By Paul Tuns Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World by Tara Isabella Burton (PublicAffairs, $35, 320 pages). We are told, by pundits and polling data, that fewer people are practicing any religion in the West, and the secularization of America is happening at an ever-quickening pace. Recent surveys show that “religious Nones” — those who do not adhere to any [...]
By Paul Tuns One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias (Portfolio, $37, 267 pages) Matthew Yglesias is a policy wonk and political commentator for the left-wing Vox website. His new book, One Billion Americans, could have been a good and important contribution to American discourse, adding to the dearth of serious, or at least ambitious, ideas. Yglesias makes [...]
Interim writer, Rory Leishman, National Affairs By Rory Leishman Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, has outstanding credentials as a lawyer, law professor, and federal judge. She is also solidly pro-life. But does it follow that pro-life Republicans in the United States Senate should rush through her ratification before [...]
By Paul Tuns The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties by Christopher Caldwell (Simon & Schuster, 2020, $37, 342 pages) Christopher Caldwell should not be anyone’s idea of a right-wing extremist. He is a columnist for the centrist Financial Times and has contributed to the right-of-center Wall Street Journal and increasing left-wing New York Times. His c.v. includes titled positions at [...]
By Rick McGinnis While our collective anxiety was being ramped up amidst stories of plague and rioting, 2020 reached deep into its awful cornucopia this summer with a reprise of cancel culture. That apparently ceaseless turkey shoot, insuring that anyone employed in politics, the arts, academia, journalism and science – so far agriculture, fisheries and forestry seem immune, but the year isn’t [...]
By Joe Campbell My friend Fernsby has new neighbours, a dog and his people. Several months ago, they moved into the house next door to his. The people, a married couple without children, rise early and set off for separate jobs to earn money to support the dog. Some days the dog sleeps in. Other days he lounges around the back yard, [...]
By Josie Luetke Shortly after I became involved in the pro-life movement, I became cognizant of the push by mostly younger members to secularize its branding, even though we were all Christian. Green as I was and enamored with the clarity of the science of when life begins and the simplicity of the philosophical arguments against abortion, I was sympathetic. Pro-life could [...]
By Rory Leishman For the past three years, every federal and provincial jurisdiction in Canada has prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender identity, yet none of our legislators, lawyers and judges can have any clear idea about precisely what this wide-ranging legislation entails. In an attempt to clear up the confusion, the Ontario Human Rights Commission has issued a policy statement [...]
The lockdowns have now become a permanent violation of our Charter Rights and Freedom to move, travel, assemble, associate, and worship. Governments are showing no intentions of removing restrictions, even as COVID-19 deaths slow to a trickle, and are now proven to be a small fraction of the dire predictions made by politicians in March. Masks have become mandatory for children to attend [...]
A few months ago, I informed readers that The Interim offices were moving from Toronto to Hamilton. While some of my colleagues at Campaign Life Coalition still come into the Hamilton office regularly, some are working at home either part- or full-time. I fall into the former category, taking the GO bus twice a week, nearly two hours each way. Jim Hughes, [...]
By: Josie Luetke Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Imagine a man on death row. Some of you probably support his being there, or at least raise no objection. Imagine that he has been fighting his impending execution for years when he learns he has terminal cancer. Suddenly, his will to live vanishes. To be spared the anguish of cancer, [...]
The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite by Michael Lind (Portfolio, $34, 203 pages) In 1941, James Burnham wrote an international bestseller, The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World. Even then, Burnham found that the age of capitalism and bureaucracy was being replaced by a group of managers. Michael Lind, a conservative (early 1990s) turned liberal (mid-1990s) [...]
For all the post-election hand-wringing about whether social conservatism was, in the words of Peter MacKay, the “stinking albatross” that cost Andrew Scheer Canada’s premiership in 2019, the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race revealed, once again, that social conservatives are an invaluable and inexorable part of the country’s conservative movement. While a self-described “pro-choice candidate,” Erin O’Toole emerged as the victor; [...]
By Paul TunsDr. Robert Walley passed away on June 22, at the age of 81, following a battle with cancer.Dr. Walley, an obstetrician and gynaecologist, and his wife Susan moved to Canada in 1973 after a London teaching hospital gave him a choice: do abortions, change his specialization, or leave the country. He moved to Toronto, earned a Masters of International Public [...]
Law Matters John Carpay In April, Ontario Premier Doug Ford denounced people who were protesting against the lockdown as “absolutely irresponsible, selfish, reckless, law-breaking yahoos.” In Alberta, lone protester Cody Haller was arrested and dragged out of the Alberta legislature grounds by sheriffs on May 11 and slapped with a $1200 ticket. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is representing [...]