"Articulate and bright and clean and…nice-looking,” as his running mate once described him, Barack Obama seems to be the fulfillment of the American dream; appropriately enough, the would-be president employs the language of dreams, speaking with the cadences of a preacher and the content of a prophet. Obama has accurately gauged the mood of the American people. For their distrust and cynicism, [...]
In the pro-life movement, we often recall the old adage, “For evil to flourish, it only requires that good men do nothing.” It is a consoling saying, but a challenging one as well, because it implies a question: can one good man prevent the flourishing of evil? The life of the heroic Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who passed away in August, gives [...]
McCain isn’t perfect, but Obama will be the ‘abortion president’ While Republican presidential candidate John McCain is far from perfect on pro-life issues, Democratic nominee Barack Obama could usher in the most pro-abortion presidency ever. In July 2007, Obama promised a Planned Parenthood audience that the first thing he would do as president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, [...]
The pen is not just mightier than the sword; it is mightier than prison camps and the totalitarian regimes that depend upon them. The life of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the novelist and Russian dissident who died on August 3, proved as much. In 1945, Solzhenitsyn was found guilty of anti-Soviet propaganda and sentenced to eight years in a labour camp, to be followed [...]
During an address at a campaign rally in Ohio on March 2, Barack Obama professed: “I am a Christian. I am a devout Christian. I pray to Jesus every night and try to go to church as much as I can when they’re not working me.” Obama regretted that he has been too busy during the election campaign to attend church on [...]
Lorne Gunter, a senior columnist with the Edmonton Journal, is one of Canada’s most prominent and distinguished journalists. Unlike the great majority of his fellow journalists and intellectuals, he understands that abortion is morally wrong and that the difference between right and wrong is a matter of truth, not arbitrary personal taste. However, Gunter is a libertarian. His commitment to that [...]
Ontario’s Family Coalition Party announced a “Contract With Ontario,” “A Path to Success” and a four-year organizational renewal plan at its annual convention, held in Mississauga on April 12. Leader Giuseppe Gori said afterwards the measures were part of an effort to show politically disinterested citizens, who are staying away from polling booths in droves, another kind of politics in the province [...]
An obscure section of C-10, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, could strip obscene or extremely violent films of tax credits. The changes were first proposed (word for word) in a 2003 position paper drafted by then Liberal heritage minister Sheila Copps and were re-introduced by the Conservative government last year. Parliament passed the amendments without opposition from the Liberal party [...]
Why “Reflections on the Revolution”? It’s a direct reference to Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke’s prescient 1790 critique of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment that informed it. Burke foresaw the mob rule that culminated in Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. He warned that if the democratic principle were allowed to run without check or limit, the French would lose freedom [...]
In 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush announced his administration would allocate an unprecedented $15 billion to PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. The enormous sum was three times greater than the comparable AIDS assistance provided by the previous Clinton administration. One might have thought that the world’s leading anti-AIDS activists would [...]
In March, we reported that a “talking points” memo issued by the Justice Department instructed Conservative MPs to keep their mouths shut about Canada’s human rights commissions, private members’ bills on the HRC and specific cases before the commissions at the time.M-446, a private member’s motion from Keith Martin (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca) that seeks to limit the scope of HRC complaints to [...]
But a number of Catholic MPs thumb their noses at his warning Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast set off a media storm over the responsibilities of Catholic politicians when he answered a question at a Feb. 19 Theology on Tap talk in Ottawa. He said that Catholic politicians who “obstinately persevere” in supporting abortion could be denied Communion. He reiterated this Catholic teaching [...]
And his party is jettisoning conservative principles over what it thinks will win it votes Someone once said power corrupts. It also seems to cause amnesia. Just consider the case of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who, since achieving power, seems to have forgotten that he was once a staunch defender of free expression. Certainly, Harper defended free speech in the days when [...]
The federal government has wisely stepped back – at least for the time being - from plans that could disengage the people who currently display the nation’s highest levels of civic participation. Bill C-16 would have increased the number of advance polling days to five, including polls on two Sundays. The government has been arguing that Sunday advance polls will increase voter [...]
The long process of winnowing down the candidates for each party’s presidential nomination – a process that began almost immediately after the last presidential election in 2004 – began with the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primaries in early January. (A caucus and primary are different ways voters within each state apportion delegates among the candidates prior to the formal nominating convention [...]