From the editor’s desk:
Global Updates reported on the parliamentary victory for Alliance for Germany (AdF), which is invariably referred to as “far right” or “extremist,” in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt: “Alice Weidel becomes the first leader in the world who is anti-immigration but has an immigrant wife, is anti-LGBTQ+ but is a lesbian herself, opposes LGBT adoption but has adopted two children, and is a hardcore German nationalist but lives in Switzerland.” Politicians are often full of contradictions, but Weidel may take the cake, or strudel. While sloppy commentators refer to the AdF as “extreme” polls have it first nationally, with between a quarter and a third of the popular support, which by definition cannot be extreme. Christopher Caldwell, writing in First Things acknowledges that at least four senior members of the Saxony-Anhalt AdF have past ties to neo-Nazi activities, but he argues it is wrong to think that the popular support for the party and its victory in this region represents a desire to return to the bad ol’ days of the 1930s and ‘40s. Instead, argues Caldwell, it is “for protesting against certain elements of modern progressivism.” The local AdF is enthusiastic about homeschooling, which the state frowns upon in Germany, but that policy speaks to parents and others concerned about propagandization dressed up as education. The AdF is at the very least a protest against the excesses of wokery, invasive immigration, rampant crime, and state overreach, but it should also be a wakeup call to mainstream parties, including the putatively right-of-centre ones, that a not insignificant portion of the country is tired of modern progressivism and demands that somebody do something about it.
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There is a lot of wisdom in this paragraph from Willaim Lind’s column in The American Conservative titled “Turn back” about what the United States – and I would add Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and other countries – needs is not conservation but restoration: “The 1950s were the last afterglow of the Victorian peak years. If we are to re-create the America of the ’50s, we must first restore what created that America. Or rather, who created it, our amazingly wise, moral and productive ancestors, the Victorians. We live today on the infrastructure the Victorians built. Not just the physical infrastructure, though that remains vital to our cities. Nor the infrastructure of beauty, of which enough remains that our structures are not all ugly, as Adorno dictated they must be under capitalism. The only reason America continues to function as well as it does, which is not as well as it did, is because Victorian morals still live, beyond the cities and their elites, in the people who inhabit the countryside and elements of the exurban but not rural middle class. Ever notice who first shows up when disaster hits? It’s not just cops and firemen; it’s also construction workers and other men who work with their hands. Those are the people where Victorian values still live.”
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The Jesuit-run Loyola High School in Montreal announced on Sept. 4 that it would become independent and forgo all provincial funding rather than comply with Quebec’s secularization law, Bill 9. “An Act respecting the reinforcement of laicity in Quebec” was passed earlier this year and it bars religious institutions that receive provincial funding from teaching religious curriculum, hold religious activities, or engage in formal prayer. Loyola president Fouad Maroun and chair of the board of governors Patrick M. Shea said the board of directors’ vote was unanimous in order to protect the school’s religious identity and tradition. In a statement, the school said, “Quebec’s Bill 9 requires schools like Loyola to choose between government subsidy and our Jesuit, Catholic mission,” and after deliberating for nearly a year, it chose the latter. “For 130 years, Loyola has formed young people in mind, heart, and spirit as lived daily in our classrooms, our chapel, our fields, and our service to others. That is what this decision protects.” Lou Iacobelli, a former teacher, said on his blog Everyday for Life, “It’s the right decision. You can’t be a Catholic school in name only.” The decision will have financial ramifications for families that send their children to Loyola High School. The current subsidy covers about $7500 of the $20,000-$21,000 it costs to educate each student. Current fees are only $12,530, but will increase to approximately $20,000 when the change to total independent school is complete.
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Malcolm Muggeridge in Vintage Muggeridge: Religion and Society: “Whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.”
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Blacklock’s Reporter, which covers the Canadian federal government, reported that 934 prayer or “quiet” rooms have been installed in federal buildings according to documents obtained by the media outlet. Blacklock’s Reporter said, “It follows a campaign by former Toronto Star columnist and cabinet advisor Amira Elghawaby to promote Muslim prayer rooms in government offices though only two per cent of employees self-identified as Muslim.” It is hard to imagine similar accommodations being made for Jews and Christians.
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There is a Chinese proverb: “See injustice and draw your sword against it.” If you understand what abortion is – namely, the deliberate killing of the preborn child – you must be an active supporter of the pro-life movement.
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A recurring theme of these From the Editor’s Desk columns is that there are victories and setbacks in the battle to defeat the Woke Left, and therefore any individual victory should be acknowledged, even celebrated, but that victory laps are premature. Some of the latest evidence that Woke is still going strong in our school systems is evidenced by a recent Juno News report on an Upper Grand District School Board custodian training session from March 2025 carried out by the board’s human rights office. The session called for a “culture of inclusion and compliance” – let the combination of those words percolate in your mind for a moment – during which the pushback against “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) is a problem that must be countered, including by school janitors. The training session attempted to counter all legitimate objections and Juno News reported that the focus on DEI ignores recent evidence that aggressively pushing DEI increases resistance to such programs that sometimes manifests itself in ways harmful to those supposedly protected by diversity, equity, and inclusion. Juno News reported that the training session contradicts itself by claiming DEI “initiatives do not create division among staff,” while also decrying “whisper networks” against these same initiatives. The training session had a case study to help custodial staff understand the concepts being pushed by the human rights office. A janitor named James does not display the pride flag because it violates his sincere religious beliefs, so he is reminded by the principal that the objection flies in the face of board policy. James maintains his position and asks that his religious rights be respected. “Refusing to comply,” the training states, “may result in disciplinary action” because the board is “building a culture of inclusion and compliance” and displaying selected political symbols such as the pride flag is as much a “job requirement” as “following safety protocols or maintaining clean facilities.”
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In a form of cancellation known all too well to pro-lifers, Eric Lanthier, withdrew as candidate for the Conservative Party of Quebec in the riding of Pontiac hours after the Journal de Montreal published a hit piece against him titled “An anti-abortion and homophobic pastor is a candidate on Eric Duhaime’s team.” Duhaime is leader of the CPQ. Among the activities the paper uncovered was an article on Campagne Quebec Vie’s website titled “Abortion: ‘It’s my choice because it’s my body’ is an irrational argument,” that he has attended the National March for Life in Ottawa, and that he said on a 2023 podcast that the abortion debate should be re-opened. Not only is Lanthier pro-life, he opposed same-sex “marriage” in 2015. (Duhaine is openly homosexual.) And, horror of horrors, he said in a 2021 radio commentary, that husbands should listen to their wives: “the more a man listens to his wife … the more she will admire you, she will trust you, she will be there for you.” I’m not sure how supporting communication amongst spouses is somehow a disqualifyingly right-wing view but perhaps I’m entirely clueless how marriage works for social liberals. Jonathan van Maren said Lanthier holds “run of the mill social conservative views that almost everyone held until very recently in Canada” and that “he expressed those views in language that is both tactful and well thought out,” but “those views, apparently, have no place in the PCQ.” What precisely is the Conservative Party of Quebec conserving if a thoughtful pro-life and pro-marriage voice cannot run to be an MNA under its banner? The Quebec provincial election is Oct. 5 and the PCQ is running fourth in the polls with about 15 per cent at the time this paper went to press.
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In August, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez distanced herself from past left-wing cultural rhetoric during an interview by remarking that a friend admitted “Woke 1.0 was crazy.” The comments come in the context of a likely rebrand of AOC’s firebrand of politics in which she embraced every woke position with vigour. I’m not convinced we’ve moved from Woke 1.0 to Woke 2.0. Certainly Canada has not. Woke 1.0 fixations on what Quillette editor Jonathan Kay calls genderwang politics are still quite strong in Canadian politics, law, and society. The National Post reports that with the help of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, women who were sexually abused in prison are suing Corrections Canada. The lawsuit has elicited a response from Ottawa that refers to these female inmates as “cisgender women,” a term used to describe … women. That is, biological women, or women that are actually women, as opposed to confused or opportunistic men who masquerade as women under the protected classification of transgender women. The feds claim that the term “cisgender women” is used for reasons of “clarity and accuracy,” as if normal people do not know what a woman is. But the statement of defense undermines that argument immediately when it has to define what cisgender woman means: “individuals whose gender identity corresponds to the gender assigned to them at birth based on observed sexual characteristics.” As AOC herself said, Woke 1.0 is crazy. And that’s even before getting to the policy that Ottawa is defending: putting biological males into women’s prison so long as they self-identify as female. Is it any wonder that people who are confused by the term “woman” might also be surprised that housing biological males who have committed crimes – a disproportionate number of them sexual or violent crimes – alongside women in intimate and close quarters, might have catastrophic consequences for the real women? We are told by commentators that the Mark Carney Liberals are not as radical as the Justin Trudeau Liberals, and for some policy that might be true. But the federal government currently maintains that female inmates being sexually assaulted by “gender diverse” prisoners (that is, men) is not a breach of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee to security of the person. Despite the experience of sexually assaulted female inmates, the statement of defense insists “Canada’s accommodation of the needs of gender diverse inmates does not infringe the rights guaranteed to cisgender women” under the Charter. The feds seem to be telling female inmates, “Lay back and think of gender ideology, ladies.”
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I welcome the launch of the The Hippocratic Review last month, a project of the Hippocratic Society. The Society and the Review exist “to support the formation of medical trainees and clinicians and to foster dialogue with our community about the moral and formational dimensions of medicine and medical training.” The Review “is especially invested in exploring themes such as virtue formation, medicine as a moral community, patient-centered care, human dignity, and medicine as a higher calling.” The theme of the first issue is “Medicine as a Moral Practice,” and it includes essays on “Tailoring Medical Education’s Means” (highlighting the tension between technical and moral education in medicine), Aaron Kheriaty on “Quiet Desperation” reflecting on encountering a patient’s suffering as a physician offering help, and “The Legacy of Dominique Jean Larrey,” the chief surgeon of Napoleon’s army considered the father of military surgery. The intended audience for this Review includes medical professionals and students; if you know anyone in the medical profession or considering pursuing a career in medicine, let them know about this value resource. Thus far it is free to read online.
-Paul Tuns
