In my latest Loonie Politics column I complain that provincial conservative first minister Doug Ford is just as contemptuous of the legislature as federal liberal first minister Justin Trudeau… and legislators and we citizens let him get away with it.
“Signs of a narcissistic sociopath/ 1. They live in a deluded reality/ 2. They are obsessed with power and control/ 3. They take advantage of and use other people/ 4. They have no moral boundaries/ 5 They have a limited range of emotions/ 6. They have a huge discard pile/ 7. They become hostile when threatened/ 8. They feed off negative energy/ 9. They get bored easily/ 10. They are empty inside”
Arrived in my X feed in January 2024 (with regard to a particular politician but they're not the only ones).
In my latest Epoch Times column I urge people to put aside small-minded, defeatist, timid claims that practically speaking Canada can only have the bad muddled policies it currently does, and write down what they really think is wrong and what they really think would fix it.
In my latest Epoch Times column, I survey the dismal shipwreck of Canada’s former natural ruling party and wonder how anyone might be willing to take the helm as it goes under.
In my latest Epoch Times column I mocked progressive alarm at Jordan Peterson daring to interview Pierre Poilievre, and at either man daring to exist. But I then expressed my own alarm at the way Poilievre makes plausibly right-wing noises without articulating genuine policy alternatives on major issues.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say that Members of Parliament need to be focused on the core, and crumbling, functions of government rather than getting distracted by exotica like advanced research criteria. The state can’t and shouldn’t do everything, and at the moment it’s not doing much of anything properly in Canada, so worry about the tax code not the genetic code, defence not dark matter, and deficits not dilithium. (It’s based on testimony I’m giving before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research on December 10.)
In my latest Mercatornet column I say the election of Donald Trump has certainly had a depressing effect on the giant climate gabfest in Baku but far more as symptom than as cause.
“The character of the process by which the views of the intellectuals influence the politics of tomorrow is therefore of much more than academic interest. Whether we merely wish to foresee or attempt to influence the course of events, it is a factor of much greater importance than is generally understood. What to the contemporary observer appears as the battle of conflicting interests has indeed often been decided long before in a clash of ideas confined to narrow circles. Paradoxically enough, however, in general only the parties of the Left have done most to spread the belief that it was the numerical strength of the opposing material interests which decided political issues, whereas in practice these same parties have regularly and successfully acted as if they understood the key position of the intellectuals. Whether by design or driven by the force of circumstances, they have always directed their main effort toward gaining the support of this ‘elite,’ while the more conservative groups have acted, as regularly but unsuccessfully, on a more naive view of mass democracy and have usually vainly tried directly to reach and to persuade the individual voter.”
Friedrich Hayek “The Intellectuals and Socialism”