In my latest Epoch Times column I say that early efforts to shut down debate over the increasingly plausible man-made origins of COVID just underline why free speech is important… at the very moment that Google and YouTube move on to efforts to suppress free debate on climate change.

“For everywhere, above and below, you will find nothing but the selfsame things; they fill the pages of all history, ancient, modern, and contemporary; and they fill our cities and homes today. There is no such thing as novelty; all is as trite as it is transitory.”

Marcus Aurelius Meditations VII.1

“If you cannot prevent your enemies from swallowing you whole, at least you must do what you can to prevent them from digesting you.”

“Rousseau’s famous charge to the Poles” quoted by George Weigel in Witness to Hope (saying that in World War II it “was tested as never before.”)

In my latest Epoch Times column I use Neil Winokur’s book The Grumpy Accountant to lament that Canada’s tax system has been outrageously and needlessly complicated and harsh for many decades. Why do we let them do it to us?

“‘The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please,’ wrote Edmund Burke, the hero of American conservatives, ‘we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.’”

David Frum Dead Right

In my latest Epoch Times column I remember, with some difficulty, that even a really annoying and disappointing election is a victory every time we vote freely and without fear.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I deplore the absence of foreign policy and national security from the current election, and from the minds of too many voters throughout the democratic world.

“A frightening scene stands out in my memory: three husky Russian policemen, with faces resembling bare buttocks, invading our apartment in search of subversive books.”

Nicolas Slonimsky Perfect Pitch