Imagine what the Nazis would have done if they had access to today’s social media platforms
I recently showed Steven Spielberg’s classic film about the Holocaust, Schindler’s List, to a group of students. Watching Nazi soldiers terrorizing and murdering Jewish people, I thought to myself that on some level they had to have known that what they were doing was wrong. Yet they seemed to be unaffected. Were they impacted at…
Cancel culture slaughters reputations, leaving its victims to endure financial uncertainty, isolation, bewilderment and pain
The riot that produced the U.S. Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump has its analogue in the cancel culture rampaging through North American institutions. Neither cancels the other, of course. Both are horrid, each in its especially hideous way. The Jan. 6 attack on America’s federal Capitol destroyed institutional property, mobbed and halted the democratic…
In a world where disagreement is misinformation, can debate even exist?
Before 2016, ‘misinformation’ was just another word in the dictionary. As soon as it became clear that Donald Trump’s straight-shooting presidential campaign was serious, and that he would likely become the Republican nominee, ‘misinformation’ became a strategy. Anything that left Trump’s mouth that media pundits or Democrats considered distasteful, or even just phrased in a…
Fortunately, some writers and thinkers still believe in healthy debate and intellectual discourse on the environment. One of them is Peter Foster
U.S. President Joe Biden’s first day in the White House included signing 17 executive orders. Three of them related directly to the environment: rejoining the Paris agreement on climate change, revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and reviewing regulatory measures pertaining to industries with high emissions. These executive orders were expected to materialize…
By Thomas York Research Associate Frontier Centre for Public Policy In light of the mainstream media coverage of riots and protests in the U.S. in recent months and the questionable claim by some in the media that the riots were “mostly peaceful protests,” the distinction between violent and peaceful protest is worthy of examination. In…
Knowledge dies when starved of criticism
University administrators and student unions are tearing down something more important than statues. These self-appointed censors are dismantling the dialectic method bequeathed to us by Socrates and generations of scholars, triggering a brain drain away from academia. Neither arcane nor novel, the rigorous, timeless methodology at stake means examining, discussing, and arguing opposing ideas to…
As the world’s favoured search engine, dominant email service and most popular video provider, Google has immense power over public opinion
“The Google of today is a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet,” reads the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the tech giant. The document filed on Oct. 20 alleges the company has used exclusionary agreements to block out competitors. Google accounts for 80 per cent of U.S. internet searches and 30 per cent of U.S.…
This obsession with identity can do nothing good for a society that values equality of treatment of all its people
On my desk is a commemorative plate honouring the 1966 Grey Cup champions, the Saskatchewan Roughriders. It includes the pictures of Canadian Football League legend Ronnie Lancaster and his teammates. A quick scan of these portraits reveals something odd: just three of the players are black. If one looks at the rosters of other CFL…
'Defund the police’ movement does nothing to address the root causes of criminality
The year is not yet over, and Calgary has already recorded more than 26 homicides, after 20 in 2019. Edmonton has witnessed a 90 per cent spike in assaults with weapons or causing bodily harm. Unbelievably, rather than tackling this escalating violence head-on, officials have joined a utopian crusade against police. Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson…
Violent extremism is not just a trait of Islamists or the far right
By now it should be abundantly clear that violent extremism is not just a trait of Islamists or the far right. Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots have resulted in dozens of deaths this year, multiple police officers wounded and blinded, and entire districts of American cities burned down in the name of racial justice.…