Churchill’s leadership contributed to a freer, more flourishing world
A statue of famed wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill will soon grace downtown Calgary, a gift from The Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary. In partnership with the province, the Churchill statue will be unveiled next spring on the south lawn of McDougall Centre, the provincial government’s southern Alberta home base. It will join another…
Governments must begin to address their own roles in keeping housing prices high
The recent rise in interest rates has dampened demand for home sales in Canada. The hike, inevitable given how historically low rates have been, has taken some of the froth off housing prices. However, given how high home prices still are in Canada, a useful question to ask is what governments can do to reverse…
Freedom is as Canadian as maple syrup and the Canadian Rockies. Don’t let collectivists tell you otherwise
Earlier this year, I stumbled across a framed copy of the Canadian Bill of Rights, the liberty-expanding law promulgated by then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and passed by Parliament in 1960. I read the document years ago but seeing it up close reminded me of Canada’s long tradition of freedom, ranging from anti-slavery efforts in the late 18th…
The left has long engaged in anti-reality thinking and behaviour. Now the right is in danger of making the same mistake
The ideological and political left has long engaged in anti-reality thinking and behaviour. Now the right is in danger of making the same mistake. Let’s begin with the left’s errors: the assumption that humans are mere pliable creatures to be directed from the top down and that societies and governments can therefore be recreated from…
Don’t let utopian perfectionists stop you from celebrating a tremendous accomplishment: Canada
To understand why it’s popular among the chattering classes to trash Canada at this time of year, it helps to understand the power of utopian thinking. In past centuries, utopian movements sprang from religious impulses and secular imitations of the same nature. Religious examples include communes which, in extreme forms, separated themselves from what they…
Queen Elizabeth represents continuity with the past, including the best developments in Canadian history
With the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation upon us, this is a useful opportunity to ponder the monarchy in Canada. Some will assert that the concept of royalty was long ago outmoded. Others oppose what Queen Elizabeth II represents – colonialism and the British Empire. It can also be argued that with an ever…
Teenagers have virtually no life experience and no expertise but are feted as if they were Einstein
By Mark Milke and Martin Mrazik The Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy The war on Ukraine instigated by Russian President Vladimir Putin should be a reminder that adults and their experiences and judgments matter, i.e. thinking through whether we wish to go to war with Russia. However obvious that seems, in recent years – on…
Institutional, systemic discrimination was attacked root and branch as far back as seven decades ago
When Jordan Peterson recently tweeted out a copy of Home Depot’s ‘white privilege’ memorandum given to its staff, it rightly caused a stir: Yet another corporation’s diversity, equity and inclusion staff parroting a simplistic academic theory. The memo offered the usual assumption that one’s skin colour explains incomes and opportunities, or not. It includes the…
It is wrong to equate individual prejudice with state-sponsored discrimination
The following is an excerpt from The Victim Cult: How The Grievance Culture Hurts Everyone And Wrecks Civilizations by Mark Milke. In this excerpt, Milke details how the “new” definition of racism from Ibram X. Kendi and others hollow out hard facts and reasoned analyses when a monocausal explanation – racism – is offered up…
Crucial to our national security interests and those of our allies
Six years ago, I asked energy companies and others to fund research on why, in addition to being valuable economic commodities, oil and natural gas might be integral to Canada’s and our allies’ security interests. My theory was that Canadians who usually think only superficially about fossil fuels might be more sympathetic to their development…