A primer in political party organizing Let ‘Em Howl: Lessons from a Life in Backroom Politicsby Pat Sorbara. (Gibsons, Nightwood Editions, pb $22.95, ebook $12.79, 252 pp) In October, 2012, a little over six months before he passed away, a dinner was organized as a Dean Martin-style “roast” to honour the late Doug Finley, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s national campaign director for [...]
The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, by Douglas Murray (Bloomsbury, $38, 288 pages) In The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray examines the social, political, and sexual phenomena of the past century. He submits that 21st-century equality activism has discarded historical ideals as its source (truth, beauty, justice). Current moral convention is shown to be necessarily incoherent, generated instead by technology, [...]
Apostles of the Culture of Life by Donald T. DeMarco (Tan, $28.71 paperback or $9.99 Kindle, 271 pages) I’m pro-life in that it is a deeply held principle and it determines how I vote. But I’m not part of the pro-life movement and I do not know much of the history. I do feel that the movement is my people, [...]
Editor’s Note: Interimeditor Paul Tuns interviewed Dan Di Rocco, chair of the business board of The Interim and editor of the forthcoming anthology from the first 35 years of Interimwriting, We Told You So, Honestly. Paul Tuns:What was the motivation for publishing an anthology ofInterimarticles? Dan Di Rocco:The paper has served a huge need in pro-life communications. It filled that need with [...]
by Abby Johnson, with Cindy Lambert. (Ignatius Press, 2014, $20.99, 320 pages) Although this book is a few years old, it is appropriate to review it at this time since the movie has been released in the U.S. to large crowds, debate, and interest. The book (and movie) describes Abby Johnson’s journey from pro-choice to pro-life with many conflicts interwoven [...]
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failureby Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press, $37 hardcover, $14.99 Kindle, 352 pages) The reference to Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) is surely no accident. Bloom, who taught at the University of Toronto for most of the 1970s, was [...]
Joan Didion I was reading The White Album, Joan Didion’s 1979 collection of essays when I came across a passage describing student unrest at San Francisco State University in 1968. Didion admits that she had missed the really big student protests earlier at Berkeley and Columbia, and that while she was expecting much of the same at SFSU, she was [...]
When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Momentby Ryan T. Anderson (Encounter Books, $36.99, 264 pages) Ryan T. Anderson, the William E. Simon senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has written a new book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. Anderson takes a thorough look at the transgender moment, from physical, mental, and psychological challenges the transgendered [...]
Population Bombed: Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Changeby Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak (Global Warming Policy Foundation, $15.99 pb, $7.75 Kindle, 259 pages) Worries about over-population are a seeming constant in debates of world issues, returning regularly to stoke fear about the rising number of people inhabiting the planet. Earlier this year, Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 book The [...]
It’s easy to believe that society is falling apart, especially if you spend any time on social media. My liberal friends are certain that the earth is on the verge of an imminent ecological disaster – probably climate change, but they’ll take resource depletion or overpopulation in a pinch. My conservative friends fill their Facebook feeds with stories and memes about the [...]
19th century Dutch legislator Groen van Prinsterer For Life: Defending the Unbornby the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity A Nation Founded on Rock or Sand: Groen Van Prinsterer for Todayby Hendrik Smitskamp (translated by Harmen Boersma) Democracy 101by William Baptiste Three recent publications tell a moral and sobering story of what happens when Christian principles and beliefs are abandoned in [...]
Philip Roth Novelist Philip Roth passed away May 22 at the age of 85. Roth is certainly in the pantheon of famous and accomplished 20th century American authors. During the 1990s, he won a National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and a Pulitzer Prize for literature for three different novels. Roth had a number of early successes with a collection [...]
Tears of the Fisherman: Recovery for Men Wounded by Abortion by Kevin Burke (Priests for Life, 183 pages) Kevin Burke, co-founder of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries, new book, Tears of the Fisherman, begins by recalling the family background of Simon Peter and Andrew, two of the first disciples of Jesus, and how Jesus chose Simon whom he called Peter, knowing his strengths and [...]
Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen (Yale University Press, $39, 225 pages) Works about the bankruptcy of current day liberal ideology are a fairly common subgenre in traditionalist or conservative writing. Nevertheless, Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed stands out in this field. Deneen, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame, traces liberalism’s errors back to its founding thinkers, [...]
My first glimpse of Jordan Peterson was almost a decade ago, when he appeared on TVO’s current affairs show The Agenda with Steve Paikin alongside my friend, the writer Kathy Shaidle. She was on the show arrayed against a dismal group of evangelical atheists, including then-United Church minster Gretta Vosper – the God-botherer against the God-deniers, a hard hour of media labour [...]