“Words matter. They are the vessels that carry moral meaning across generations. When they are stretched beyond recognition, they do not become more powerful; they become useless. That is why the recent spectacle surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – now casually accused of committing ‘genocide’ – demands serious attention. Not because the charge is credible, but because it reveals how far public discourse has descended into moral inflation and historical amnesia. The most disturbing element of this phenomenon is not found on fringe social-media platforms, but in mainstream conversation—amplified by prominent voices and repeated without shame. When enforcement of immigration law in a constitutional democracy is labeled ‘genocide,’ the word itself ceases to mean what it once did. And that loss is not academic. It is catastrophic. The term genocide was coined to describe the deliberate, systematic annihilation of an entire people. It was meant to capture the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust and other acts of mass extermination. It refers to death camps, mass graves, starvation, forced sterilization, and the total erasure of a people’s existence. It does not refer to border enforcement, deportation proceedings, or the execution of court-ordered removal. Yet today, this distinction is treated as pedantic – almost offensive. Emotion has replaced definition. Outrage has replaced precision…. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did not merely echo the claim that ICE enforcement constitutes ‘genocide.’ He compared the fear of young people whose families are in the country illegally to Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager hunted by the Nazi state and ultimately murdered in Bergen-Belsen. This is not historical illiteracy; it is moral obscenity. Anne Frank was hiding from a government committed to the total extermination of her people. ICE is enforcing immigration law in a constitutional democracy – often against individuals who have already received due process and removal orders. To equate lawful immigration enforcement with the machinery of Auschwitz is to empty the Holocaust of its meaning and to weaponize Jewish suffering for contemporary political theater. It is precisely this collapse of moral scale—where everything disliked becomes ‘genocide’ and every fear becomes Anne Frank—that makes serious conversation impossible and turns historical memory into a blunt instrument rather than a solemn responsibility. This is not merely offensive to Jews. It is dangerous to society at large. When the Holocaust becomes a metaphor rather than a historical event, it loses its power to warn. If Anne Frank is everyone, then she is no one.”

The Times of Israel blog by Benjamin Blech [the Times explicitly takes no authorship or responsibility for its blogs] Feb. 5, 2026 [https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/when-ice-became-the-gestapo/].

“There is always a temptation to explain great events in terms of great ambitions, but the truth about Stalingrad might be much simpler. In the orders of 23 July Stalingrad was only one among many other targets and aims. It had no obvious priority over the others. It might be that the first failure to capture the city led to reinforcements being sent to make a second attempt, which also failed. More reserves were then fed into counteract the earlier failures. In this way more and more men and resources were pushed in piece by piece until the battle took on a priority of its own, quite divorced from the actual value of the supposed target. Prestige and stubbornness became the reason for the battle to continue, not the capture of Stalingrad itself. It would not be the first time such a thing had happened. The great Battle of Gettysburg that decided the American Civil War was another example. A Confederate regiment had gone to the town to capture a shoe factory, because they were short on footwear. Before they could get the shoes they were driven out by a Unionist division. The Confederates called up reinforcements and counterattacked, causing the Unionists to summon their own support. Before long the two main armies were locked in a deadly combat that neither had foreseen and neither wanted. It seems that much the same thing happened at Stalingrad.”

Rupert Matthews Stalingrad: The Battle that Shattered Hitler’s Dream of World Domination

In my latest Loonie Politics column I ask why, if things are so bad in the United States, it remains the indispensable nation and why Donald Trump, for all his glaring defects, remains better than so many of his rivals and critics, including in apparently securing the control over Greenland everyone ridiculed him for.

“People are most often of two basic types – those who always have an excellent reason why they are not able to do something, and those who always get their tasks done, somehow.”

Martin Anderson Revolution

In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that despite his recent byelection wins and high standing in the polls, Mark Carney is in fact already a failure because across the board his policies are achieving feeble or disastrous results, and even in Canadian politics reality matters eventually.

“Over the years, I’ve had dealings with many universities around the world. I’ve funded research centres, chairs and programs related to entrepreneurship, business management, engineering and technological innovation. I’ve also served on a number of university boards and given guest lectures on campuses in Canada, the United States and Europe. But until recently, it never occurred to me to consider the overriding purpose of a university. In conceiving and drafting the framework of an ideal society, universities should look at all aspects — everything from the arts and sports to business and medicine. They should also consider the ideal structure of government — one that ensures individual liberty and places certain checks on the power of elected officials. One of the ways we currently do that is through our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But what about other rights, including, most importantly, economic rights? Why has no society ever enshrined an economic charter of rights, and what should those rights be? One thing is clear: democratic charters of rights need to be fortified with economic rights, because if a society’s economy is weak, then everything within society will suffer. If citizens can’t feed themselves or don’t have access to medical care because the economy has collapsed, then all the best government programs and philosophies don’t mean much.”

Frank Stronach in National Post May 14, 2024 [but it is surely extraordinary that he does not know Magna Carta does enshrine economic rights including to property or that the U.S. Constitution does].

“To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, the miracle of development.”

Winston Churchill explaining why he approved use of the atomic bomb before it had even been successfully tested, quoted by Karen Farrington Victory in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor to the Fall of Okinawa [again, sadly, she does not footnote this or any quotation]

“Troops departing from Japan in the heady days of December 1941 were given a booklet to enlighten them as to the nature of their enemies: ‘Westerners – being very superior people, very effeminate and very cowardly – have an intense dislike of fighting in the rain or the mist or at night. Night in particular (although it is excellent for dancing), they cannot conceive to be a proper time for war. In this, if we seize upon it, lies our great opportunity.’”

Quoted by Karen Farrington Victory in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor to the Fall of Okinawa [she does not footnote this or any quotation].