Posts in Values
The slippery woke slope

In my latest National Post column I warn that because ideas have consequences, and a powerful internal logic, progressive organizations that start with apparently non-controversial causes tend to slide into radical craziness, as with Ottawa’s Capital Pride that’s being boycotted even by Justin Trudeau because it’s so pro-Hamas and can’t stop itself.

Words Worth Noting - August 21, 2024

“When it [Queen’s University] opened its first classes in 1842, its first professor, the Reverend Peter Colin Campbell, taught classical literature. In its Memorial Room to the school’s war dead, there is an inscription around the wall, from Wordsworth, another provocative conditional: ‘We must be free or die, who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold which Milton held.’”

Joseph Brean in National Post January 26, 2024 [heckling the way Queen’s was handling its funding crisis].

And the Truth Shall Make You Free

In a talk to the 2024 Economic Education Association of Alberta "Freedom Talk" in Red Deer, AB on July 7 I argue that a radical commitment to truth-telling, including refusing to remain silent in the face of lies, is crucial to personal and to political freedom.

Western Civilization: The Battle of Ideas

In my opening remarks to the 2024 Economic Education Association of Alberta “Freedom Talk” on “The Decline of Western Civilization: Our Fate or Our Choice?” in Red Deer, I said the fight to save Western civilization is fought first and foremost on the field of ideas.

Words Worth Noting - July 10, 2024

“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 The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)