In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the reason Mark Carney can’t pull us back from the left-wing idiocies of Justin Trudeau is that he holds substantially the same views and doesn’t even know it.

In my latest Epoch Times column I say from coast to coast Canada is turning away from trusting the people and abandoning self-government for meddlesome ineffective presumption.

In my latest Epoch Times column I ridicule the government for thinking the solution to the taxman riding roughshod over citizens’ rights is to get him bigger boots.

In my latest Epoch Times column I say Canadian authorities’ feeble justifications for cancelling concerts because they don’t like the singer or the lyrics show just how little they understand free speech… or even think about it.

In the Epoch Times I summarize my C2C Journal argument against photo radar and encourage everyone to fight these frivolous tickets. If they’re really a safety measure the state will happily spend more collecting them than it actually collects. But if they’re a cash grab that cost more than they rake in, it will stop. As it should.

In my latest C2C essay I explain why people hate photo radar: it’s a brazen violation of the rule of law and the social contract to fine citizens for normal behaviour.

“Politics are now so corrupt that everything they touch is corrupted. We are long past the point of protecting our government from the degrading influences of trade or professionalism. If anything, we have to protect our trades and professions from the degrading influences of government.”

G.K. Chesterton in New Witness November 5, 1920, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #1 (September-October 2024) [and I need hardly add that we did not and it has therefore gotten far worse in the intervening century]

“As the [c. March 1208 papal] interdict was declared, John ordered books to be sent from Reading Abbey, which were delivered by the hand of the abbey’s sacrist. John did not explain why he chose this moment to catch up on his reading, but it is worth considering what he wanted to have with him at a moment of extreme crisis for himself and for the kingdom. There were six volumes containing the whole of the Old Testament. This was a particular favorite of medieval kings since they liked to model themselves on the bellicose David in particular. The sacrist also brought Hugh of St. Victor’s On the Sacraments of the Faith, the greatest work of one of the greatest minds of the twelfth century; since the pope was withdrawing the” “sacraments from John and from his people, it is not surprising that Hugh’s book was on John’s reading list. There were also more esoteric works, including the Letter of Candidus to Marius Victorinus. Marius was an early Christian theologian who adapted Stoicism for Christian purposes: John would have to be stoical in the face of the pope’s onslaught, so this text was a good place in which to find inspiration. Another text that John had brought to him from Reading Abbey was Valerius Maximus’s Memorable Deeds and Sayings. Written in about AD 31 to provide moral guidance to his Roman readers, Valerius’s work covered such topics as Courage, Endurance, Determination and Self-Confidence, crucial for the coming struggle, along with some that John might have wished to pass over, such as Loyalty to Parents and to Brothers. The more standard works in the collection of books delivered to John included Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Quatuor libri Sententiarum), perhaps the leading theological work of the age, with the fourth book devoted to the seven sacraments and to the subjects of death, judgment, hell and heaven. John also received Origen’s treatise on the Old Testament, in which the author uses allegory to explain the text. In the minds of modern theologians, Origen’s methodology amounts to no more than reading into the text what one wishes to read into it, not quite making it up as one goes along, but not far short; the fact that John chose to read Origen perhaps gives us a further, unflattering insight into the king’s mind at this point in his life. The final selection was from the work Augustine of Hippo, including his City of God, a treatise that, amongst other things, notices that “all men desire to be happy” and then goes on to question what happiness might be. None of this is light reading and all of it suggests that there was some serious discussion under way in the close circles around the king concerning the impact of the interdict. John was applying his mind as well as his might to the problem.”

Stephen Church, King John: And the Road to Magna Carta