When did you last hear anyone complain “Where is a Women’s Studies professor when you need her?”
The academic world was all a-twitter a few weeks back with the enormously humorous idea of a “Scholars’ Strike.” The idea was that over two days, university professors would put down their intellectual tools. By doing nothing – or indulging in ever-so-intelligent talking about doing nothing – they would advance the cause of social justice.…
Unless checked, Communist China’s economic muscle will continue to be used to acquire increasing influence around the world
Historians make lousy prophets. We find it hard enough to predict the past, much less what’s going to happen in the future. Nonetheless, I’m going to attempt to predict some imminent geopolitical strategy. As the People’s Republic of China makes threats against Canada for detaining an executive of a Chinese corporation, as it warns the…
As the COVID-19 crisis has shown, open borders mean diseases travel more rapidly and supply chains are endangered
Pope Francis recently praised attachment to one’s own culture and place. He criticized global capitalism with its “consumerist vision of human beings” for its “levelling effect on cultures, diminishing the immense variety which is the heritage of all humanity.” But in Canada, nationalism – the idea that one should have particular regard for one’s own…
COVID-19 fallout has revealed a genuine hostility on the part of the young toward the old, especially baby boomers
The Great Plague of 2020 has revealed some interesting things about Western society’s attitudes toward old people. In Italy, the shortage of medical equipment to treat patients suffering from COVID-19 led hospitals to sometimes rule that people over the age of 60 couldn’t be fully treated. That was essentially a death sentence for some pensioners.…
Thoreau, Gandhi and King understood that going to jail was a reasonable price to pay for protest. Why don’t we accept that today?
In 1849, American philosopher Henry David Thoreau was angry at his government’s actions in the Mexican-American War and at the continued legality of slavery in the United States. He published an essay entitled Civil Disobedience, in which he stated that that the evils of war and slavery should be confronted by citizens through withholding their…
The mayor is misreading the events of the Northwest Rebellion and romanticizing a nasty moment in our country’s history
“The red coats we know, but who are those little black devils?” This was the question posed by a Métis prisoner after the Battle of Fish Creek. Thus was born the nickname of the military unit that would later be known as the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, one that had been sent west to help crush…
Protesters have silenced free speech through a combination of media pressure, inflated security costs claims, boycotts, riots and violence
The Cancel Culture has claimed another victim. Renowned poet George Elliott Clarke has backed out of giving the University of Regina’s Woodrow Lloyd Lecture over accusations from Indigenous activists that he associates with another poet with a criminal background. His talk was to have been titled ‘Truth and Reconciliation;’ versus the ‘Murdered and Missing’: Examining…
In modern society, we tend to casually toss around words like racism and genocide. We need to be more respectful of these words – and their horrible history
If you are an activist who wants to persuade your fellow citizens of the correctness of your views, the first thing you should do is take control of the English language. Change the meanings of words so your enemies can be accused of any crime and your side can always claim the moral high ground.…
History shows plenty of radicals who pushed too hard. We have plenty on today’s world stage
In the summer and autumn of 1789, the French National Assembly overturned 1,000 years of law and custom to produce a modern constitutional democracy. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen spelled out all the new conditions of civil life: the abolition of feudalism and aristocratic titles, freedom from arbitrary arrest,…
And what does that matter more than other qualities when it comes to electing politicians?
Society has become obsessed with identity. I’m old enough to remember when there was only one channel on the television and just two sexes. Humans came packaged as either male or female and vive la différence! Now I’m told that there are many, many genders: agender, genderqueer, neutrois, pangender, transgender, androgyne, bigender, transmaculine and two-spirit,…
The academic world was all a-twitter a few weeks back with the enormously humorous idea of a “Scholars’ Strike.” The idea was that over two days, university professors would put down their intellectual tools. By doing nothing – or indulging in ever-so-intelligent talking about doing nothing – they would advance the cause of social justice.…
