From the editor's desk: I had planned to use this column to write about the Uvalde school shooting in Texas on May 18, and how it ties back to abortion and other cultural rot. I’m postponing that essay because this issue is jam-packed with a lot of “heavy” material. Instead, I return to covering a miscellany of events as is my usual [...]
From the editor’s desk: Cook at Mercatornet made an excellent point about the abortion debate in the United States following the leak of a Supreme Court decision that indicates that the five-decade old Roe decision is about to be overturned: the pro-abortion side is going to have to learn to debate their position. For nearly five decades, the pro-abortion side has been [...]
From the editor’s desk: You probably saw that during Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, she refused to answer what a woman is. Joe Biden appointed Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court because she was a black woman, the sole qualification Biden outlined for his first Supreme Court appointment when he was running for president. Asked if she agreed with the late Justice [...]
The mainstream media has parroted a Democrat talking-point in labeling a Florida parental rights law a “don’t say gay” prohibition in the classroom. Florida House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act was passed in the state house in February and the state Senate in early March, and was set to be signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis. The move [...]
Paul Tuns From the editor’s desk: Cardus, a Canadian think tank, released a report, “Needs Improvement: How Public Schools Teach About Religion,” authored by Andrew P.W. Bennett. The study looked at how religion is taught in elementary and secondary schools in British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Ontario. It found that approaches varied, with Ontario being a “stand-out example of a more [...]
Whatever Happened to Tradition: History, Belonging, and the Future of the West by Tim Stanley (Bloomsbury Continuum, $38, 266 pages) Tradition and especially traditionalism has a bad reputation. It is often conflated with the old-fashioned and nostalgia, which barely begin to scratch the surface of the richness of tradition. Tim Stanley, an editorial writer for the Daily Telegraph in London comes to [...]
Paul Tuns, From the editor's desk: Christine Rosen, senior writer for Commentary, wrote the magazine’s January cover story, “The New Misogyny,” on how women are denigrated by the transgender ideology. Under the guise of a “liberationist philosophy,” she writes, this “progressive” spirit is actually “an audacious form of woman-hatred” that “comes in the guise of opening up womanhood.” This new misogyny “insists [...]
Paul Tuns I listened out of both duty and interest to the oral arguments before the Supreme Court, and followed along on Twitter and a number of people live-blogging the proceedings. Since the Court accepted the case, I’ve assumed that it would uphold Roe v. Wade but amend it by permitting supposedly severe restrictions before the commonly accepted point of viability point [...]
Paul Tuns Review The Critical Temper: Interventions from The New Criterion at 40 edited by Roger Kimball (Encounter, $39.99, 561 pages) The idea of the culture wars is much derided by pundits, often considered distractions from real issues. I would argue there is nothing more important than to go to (metaphorical) war over than culture. A field general in the war over [...]
From the editor’s desk I read a lot. Not only for my job, but for fun so I thought I’d write about a few non-work books that I enjoyed immensely this year. For years baseball was my favourite sport; it has since been usurped by football and I no longer watch the game that I spent years watching and listening to, but [...]
Paul Tuns A Nova Scotia man was assaulted during the 40 Days for Life witness in Halifax. The man, whom The Interim is not identifying, were “minding our own business on the side of Spring Garden Road” in Halifax, “praying my rosary” when “suddenly” a “masked woman rushed onto us from our right side,” grabbing one of the signs from the man’s [...]
Paul Tuns The Manitoba Progressive Conservative caucus voted against a private member’s bill that would have created an anti-free speech zone around all facilities that committed abortions in the province. Bill 207, The Abortion Protest Buffer Zone Act, was defeated 30-20 with the NDP and Liberal MLAs voting for the bill, on the last day of the fall legislative session. NDP MLA [...]
Paul Tuns On Oct. 13, Calgary ‘street’ pastor Artur Pawlowski and his brother Dawid, were fined, put on probation, and ordered to preach the government’s talking points on the science of COVID-19, following their contempt of court convictions in June for breaking anti-pandemic masking rules. Christopher Scott, owner of the Whistle Stop Cafe in Calgary, was also sentenced for not enforcing mask [...]
Paul Tuns From the editor’s desk: This paper’s editorial advisory board consists of members that have diverse opinions about COVID-related public policy. At times, some members have wanted the paper to address COVID issues head-on. Others, including your editor, are more reticent. This paper opposes vaccinations and other treatments that utilize cell lines derived from aborted babies and, of course, we strongly [...]
Paul Tuns, Analysis: After a five-week campaign and $610 million election, the makeup of Parliament returns appearing to resemble the previous one, except in one important respect: there are about a dozen fewer pro-life MPs. When The Interim went to press, the Liberals were elected or leading in 158 seats, up one compared to 2019, while the Conservatives were elected or leading [...]