On Alex Epstein’s “Power Hour” podcast we had an extended discussion of China’s geopolitical ambitions and how the Western obsession with “Net Zero” plays into the hands of a Politburo all too happy to keep using fossil fuels while we cripple ourselves by discarding them.
In my latest National Post column I pick up on the Post’s fall series “A Serious Canada” to lament just how unserious a look at a typical newspaper front page reveals us to be on everything from Chinese Communist aggression to budgeting to open government.
“In one experiment, for example, a group of subjects is told that a man parked his car on an incline, after which it rolled down into a fire hydrant. Another group is told that the car rolled into a pedestrian. The members of the first group generally view the event as an accident; the second group holds the driver responsible.”
John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper
“The Grate One”
Terry O’Neill in British Columbia Report July 30, 2001 [not referring to Wayne Gretzky, just adapting his nickname to insult any annoying person]
“the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.”
Fyodor Dostyevsky, quoted by Owen Lippert in Fraser Forum July 2000
On March 27 in a Christian Heritage Party webinar talk “Magna Lockdown: Canadian Liberty in a Medical Crisis” I argued that liberty isn’t a frivolous luxury or vague abstract ideal but a vital practical tool for creating and maintaining good government in crises as well as quiet times.
“Human nature red in tooth and claw.”
Again I quote myself, swollen in head and pride (from August 2000)
In my latest National Post column I say it’s fatuous to ask companies to stay out of politics; what they need to do, being collections of people, is seek to act morally in public as in private affairs.