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 my latest Epoch Times column I explore the ongoing fascination with the Catholic Church on the part of people who scorn its teachings.
“Already, by the time that Anselm died in 1109, Latin Christendom had been set upon a course so distinctive that what today we term ‘the West’ is less its heir than its continuation…. Today, at a time of seismic geopolitical realignment, when our values are proving to be not nearly as universal as some of us had assumed them to be, the need to recognize just how culturally contingent they are is more pressing than ever. To live in a western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions. This is no less true for Jews or Muslims than it is for Catholics or Protestants. Two thousand years on from the birth of Christ, it does not require a belief that he rose from the dead to be stamped by the formidable – indeed the inescapable – influence of Christianity. Whether it be the conviction that the workings of conscience are the surest determinants of good law, or that Church and state exist as distinct entities, or that polygamy is unacceptable, its trace elements are to be found everywhere in the West…. The West, increasingly empty though the pews may be, remains firmly moored to its Christian past.”
Author’s “Preface” in Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
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 Epoch Times column I say instead of worrying about polls asking whether we think the decline in trust might mysteriously reverse itself, we should concentrate on reversing it by making sure we’re trustworthy. I know it sounds weird but it just might work.
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.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I ask parties and candidates frantically obsessed with the nightmare that will ensue if they lose in the current federal election to spare a moment’s thought for possible problems if they win.
“The creation of a new creature, not ourselves, of a new conscious center, of a new and independent focus of experience and enjoyment, is an immeasurably more grand and godlike act even than a real love affair; how much more superior to a momentary physical satisfaction. If creating another self is not noble, why is pure self-indulgence nobler?”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly Sept. 27, 1930, quoted in “Why Do You Keep Asking Me Rhetorical Questions?” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)