“History is a vaccine against bad ideas. Unfortunately, current problems arise largely from a recycling of bad ideas from the past.”

Valerius Geist, Wildlife Conservation Policy

In my latest National Post column I say leftist parties are losing traction with the public, often sympathetic to them on other issues, because too much of the left unreflectively treats disloyalty to Western civilization as a virtue.

“The state is not the source of individual rights or of social community. It presupposes that these exist and are worth protecting, and that individuals reciprocally benefit from their interactions with one another…. The state becomes a moral imperative precisely because there is something of value that is worth protecting from the unbridled use of force by those who forsake tradition, family, and friends. A set of forced exchanges from existing rights does not create the original rights so exchanged… A forced exchange does not create culture and sense of community, it protects them by removing the need for compelling or allowing everyone to act as a policeman in his own estate.”

Richard Epstein, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the only surprise about the Strategic Innovation Fund being used to subsidize things that are politically expedient is that anyone is surprised, including its creators.