Be Careful What You Wish For When You Charter A Nation
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So goes the timeworn expression. But the cynical wisdom of that phrase endures.
Read MoreThe road to hell is paved with good intentions. So goes the timeworn expression. But the cynical wisdom of that phrase endures.
Read MoreLiberals have a standard line to end debates on their pet projects: “In a country as rich as Canada/ USA/ Britain, shouldn’t we make sure everyone has (insert your cause)?” The cause may be health care, clean water, low infant mortality, no gun problems, housing, good working wage, winning hockey.
Read MoreSince his election in 2015, people have sought to define Justin Trudeau’s leadership. There were the selfies, the slavish media coverage from American liberals suffering from Trump derangement and the philosophy of trying to please everyone using public money.
Read MoreBack in the innocent 1970s, Coca Cola made uplifting commercials in which their sugary carbonated beverage would “Like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony”. The commercials ended with the full rainbow of humanity join hands on a hillside in mutual acceptance.
Read MoreOnce again, Democrats chose the tuna with good taste over the tuna that tastes good. Chic filmmaker Jon Ossoff, buttressed by $ 25 million in mostly out-of-state money, went down in flames in Georgia against a modest Republican named Karen Handel on Tuesday. With revenge oozing from every pore after last November’s Clinton debacle, Dems burned through their stack of cash to no avail.
Read MoreThe motivation for the shooting of Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice Wednesday remains unclear as yet. Eyewitnesses suggest it could be an escalation of the political conflict going on in the U.S. since Democrats decided Donald Trump was unfit to be president. A gunmen (now deceased) shot up to 100 rounds, wounding, among others, GOP whip Steve Scalise. Early reports indicate a political motive, but details are still developing as the shooter is identified.
Read MoreLast weekend I was at a book talk with Tom Nichols, author of The Death of Expertise (about the decline in expertise, education and learning). In the process of the session, the moderator, an official with the Literary Review of Canada, tried to explain the issue of appropriation to him.
Read More“It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true.”— Oscar Wilde
This thought from the great Wilde seems particularly apt watching a vanquished Hillary Clinton put on the political foil once more, announcing herself a part of the “Resistance”.
Read MoreAn appeaser, wrote Winston Churchill, is someone who chooses to feed a crocodile in hopes that it eats him last.
In the case of the arts industry in Canada—which has been slavish in its devotion to even the most unhinged fringe groups— the appeasers have provided a very tasty dish for the culture crocodiles the past few weeks. Here’s a brief summary on the appropriation fiasco now devouring several dedicated editors.
Read MoreThis week on my podcast The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin, my guest is the eminent British mental-health expert and social critic Theodore Dalrymple. (https://goo.gl/WlB4Cm) To say he has a few inflammatory opinions in this age of moral relativism would be an understatement. Among the issues we discussed was Prince Harry’s public admission that he’d sought help in coping with the death of his mother.
Read MoreHistory has seen the Bronze Age. And the Pleistocene Age. And the Stone Age.
Now welcome to The Nice Age. Humanity— alright, humanity in the western world— has entered into a time when the tender sensibilities of humans have become the organizing principle of society. Be Nice, clean your ice. And what’s wrong with people being nicer to each others? A little civility, giving the other person alittle space, a smiley face. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with reminding others that they’re not the only ones on the planet.
Read MoreThere was never a bigger fan of Bruce Springsteen. It was a revelation when The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle first dropped on my turntable in 1974. Springsteen’s tales of Asbury Park’s street people, reprobates and the desperate ones breathed originality into a rock-and-roll form gone stale and self serious.
Read MoreThe news that Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Despond, are set to visit Canada this summer was greeted with something less than rapture from his subjects here. Indifference probably best describes the reaction to the sort of Royal news that, in the past, might have set off excitement from coast to coast to coast.
Read MoreThe verdict on the U.S. president seems conclusive. The Republican dashes from “one thing to another with amazing dispatch… each act of his, and each opinion expressed likely to abolish or contravene some previous act or expressed opinion.” Consistency is a word he abhors, reversing himself on foreign war, the Mexican issue and the role of Congress in his agenda.
Read MoreThe thing you must understand about the modern Democratic party— in particular its impatient, intolerant progressive wing— is that the game is up without control of the Supreme Court.
Read MoreTo paraphrase Robert Duvall (Col. Kilgore) in Apocalypse Now, “I love the smell of whining in the morning. It smells like… government funding”.
Read MoreBack in the day, the simple word debt could make someone a pariah. It could strip him or her of their self respect. Debt could leave you dependent on charity soup kitchens and consignment shops. I can remember my parents, children of the Depression, grow dark and silent when they learned one of my uncles was being buried by debt.
Read MoreUnless you’ve been out of the universe since Y2K you’ve no doubt heard that a plague is sweeping the nation. Bullying has become a dread curse for the progressive left. There are online campaigns, in-school codes of conduct and television commercials decrying this bane on society.
Read MoreThe moment was pure Justin Trudeau. Virtuous. Blithe. Impulsive. And more than a little messianic.
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