David Warren
Canada stands tall
There was a moment this week in which I felt very proud to be Canadian. There could be moments like that in any week, but this one was unusual for its cause. It...
They who confront false gods
We have just celebrated our northern Thanksgiving; and I, for one, am still assimilating an infusion of pheasant, stuffed with wild rice; of lamb shanks, sweet potatoes, corn, apple pie: “enough to kill a...
End our ‘multiuniversities’
Before leaving the topic of, “Education, Need to get government out of,” in my naive Sunday series on “What is to be done,” let me touch specifically on the topic of our universities.
I wrote,...
Redemption through paperbacks
They look so frail, now—this “parcel of Penguins” that has resurfaced from my own distant past. They are from a time less than half a century ago, yet to a person who has lived...
Violence in the name of religion
Allow me to preface today’s thought with a short bibliography (two books). These works will not be assigned: I’ve scanned the one, and read a review of the other. I am nevertheless confident that...
In search of a meaningful education
Gentle reader and I are enduring my series of Sunday columns in which I consider not “what is wrong with the world” but rather, “what would be right?” Last week I touched on the...
A police-patrolled brothel
By striking down all laws that limited the practice of prostitution in Canada, this week, Judge Susan Himel, of the Ontario Superior Court, was doing what all our liberal judges believe themselves to have...
Ban the what?
It would appear that a significant thing has happened—an act of war with extraordinary consequences—without anyone getting visibly upset. Perhaps I am understating: but the cyber worm attack on the Iranian nuclear facility at...
Get the state out of education
If you could completely privatize just one government function, what would that be?
Without much hesitation, my answer to that question would be, education—in the policy sense of, all schools, from the earliest day cares...
Breaking the taboo
In the Swedish Riksdag election this week, 20 seats were won by the “racist, anti-immigrant, far right” Sweden Democrat Party. Only 329 were not.
The opposition to the “SD” is split: 173 seats to the...
The outsider is coming inside
Polls are said to take the pulse of a nation. The pulse of a healthy patient remains fairly stable, with minor fluctuations through the day. A very slight alarm could tip the balance of...
Articulating freedom
In this space last week, I warned my readers that I’d embarked on an eccentric little journey. Inspired, somewhat, by the Tea Party phenomenon in the States, I want to write some columns in...
A beautiful soul
The easiest columns become the hardest to write. When I learned that Anne Roche Muggeridge had died, my first thought was incommunicable; but my second was, I must write a column to tell my...
The biggest non-story of the year
Much has been said and written over the Florida pastor who was threatening to burn copies of the Koran last week—quite amazing quantities of mass media attention, refracted into the electronic “logosphere.” Little I...
Our cynical democracy
Learned a new word this week: “bobbleheads.” More precisely, I learned a new metaphor, having heard the word itself long before, applied to those silly little dolls, with large heads, that bob up and...
