Rory Leishman: In a startling headline on Jan. 24, Scotland’s largest newspaper, the Daily Record, exclaimed: “Transgender Scot found guilty of raping two women when she was a man.” When she was a man? Really? Robert “Robbie” Burns, revered by Scots as the world’s greatest poet, insisted, “A man’s a man for a that and a that.” Of course, that is no [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements You’ll just have to trust me when I say that it was a very big deal when A.O. Scott, one of the New York Times’ two full-time movie critics, recently announced he was retiring from reviewing films. The news might not have reached you yet, so I’ll give you a minute to digest [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey My anonymous Twitter troll has seemingly finally moved onto bigger and better things (knock on wood), but in the past, (presumably) he would repeatedly demand I educate myself on the history of the pride flag – originally the gay pride flag. I recently declined to attend an alumni event at my alma [...]
Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Josie Luetke: Included in the LGBTQ community’s ever-expanding lexicon for their fantasy world is the phrase “trans erasure.” In an Everyday Feminism article, “non-binary” writer Ayesha Sharma claims, “Trans and gender variant people’s existences are overlooked, invalidated, and erased every single day.” Of course, it is the height of gaslighting, of deceit, to attempt [...]
John Carpay: Censorship spreads like a cancer, starting small but then expanding everywhere. Once upon a time, only 15 years ago, pro-life student clubs were the only groups facing censorship on campus. Pro-life students were barred from renting rooms or other spaces on campus that were freely available to everyone else. Pro-life students were expressly prohibited from setting up recruitment tables at [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey I regularly do activism with abortion victim photography (AVP)—“Choice” Chains, through which we show what “choice” looks like. I’m convinced of the merit of this action, reassured that regardless of whether or not I have productive conversations, passersby likely will feel more negatively towards abortion, and—at minimum—can no longer claim ignorance. I [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements There’s an evergreen appeal to books about the world going to hell. There might be better or worse times to tell a story about civilization falling apart – the ‘30s and ‘70s were ripe for it; the ‘60s and ‘90s not so much. We’re in one of those doomsaying boom times again. I [...]
John Carpay: Since early 2020, the majority of religious leaders around the world have supported lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccination passports, and other coercive measures that violated the freedom, prosperity, and well-being of millions of citizens. As just one prominent example, in August of 2021 Pope Francis and other bishops praised the new Covid vaccine as “safe and effective.” Vatican City pressured all [...]
JOHN CARPAY: Since early 2020, the majority of religious leaders around the world have supported lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccination passports, and other coercive measures that violated the freedom, prosperity, and well-being of millions of citizens. As just one prominent example, in August of 2021 Pope Francis and other bishops praised the new Covid vaccine as “safe and effective.” Vatican City pressured all [...]
From the editor’s desk: I have noted before that the greatest influence on my thought and writing is George F. Will, but he has not the only writers to guide my political thinking and career choice. Two others were the historian Paul Johnson and journalist Patrick J. Buchanan. In January, we lost Johnson who died at the age of 94 and Buchanan, [...]
Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements Rick McGinnis: Ten years ago, journalist Leah McLaren wrote something that would come back to haunt her: “I have a secret to tell you: The best confessional writing isn’t the truth.” The first sentence of an article published in Chatelaine magazine, it was a reflection back on a career writing about herself and her experiences [...]
Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Josie Luetke: I find it helpful to make sense of the world through various dichotomies—good versus evil, light versus darkness, life versus death, existence versus non-existence, something versus nothing. In the movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, tasked with implanting an idea in a sleeping target’s subconscious. To accomplish “inception,” he needs “the simplest [...]
Rory Leishman: On Dec. 19, a six-judge panel of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts unanimously affirmed in Kligler v. Massachusetts Attorney General that no person has a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. For the United States, this ruling was not unusual. In 10 states plus the District of Columbia, legislatures – not the courts -- have legalized physician assisted suicide. However, [...]
John Carpay: My recent 23 hours in a Calgary jail on Dec. 30-31 remind me of the fact that our circumstances can feel either incredibly difficult or quite easy depending on what we compare them to. On the afternoon of Friday, Dec. 30, I was working at my office when I received a phone call from Calgary Police Services detective Mark Weir [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements I have lost track of the number of times I’ve been watching a movie or TV show and wondered to myself if it was filmed in the first vertical shaft of a coal mine, or if I might be developing cataracts. Apparently, I’m not alone; at least three times in the last year [...]