Confronting state power

Jan 12

Written By Lisa P

Fundamental Truths — Red Deer — January 10, 2026

The one-day event “Fundamental Truths” brought together Canada’s leading voices to discuss various topics shaping the nation today. Legal experts, scholars, advocates, and community leaders engaged in conversations about biological reality, constitutional authority, parental rights, Indigenous relations, economic truths, and the limits of government power. Featured speaker, professor Bruce Pardy, addressed the topic of “Confronting State Power: Can Truth and Freedom Coexist?” A transcript of his presentation follows below.

Transcript

“I’m really sorry because I'm your third lawyer in a row, and I hope you don’t start thinking about William Shakespeare. You know, the part where he says the first thing we’ll do is kill all the lawyers.

I want to offer you an inconvenient fundamental truth, and that is that fundamental truths are beliefs, and beliefs are held by individuals. But here’s what happens.

Human beings tend to be tribal. They like to be in groups, I think, because groups give them meaning, and in those groups, they develop fundamental truths. That is, beliefs about morality, about religion, about spirituality, about values, and virtues. In this group, they believe that they have come to the truth, and all of that is fine. But then the group thinks that it knows the truth. And if it knows the truth, then why shouldn’t everybody be required to live according to the truth? In other words, truth and freedom are not the same thing.

Truth, because it is a belief that is your business and your business alone. We get into real trouble when we start to get to the idea of truth given state sanction. In other words, to join truth and authority. The combination of the claim to truth and authority is the combination that leads to tyranny.

Now, this operates in all different directions because we are subject right now to a regime that is sure it knows the truth, and it is using its power to impose it. But the same can happen in reverse.

I recently shared a stage with several other people who claimed to know the truth, and in the context of that claim, made the case that the law ought to be based upon the Ten Commandments because the Ten Commandments are the truth. Now, maybe they are, but here’s the point: people disagree.

So, let’s just take a look at the Ten Commandments for a moment and let me explain to you why I think that this kind of proposition, and this is just an example, why this kind of proposition—that the law must be based upon the truth—means that you will not be free. Let me put it another way before I go to the Ten Commandments. Let me put it this way.

Here’s the question. What is right? What is good? What is true? What is good, right, and true? That is actually asking two different questions, not one. And this is the error that we make. The error goes like this. That question, what is right, defines what the law ought to reflect. Now, here are the two questions.

Number one, how should you behave? That is a philosophical, moral, religious, spiritual, value-laden question. How should you behave? Question one. Question two, how must you behave? That second question is not primarily moral, religious, spiritual, or value-laden. That is a legal question and the legal question is answered with the force of the state. And the error we make is to conflate them.

You take your answer to the first question, how should we behave? You can give all kinds of different answers. But if you take your answer and you insist that that answer be embedded in the law, you are now the tyrant. So let’s go to the Ten Commandments.

Here are the Ten Commandments, as you probably well know. Number one, no other gods before me. Number two, no idols. Number three, do not take the name of the Lord in vain. Number four, keep the Sabbath. Number five, honor thy father and mother. Number six, don’t murder. Number seven, shall not commit adultery. Number eight, shall not steal. Number nine, shall not bear false
witness. And number 10, shall not covet. Which of those commandments should be embedded in the law?

My answer to you would be two of them, maybe two and a half. Here are the two. Thou shalt not murder, and thou shalt not steal. Why? Why those two? Well, because in an ideal world, the world that I would like to live in, the purpose of the law is to protect your freedom. And what is freedom? When are you free? You are free when you are not subject to the coercion of other people. That is, you are not subject to their force, their violence. You are not made to do things you do not want to do by other people and by the state. So, if you murder somebody or you steal their stuff, you are now infringing on the liberty, the freedom, of those other people. That’s why those have to be laws, because the whole idea is that everybody is free.

The half is perhaps don’t bear false witness, as in don’t go to court and tell a false story. You’re now in contempt of court. But the rest of them, the rest of them might be true. They might reflect a truth. But they cannot be the law. Why? Because now, some people are imposing their values upon other people. Otherwise those people are not able to do what they want to do, and those actions have nothing to do with imposing their will on other people. So, this is a conundrum for people who have a strong belief in truth and want to be free.

Let’s put it another way. If you want to be free, then you want two things. The first one is easy. The second one is hard.

The first one is this. If you want to be free, you do not want to be told what to do. That’s easy. It’s easy to want. Here’s the second one. If you want to be free, if you want to live in a free society, you do not want to tell other what to do because the world is full of people who want to tell their fellows what to do because they know the truth. The fact of the matter is that nobody knows what is good, right, and just. And if they do, maybe they do; but if they do, they cannot prove it. And if they cannot prove it in a way that cannot be controverted, then it cannot be imposed on other people.

Let’s put it this way: can you think of a moral proposition? Any moral proposition you can think of—the most extreme thing you can imagine, the one thing that you know in your heart of hearts is true. Think to yourself, “Okay, I know that’s true. How do I prove it’s true?” Now, I’m not talking about facts; we’ll put facts off to the side. Facts are based on observation. You know, the hammer fell to the ground. Fine. I’m not talking about facts. I’m talking about moral, religious, spiritual, and value-laden propositions.

Let me put this proposition to you: no moral proposition has ever, in the history of mankind, been proven to be true. It is just a belief. It is just a feeling. I’m not saying it’s not valid; I’m not saying it’s not valuable; and I’m not saying it might not be true. I’m saying that if you can’t prove it’s true, you cannot impose it upon other people because they believe differently. The thing you cannot do is impose on their freedom. You can’t murder them, you can’t attack them, you can’t take their stuff, and you can’t violate their property. That’s what freedom means.

And that means, in turn, that law, properly formulated in a free society, cannot be based upon morality. The distinction is not between right and wrong; the distinction is between force and the absence of force. If you are not subject to the force of other people, you are free, and vice versa. That is the line between you and your fellow citizens.

Now I want to make something clear. It may sound like I am suggesting that normality is subjective, as in not real or not true. I’m not saying that at all. To assert that morality is indeterminate, which is what I am doing, is to say that it’s indeterminate in this sense: You can’t prove it one way or the other. You might be right in the beliefs that you hold; your belief in morality might actually be the real version. That doesn’t matter. You cannot impose it because neither you, nor they, nor I can determine conclusively who among us is right.

And that means, in turn, that law cannot, in a free society, be based upon the common good. Everybody is an individual, and every individual has beliefs. As long as that individual is left alone to do as they think best, and as long as they don’t interfere with others, that means everybody is free and left to their own devices. There is no common good because the common good itself is based upon a value of commonality that not everybody shares.

So, we’re talking about a myth. Bottom line: in a free country, free people find their own truth, their own fundamental truth. The search for truth is everything. But truth itself, in a state government sense, is nothing. The quest for truth is quintessential. But that does not mean that we must come to a consensus about the results, because that consensus will always leave some people out who do not, in fact, agree. And if we impose that consensus on them, they are not free.

Just remember this: the only mind inside your head is yours. Nobody else really knows what goes on in there. And whatever that is, that is your business and your business alone. Thank you very much.”

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