable when they support the approved narrative? We’ve become so terrified of offending one another that we’ve forgotten how to speak to one another. And perhaps most absurdly, we’ve confused disagreement with hatred. Your political opponents are not your enemies. Someone who disagrees with your ideas is not automatically a fascist, a Nazi, a racist, or whatever other accusation happens to be fashionable this week. You can believe someone is profoundly wrong without believing they are profoundly evil. You can challenge a policy without attacking a person’s humanity. And you can acknowledge an uncomfortable fact without endorsing every possible interpretation of it. A functioning society requires the ability to do all three. Because the purpose of free speech isn’t to guarantee that everyone agrees. It’s to make it possible for us to discover where we’re wrong, identify what’s broken, and work out how to fix it. I believe we should be able to stand up and say, “Excuse me, but the emperor has no clothes.” And instead of spending the next six months investigating the motives, political affiliations, and moral character of the person who pointed it out, perhaps we could do something revolutionary. Get the emperor some freaking clothes.