George Jefferson from TV show All in the Family. Until I did some research, it hadn’t occurred to me that there might be a cache of racial slurs that target whites. Well, apparently there are plenty of the allegedly offensive epithets. I say “apparently” and “allegedly” because I’ve never heard of most of the entries, and the ones I know [...]
There’s a visual shorthand you see in movies and on TV shows that’s meant to let you know you’re in the presence of Roman Catholics, and probably Irish ones. It’s a picture of John F. Kennedy hanging on the wall of someone’s bedroom, dining room or living room, or in some bar, barber shop or police chief’s office. It might be accompanied [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Not-so-breaking news: The Progressive Conservatives won the Ontario election and nine pro-life PC candidates whom CLC green-lighted now have seats in the legislature. I’m sure their activities will be closely monitored and reported on over the next four years, so at least for this column I want to direct my attention to those pro-life candidates who [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman In a significant seven-to-two ruling in Masterpiece Cake Shop Ltd. v. Colorado on June 4, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a ruling by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that a Christian baker had no right in law to refuse on grounds of sincere religious conviction to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. That [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell "I’m learning about the virtues,” Bimson said. “The virtues?” Molder replied. “You know,” said Bimson, “temperance, liberality, justice, fortitude, that sort of thing. I’m taking a short course in ethics.” “It’s easier to learn about the virtues than to practice them,” Molder said. “That’s what our instructor told us,” said Bimson. “So each time he [...]
Law Matters John Carpay You know a court ruling is bad when judges deliberately ignore the evidence placed before them. But reality was brushed aside in the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision to repudiate, nullify, and revoke the fundamental Charterfreedoms of Trinity Western University (TWU), its staff, and its students. According to the justices, Charter-protected freedom of religion was narrowed [...]
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film widely regarded as one of the best and most important in the history of cinema. I’m not here to dispute this judgment – I’m a big fan of the film, and have been since my brother-in-law took me to see a road show screening [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Am I ever naive. I used to think that overeating is about catering to an unruly appetite. It isn’t. It’s about promoting world peace. Because of it, thousands fail to qualify for military service every year. They’re too fat to fight. Of course, only a quarter to a third of adult North Americans are obese. [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman On April 23, Alfie Evans, an infant afflicted with a devastating neurodegenerative brain disease, was removed from a life-sustaining ventilator in Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital over the strenuous objections of his parents. Five days later, he died aged 23 months. Notwithstanding all the rumours and misinformation beclouding this intensely controversial case, there is general agreement [...]
Law Matters John Carpay Supporters of mandatory gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in schools want to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand, they insist that GSAs are merely peer support groups and harmless social clubs, which do not indoctrinate kids into any political or sexual agenda. On the other hand, they object to parents being notified if [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I’m well aware that by the time you read this, the Ontario election may have already passed. If that is the case, then, if you live in Ontario, you have the next four years or so to mull over these words. With the dropping of Tanya Granic Allen as a Progressive Conservative candidate, though, I just [...]
Tom Wolfe (Photo Rick McGinnis) Reading the obituaries for writer Tom Wolfe, who died last month, it’s hard not to think of the overused word “enigmatic,” which seems odd for a man who was neither reclusive nor reticent with his opinions. Wolfe flamboyantly embodied a collection of contradictions that only seem unusual now that his sort of public intellectual seems [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke On March 20, 2017, famed white supremacist Richard Spencer declared, “We should recognize that the pro-life movement – this is not the alt-right, this has nothing in common with identitarians … Pro-lifers want to be radically dysgenic, egalitarian, multi-racial human rights thumpers – and they’re not us.” In response, I commented on my Facebook wall, “Well, [...]
Maybe it’s some remnant of our tribal past, but it’s hard for us to leave behind some impulse to fear and vilify whoever lives one village over, beyond the river or in the next valley. We might think we’re sophisticated, cosmopolitan people, but this nascent tribalism is never far from the surface, and I saw it re-emerge with a roar during recent [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman Paul McHugh, University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry in the John Hopkins School of Medicine, relates in Try to Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash Over Meaning, Memory and Mind, that he has often put this question to himself and others over the past few decades, having “repeatedly witnessed how faddish misdirections of thought and therapeutic practice sweep across the field to [...]