In my latest Loonie Politics piece I say the real question about shrinking Toronto City Council is why people who call Doug Ford an evil rights-hating maniac for invoking the Notwithstanding Clause to protect legislative authority aren’t even slightly concerned about judges routinely invoking Section 1 of the Charter to infringe fundamental rights like free speech.

BTW this particular piece is not behind a paywall. But Loonie Politics depends on subscriber support. So please sign up for their monthly or annual plan to support their work… and mine.

"The most primitive idols, even those which have long been abandoned to the jungle and the sand-drift, are land-marks in the journey of the human soul: they represent a search for coherence in the confusions and fears of living. So this venerable House of Lords was not simply a constitutional relic of the great landed fortunes; it was also a fetish, it meant the ideally paternal responsibility of the noble few. And though this meaning was quite irrelevant to the twentieth century, yet those who tried to preserve it were not merely idle men or arrogant men. They saw the passing of certain values which at their best were very high and at their worst were very human; they did not realize that life consists in change, that nothing can stand still, that today’s shrines are only fit for tomorrow’s cattle."

George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England

In my latest Mercatornet piece I argue that Australians, too, owe their firmly grounded self-government to the long and often violent struggle for liberty throughout the English-speaking world. (On which see also, of course, my documentaries on Magna Carta and the Right to Arms.)

If you're in the Ottawa area on Oct. 30 please consider joining MP David Anderson (Cypress Hills-Grasslands, and Shadow Cabinet Secretary for International Human Rights and Religious Freedom), Janet Epp Buckingham (Director of Trinity Western University's Laurentian Leadership Centre), Jay Cameron (Litigation Manager for the Justice Centre for Canadian Freedoms) and myself to discuss "Canadian Freedoms: Growing Threats?" at the Parliamentary Forum on Canadian Freedoms.

It's in Room 430, Wellington Building (197 Sparks St.) from 7 to 9 p.m. on Monday Oct. 30 and it is open to the public. But you need to RSVP to David Anderson's Legislative Assistant Tristan McLaughlin (613-995-1616 or david.anderson.a1@parl.gc.ca) and you will need photo ID for admission to the Parliamentary premises.

I'll be talking about Magna Carta, how Parliament evolved to protect the freedoms guaranteed in the Great Charter, and how the weakening of Parliament in recent decades threatens our liberties.

In my latest National Post column I argue that the federal Liberals' contempt for truth explains their contempt for Parliament.

"It is one of the deep jokes of existence that very wise people and very ignorant people frequently say the same thing; perhaps it is the basis of democracy."

G.K. Chesterton in Daily News Feb. 23, 1907, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #1 (September 2006)