“When Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in November 2016 an immediate reaction in the media, among Democrats and discomforted Republicans, and many besides, was that he should not be ‘normalized’. That such an ignorant, intemperate, corrupt buffoon was President was an enormity that was to the country’s shame and must be resisted. When Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister in November 2015 there was no such reaction in Canada. That a callow young man who had led a meandering life, who had never shown any interest in government, who was evidently both conceited and silly, should be Prime Minister simply because he had been famous since shortly after his conception, was nice looking, and was the son of a man who had been a bad Prime Minister for fifteen years over 30 years before, should sweep the country in the 2015 election was shameful. No one seems to have noticed.”

John Pepall in Dorchester Review #29 (Vol. 14 #3 Autumn 2024)

“Even the Jacobins, the revolution’s dominant and most radical faction, had initially been welcoming to the clergy. For a while, indeed, priests were more disproportionately represented in their ranks than any other profession. As late as November 1791, the president elected by the Paris Jacobins had been a bishop. It seemed fitting, then, that their name should have derived from the Dominicans, whose former headquarters they had made their base. Certainly, to begin with, there had been little evidence to suggest that a revolution might precipitate an assault on religion.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

“The citizens no longer listen to good advice, for the belly has no ears.”

Cato the Elder, quoted in Will Durant Caesar and Christ

In my latest Epoch Times column I suggest we could make party platforms less preposterous and ephemeral by insisting that the politicians explain to us what practical obstacles they see to implementing their focus-grouped visions.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that while all the other major parties are manifestly unfit to govern for one reason or another, or several, the Conservatives’ chronic lack of the courage of their convictions is not a tactically brilliant meeting of the moment but a potentially fatal ducking of it.

In a piece for the Aristotle Foundation in the Epoch Times I assess claims that the extent of open anti-Semitism in Canada today resembles the period right before World War Two, and conclude that it’s actually worse now.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I again protest restrictions on free speech during elections, and Canadians’ willingness to tolerate them.

In my latest Epoch Times column I warn that what benefits citizens and what benefits politicians is often different, and as rational utility maximizers politicians will dependably choose the latter if we let them.