No, really. Governments across Canada face appalling challenges including the growing threat of Western alienation. But most politicians are far too cautious, focus-grouped and partisan to put forward bold new ideas. If we want frank talk and big ideas that challenge the status quo and open the way for reforms that work, we’re going to have to do it ourselves.

So we’re holding the 6th annual Freedom School conference in Calgary on Feb. 8 and 9 to discuss “Things that Matter: An Agenda for Alberta”. We’ve got a terrific lineup of speakers to talk taxes and pipelines, pensions and schools, equalization and efficiency, and open the way for politicians to escape the rut of stale rhetoric, complacent overspending, bad public services and a weak economy.

Remember Ralph Klein’s supposed wisdom about finding a big parade and getting in front of it. Well, join us in Calgary and let’s get the parade going.

“A man who does not lose his reason over certain things has none to lose.”

Gotthold Lessing (1729-81), quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail August 22, 2000

“History is not a social science but an unavoidable form of thought. That ‘we live forward but we can only think backward’ is true not only of the present (which is always a fleeting illusion) but of our entire view of the future: for even when we think of the future we do this by remembering it. But history cannot tell us anything about the future with certainty.”

John Lukacs, At the End of an Age

In my latest National Post column I offer the State of the Union address I think should be given in 2019… even if it makes people cry.

“My house, my car, my family may be a lot of responsibility, but I would rather take that responsibility than have any of you dating my wife or backing my car into phone poles or leaving your dirty socks on my bedroom floor. (Although when it comes to the kids, if any of you want to baby-sit for free, I’m willing to share.)”

P.J. O’Rourke to the 25th anniversary of the Cato Institute, in Cato Policy Report July/August 2002

“A knowledgeable fool is a greater fool than an ignorant one.”

Molière [e-mailed by a friend without further citation]