Canada We learn from the New York Times that a group of singers performed a virtual concert of Frederic Handel’s “Messiah,” giving it a thoroughly modern interpretation. One self-identified gay Chinese-Canadian “struts through the streets of Vancouver” singing “ev’ry valley shall be exalted” as a coming-out anthem as the camera “focuses on his six-inch high stiletto heels.” A Tunisian-Canadian sings about [...]
BY JOE CAMPBELL Interim writer, Joe Campbell, Light is Right I don’t know economics. Although introduced to it at university, I don’t know it, let alone understand it. Economics is about scarcity. For several months I studied it. For the rest of my days I lived it. Scarcity means you can’t have everything you want. You have to choose, presumably after [...]
BY RICK McGINNIS Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements You have to assume that Ronald Diebert was being provocative by calling his book about the internet in a time of social and political crisis Reset. Presented as a series of lectures this past year in the middle of the unfolding coronavirus pandemic, the title evokes the concept the “Great Reset” – [...]
BY JOSIE LUETKE Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey I’m writing this column for precisely the reason I didn’t want to: the information available on vaccines in general, and particularly the COVID-19 ones, is immensely confusing and contradictory (even without journeying down the rabbit hole into conspiracies about nanoparticles, cryptocurrency, and 5G antennas—don’t ask). If I had trouble sifting through [...]
BY ANDREW LAWTON Interim writer, Andrew Lawton, Laying Down the Lawton In keeping with the theme of the last four years of politics, the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency were needlessly eventful. A protest against the process by which Joe Biden was declared the winner of last year’s election turned into a siege on the United State Capitol, which [...]
Even before the Capitol chaos, tech giants were purging conservatives BY PAUL TUNS Within 48 hours of the chaos at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Facebook and Twitter banned President Donald Trump -- the former indefinitely, the latter permanently, saying they feared the President might incite his supporters to violence ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of Joe Biden. Facebook, which owns the [...]
BY JOHN CARPAY Interim writer, John Carpay, Law Matters What drives some religious leaders to ignore the harm and suffering that lockdowns are inflicting on their congregations, and on all of society? We are now 10 months into the daily and ongoing violation of our human rights and fundamental freedoms. Depending on what province you live in, it’s illegal to [...]
Interim Staff On Jan. 18, the Ontario Office of the Chief Coroner released new reported euthanasia and assisted suicide death statistics, showing that there were 1260 assisted deaths from July 1 - Dec. 31 2020, compared to 1127 in the first half of the year. The 2387 reported “Medical Aid in Dying” deaths (MAiD) in 2020, bring the province’s total reported euthanasia [...]
BY PAUL TUNS A study released by Operation Rescue in January shows that 45 abortion facilities closed or halted abortions in the United States in 2020 and that Missouri became the first “abortion-free state” as its last abortion mill, Reproductive Health Services Planned Parenthood (RHSPP) in St. Louis, has not taken appointments for abortion since September. In total, there are 706 abortion [...]
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay | (Encounter, $37.95, 351 pages) Helen Pluckrose (a historian) and James Lindsay (a mathematician) have provided a useful public service by exposing the bogus “scholarship” that infects too much of the modern university and how this politically motivated work has jumped from being a self-perpetuating field [...]
Editor’s Note: The Interim asked a number of families from across Canada to tell us how they remain positive and what they are doing to cope with the pandemic and lockdowns. Up (to) the creek They say each cloud has a silver lining … a little glimpse of light to remind us that the sun has not completely disappeared but is still [...]
BY PAUL TUNS Republican President Richard Nixon referred to the “silent majority” in 1969, but it was a liberal Hollywood producer who gave it voice in a sitcom that would dominate television for a half-decade in the 1970s. Norman Lear created All in the Family after hearing about, but not seeing, the British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part. The British show [...]
BY PAUL TUNS In his under-rated and under-appreciated sociological treatise, Passion and Social Constraint, Ernst van den Haag, notes that “though the culture of each society differs from that of others, some institutions are needed in all societies to perform, in however varied ways, functions essential to any social life.” He observed that “all societies that have offspring have the institution of [...]
BY PAUL TUNS In advance of an expected hearing date this year, the Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) announced that it had six affidavits in support of Fr. Tony Van Hee’s constitutional challenge to Ontario’s Safe Access to Abortion Services Act, the “bubble zone” law that outlaws pro-life speech near facilities that commit abortions. Among the affidavits were ones from Christian Elia, [...]
BY PAUL TUNS On Jan. 6, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) filed a constitutional challenge in the Court of Queen’s Bench in Fredericton. The CCLA advised the New Brunswick government in October that they would be launching a legal challenge if it did not rescind Schedule 2(a.i) of Regulation 84-20, which does not permit the paying for non-essential services in private [...]