In my latest Loonie Politics column I suggest the reason Canadians have been docile in the face of harsh and often arbitrary pandemic measures is that we are becoming a nation of sheep who bleat “I am a rebel” in unison because the government told us to.
In my latest National Post column I say the cycle of COVID lockdowns is like a bad remake of Groundhog Day, where no lessons get learned
Academia “is a place filled with generally quite well-meaning people, but on the whole not with brave people, not people who are willing to follow the truth wherever it leads”.
Paul Harper Scott, a music professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, “who resigned in protest at ‘dogmatic’ attitudes to decolonisation which could stop students learning Beethoven and Wagner” quoted in The Telegraph Sept. 18, 2021
In my latest National Post column I say that politicians and voters need to make a New Year’s resolution to think about why bad things are happening and how to stop or reduce them instead of just wishing them away.
“Experience teaches us that nothing stands so much in the way of developing great philosophers as the custom of supporting mediocre ones in state universities…. No state would ever dare to patronize such men as Plato and Schopenhauer… The state is always afraid of them.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator” quoted in Will Durant The Story of Philosophy
“The fundamental question to be asked about any theological statement is, ‘What is the evidence that makes you think this might be true?’”
Author’s Introduction to John Polkinghorne The Faith of a Physicist
According to Schopenhauer “It is this removal of the personal equation which leaves the genius so maladapted in the world of will-full, practical, personal activity. By seeing so far he does not see what is near; he is imprudent and ‘queer’; and while his vision is hitched to a star he falls into a well.”
Will Durant The Story of Philosophy [paraphrasing not quoting]
“If persons do not behave in accordance with their own economic self-interest, objectively defined and measured, on what basis do they act?... The economist is well-equipped to recognize mush for what it is, and when noneconomists hypothesize that persons want to ‘do good,’ he quickly detects the absence of predictive content.”
“Is Constitutional Revolution Possible in Democracy?” in Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy