In a departure from my normal grouchy columnist routine, I had a piece in the Kingston Whig-Standard urging people to volunteer for their local lake association (or similar group). Please consider it.
“The true modern cowardice is that no one has the courage to pronounce truisms. Consequently the chief evil of all modern argument is that it will not begin, like Euclid, with the things that are quite obvious; Euclid is dull during the first four or five pages; not before the third book does he begin to become even feebly brilliant. In short, the characteristic modern controversy has this defect, that those partaking in it have not the courage to be dull, have not the courage to state the things which are only evident to some.”
G.K. Chesterton in the Morning Post Oct. 18, 1906, quoted in “Chesterton For Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
In my latest National Post column I say Calgary’s current water problems are emblematic of how progressive politicians don’t just engage in zany symbolic antics, they wreck cities and countries in zany ways.
In my latest Mercatornet column I ask how the United States, of all places, could have become vulnerable to tyranny.
In a talk to the Augustine College Summer Seminar I argued that the American Revolution brought liberty and prosperity because it looked back to the solid foundations of Magna Carta, Christianity and the Western tradition, while the French Revolution brought misery and death because it looked forward to a utopian future unconstrained by the past.
“As Justice Jamie Campbell once wrote, ‘The Charter is not a blueprint for moral conformity. Its purpose is to protect the citizen from the power of the state, not to enforce compliance by citizens or private institutions with the moral judgements of the state.’ Trinity Western University v. Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, 2015 NSSC25, at para. 10. Sadly, this clear thinking was not followed by a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada in a similar case, where seven of nine judges ruled against Trinity Western University’s proposed Christian law school due to a perception the law school would discriminate against non-Christians.”
André Schutten and Michael Wagner, A Christian Citizenship Guide 2nd edition
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the trendy ritual elite “land acknowledgements” that Canada is an illegitimate settler-colonial land-stealing oppressive patriarchal nightmare are socially destructive, hypocritical and false.
“The greatest blessings we receive in life are undeserved. For example, I didn’t do anything to deserve good parents. On the other hand, it is not unjust for a person to have such a blessing, and it is not an act of justice to try to erase it. What justice requires is gratitude for blessings received. What charity requires is trying to act in a way that blessings of the same kind may be more widely enjoyed.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]