In my latest piece for NP Platformed (subscription only, so please get one if you haven’t already) I deplore the tendency of courts to uphold breaches of our rights on sociological not legal grounds.
In my latest National Post column, I warn that reflexively scoffing at the rubes who don’t like sending their money to Quebec and think they can stop it would be disastrous.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the answer to declining social trust, including on COVID lockdowns and vaccines, isn’t to shame and silence people, it’s to have an intelligent and respectful discussion. Which apparently now makes me a kook.
“If persons do not behave in accordance with their own economic self-interest, objectively defined and measured, on what basis do they act?... The economist is well-equipped to recognize mush for what it is, and when noneconomists hypothesize that persons want to ‘do good,’ he quickly detects the absence of predictive content.”
“Is Constitutional Revolution Possible in Democracy?” in Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy
“Once the memory of the past grows dim, we will forget who we are and why we exist as a people. Poised ready to relish the pleasure of the moment, without regard for how we became a free society, we risk losing all.”
Solveig Eggerz in Joseph Baldacchino Educating for Virtue
“‘The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please,’ wrote Edmund Burke, the hero of American conservatives, ‘we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.’”
David Frum Dead Right
In my latest National Post column I say nobody won the election and things won’t improve until the parties admit it and accept their share of the blame.
“there is an immense amount of pleasure to be derived from the sense of private ownership. It is surely no accident that every man has affection for himself: nature meant this to be so. Selfishness is condemned, and justly, but selfishness is not simply to be fond of oneself, but to be excessively fond.”
Aristotle The Politics.