In my latest National Post column I say, as a very reluctant interventionist, that the time has come to oust Venezuela’s dictator.

“They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer – not an easy answer – but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.”

Ronald Reagan “A Time for Choosing” (a.k.a. “The Speech”) October 27, 1964

No, really. Governments across Canada face appalling challenges including the growing threat of Western alienation. But most politicians are far too cautious, focus-grouped and partisan to put forward bold new ideas. If we want frank talk and big ideas that challenge the status quo and open the way for reforms that work, we’re going to have to do it ourselves.

So we’re holding the 6th annual Freedom School conference in Calgary on Feb. 8 and 9 to discuss “Things that Matter: An Agenda for Alberta”. We’ve got a terrific lineup of speakers to talk taxes and pipelines, pensions and schools, equalization and efficiency, and open the way for politicians to escape the rut of stale rhetoric, complacent overspending, bad public services and a weak economy.

Remember Ralph Klein’s supposed wisdom about finding a big parade and getting in front of it. Well, join us in Calgary and let’s get the parade going.

In my latest National Post column I say ridiculous warning labels that are all noise and no signal only alert us to a society that is neurotic and litigious.

“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