John Carpay: Bad laws are the result of bad politics. Bad politics result from a rotten culture. A rotten culture emerges when too many people embrace bad ideas. A complete description of all the bad ideas that are now wrecking Canada’s culture, society, and economy would fill many volumes. But here follows a partial list. “Most parents are dangerous and abusive.” This [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Last year, the only pro-life MP to attend the National March for Life was Arnold Viersen (CPC, Peace River—Westlock). Bill C-311, the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act, tabled by MP Cathay Wagantall (CPC, Yorkton—Melville), was being debated at the time, and the mainstream media and leftist politicians were taking pains to paint [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements It’s been a rough four years. Everybody knows that. And though their struggles don’t register much with the public, journalists have arguably been having a rough 20 years, probably more. They’d ask for your sympathy but know they’re not likely to get it, though they can write books like Nellie Bowles’ Morning After [...]
Donald DeMarco: George Huntston Williams, an historian of Christianity known for his extraordinary range and productivity, passed away on Oct. 6 in the second millennial year at the age of 86. Sic transit gloria mundi! His legacy should not pass into oblivion. He began his career as a teacher in 1947 at the Harvard Divinity School, which was struggling to stay afloat [...]
Paul Tuns: There is a scene near the end of Billy Madison in which the title character played by Adam Sandler compares the Industrial Revolution to a puppy. Astonished at the vacuity of the answer, the principal who posed the question said: “What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in [...]
Rory Leishman: Direct attacks on the God-given, natural right of everyone to freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression are continuing to mount, not just in Canada, but also in Europe. One of the most prominent, recent victims is J.K. Rowling, a resident of Edinburgh Scotland and author of the Harry Potter series of novels. Siobhian Brown, Scotland’s Minister for Victims and [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be by Timothy P. Carney (Harper, $36.99, 343 pages) Invariably, it seems, Timothy Carney’s Family Unfriendly and Brad Wilcox’s Get Married are getting reviewed together. Not here. Both are deserving of their own treatment. The Wilcox review will appear next month. Carney, a Catholic father of [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements There was a point, nearly a quarter century ago, when the war to protect children online was probably lost. Writing about the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in his new book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt notes that the [...]
John Carpay: Bill C-63 (Online Harms Act) is the most serious threat to free speech in Canada in generations. If passed into law by Parliament, Bill C-63 would give the Canadian Human Rights Commission new powers to prosecute and punish non-criminal speech if deemed to be “hateful” in the subjective opinion of federal bureaucrats. Canadians found guilty would be required to pay [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey As British politician Lord Acton once remarked, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And for some reason, a bunch of lowly municipal politicians in Canada have become convinced they possess absolute power. I do not exaggerate. The Corporate Services Committee for Niagara Region (that you’ve likely never heard of [...]
Rory Leishman: Faithful Canadians who look to Sacred Scripture as the ultimate authority on all matters of faith and morality should beware: They could soon end up in jail as a prisoner of conscience for upholding their honest Christian beliefs. That is the fate now threatening Paivi Rasanen in Finland. She is a prominent medical doctor and long-standing member of the Finnish [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements Two years ago at a Munk Debate about public trust in mainstream media, journalist Matt Taibbi was repeatedly smeared by his opponent, essayist Malcolm Gladwell, with a charge that he harboured an “affection” for (as Taibbi recalled) “Jim Crow, the ‘50s, and the ‘golden moment’ when media was ‘dominated by white men’.” It [...]
All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism by Kevin Vallier (Oxford, $36, 305 pages) Version 1.0.0 Kevin Vallier has set out to reply to the integralist challenge to liberalism in his important 2023 volume, All the Kingdoms of the World. Vallier takes a dozen pages to define integralism but if it can be summarized in [...]
Donald DeMarco: It is a relatively simple thing to make something. All we need to do is put together parts that are readily available. Man is a maker. Homo faber is his classical name. On the other hand, man himself is made. The process of making a man is unimaginably complex and extends over centuries. We could not come into existence save [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Canada’s fertility rate is now 1.3 children per woman, its lowest in recorded history. Replacement level fertility, by comparison, is 2.1 children per woman. Several years ago, Statistics Canada cautioned, “If the country’s fertility continues to decline further in the coming years, Canada could join the countries with the ‘lowest-low’ fertility rates [...]