In museums, libraries, galleries, and concert halls, one can watch a similar drama unfold. An incipient style—of a period, of an artist—begins uncertainly, but it promises something more, an as-yet-unachieved maturity. Eventually, as the career of a style progresses, something permanent and distinctive is added to the sum-total of cultural achievements. One need only think of the qualities conjured by eponymous adjectives—like [...]
John Carpay: The more that people possess virtues like humility, wisdom, courage, and self-control, the less that people need regulations and laws to govern their conduct. In a society where most citizens possess a high degree of virtue, people have the capacity to cooperate with each other to achieve social, economic, financial, and community goals. Virtuous people don’t need thousands of laws [...]
Rory Leishman: In a startling headline on Jan. 24, Scotland’s largest newspaper, the Daily Record, exclaimed: “Transgender Scot found guilty of raping two women when she was a man.” When she was a man? Really? Robert “Robbie” Burns, revered by Scots as the world’s greatest poet, insisted, “A man’s a man for a that and a that.” Of course, that is no [...]
Poland’s family centered values The European Union constantly pushes EU countries into passing laws which devalue the family, increase abortions, and remove parental guidance by parents. Poland, like Hungary, is repeatedly attacked for its family affirming policies. Recently, Poland launched Education for Family Life, a required course in the standard curriculum of primary education. The objectives of the course are to teach [...]
Donald DeMarco: The word “potential” is mesmerizing. It conjures up a dreamland in which one can become anything he wants to be. It has not yet crossed into the realm of the actual where it loses its unsullied attractiveness. A young woman yearns for the perfect mate. She can maintain this yearning as long as it remains in dreamland. When she marries, [...]
On April 3, Reformation 21, a Reformed Church website, ran an important essay by Rosaria Butterfield, “Why I no longer use Transgender Pronouns — and Why You shouldn’t, either.” Butterfield, an erstwhile lesbian who found faith, wrote: “Trans identity and Jesus are not coterminous. It’s one or the other. Christians need to learn how to love their enemies, not pretend their enemies [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey My anonymous Twitter troll has seemingly finally moved onto bigger and better things (knock on wood), but in the past, (presumably) he would repeatedly demand I educate myself on the history of the pride flag – originally the gay pride flag. I recently declined to attend an alumni event at my alma [...]
Heterosexual students happier, healthier than LGBQ+ students The U.S. Centres for Disease Control has completed and released its annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey. High school students were grouped into heterosexual and LGBQ+ categories. (Subsequent assessments will include transgender students.) Here are a few of the disturbing results. Among heterosexual students, 22 per cent experienced poor mental health, in contrast to 52 per [...]
Donald DeMarco: Arthur Rubinstein begins his lengthy autobiography by paying tribute to his aunt Salomea Meyer. Mrs. Rubinstein had given birth to six children. It would be eight years before she would conceive her seventh. Given her situation, it may be understandable that she was reluctant to give birth to a seventh child. The distinguished pianist writes: “I was utterly unwanted by [...]
Rick McGinnis: Perhaps because no place makes us more anxious than the future, there’s a bottomless appetite for predictions about what happens next. Last year Peter Zeihan broke from the usual pack of prognosticators with The End of the World is Just Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, a thick but very readable book about the world-changing crisis he says has already [...]
Mary Zwicker: The family, the basis upon which society is built, is faced with challenges and threats like never before, as an over-reliance on technology can leave families estranged while at the same time exposing its members to harms such as pornography, even at a young age. The Institute for Family Studies, an organization that is dedicated to strengthening marriage and families, [...]
Rory Leishman: Josh Alexander is the Grade 11 student in Renfrew, Ont., who was expelled from his Catholic high school for insisting that transgendered females -- that is to say, boys who think they are girls -- should not be permitted to use the girl’s washrooms. Alexander, of course, is correct. However, it is regrettable that in explaining his position to the [...]
The last canticle of Dante’s Divine Comedy begins with the poet taking stock of his unprecedented enterprise. Thus far, his imaginative journey has taken him, like the epic heroes of old, to the depths of the underworld. But, unlike them, he does not return to the world. Instead, he passes through the realm of forsaken souls to ascend the purgatorial terraces of [...]
How do contraception, abortion, transgenderism and euthanasia fit in? Paul Tuns Editor’s Note: Part I appeared in the March edition of The Interim. Technology, as the writer Sean Haylock points out in a 2017 essay in Crisis “is mechanistic (reductively focused on efficient causation), utilitarian (reasoning by a calculus and willing to treat persons as means to an end), and voluntaristic (taking [...]
Paul Tuns: Beginning April 1, British Columbia taxpayers will pick up the tab on most prescription contraception. In her Feb. 28 budget, provincial Finance Minister Katrine Conroy said that the provincial health plan would cover the full cost of most birth control pills, and all hormonal and copper intrauterine devices, Depo-Provera (an injectable contraceptive), Nexplanon (an implant contraceptive), and the morning-after pill [...]