Xerxes, my friend the former left-wing columnist (who seems to have decided to clip his wings), wants the Beatitudes revised. He feels they no longer apply in modern times. Are there indeed new problems or issues to which they should refer, but do not? Xerxes cites drug overdose deaths. This is indeed currently an epidemic problem, but in principle, not new. Alcohol was a drug, and potentially a deadly drug, available in Jesus’s time. Not to mention hemp or opium, which seem to have been known. We must assume that Jesus did not consider this a moral issue, or an important moral issue ..read more

  Canada is gaining an international reputation for all the wrong things. Elon Musk has chipped in on Justin Trudeau’s “Online Harms Bill,” that “This sounds insane if accurate! Community notes, please check.” Specifically, according to a tweet he reposted, it “will give police the power to retroactively search the Internet for ‘hate speech‘ violations, and arrest offenders, even if the offense occurred before the law existed.” Is this true? Apparently so. Community notes responded: it applies if “a person communicates or causes to be communicated hate speech so long as the hate speech ..read more

  ... and he's right. 'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade ..read more

  Small Dead Animals reports that mortgage defaults are rising quickly on commercial properties. It stands to reason: the rise in interest rates hurts commercial property owners just as it hurts residential owners. But with the growth in telecommuting, and the boost it got from the Covid lockdowns, commercial vacancy rates are 20-23%. People are working from home. We have too much commercial space. The problem is almost its own solution. Too much office space; too little residential space. We need to convert office buildings to apartments.  These buildings will generally be high a ..read more

  The Irish immigration situation is ironic. The UK voted to leave the EU mostly because the common people were alarmed at the levels of immigration, in particular “asylum seekers.” They felt their culture was being lost. It was urgent to take control of their own immigration policy. They could not so long as they belonged to the EU.  Ireland cut up a fuss, demanding that the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland be kept open and unrestricted—they did not want a more divided Ireland. Now the Irish general public is also up in arms. They fought Britain for centuries to e ..read more

  The common wisdom is that Justin Trudeau’s poll numbers are collapsing now because people are tired of his government. There is a natural cycle, and nobody stays in for more than about ten years. That’s what the established punditry wants you to believe. Because they like Trudeau’s policies, and hope they continue. I think this is wrong. Canada is actually unusual among democracies for keeping governments and leaders they like in power for a long time: Mackenzie King, Ontario’s Big Blue Machine, Smallwood in Newfoundland, Hatfield in New Brunswick, the Tories in Alberta, Duplessis in ..read more

  You want the truth? Resentful radical leftists took over the Faculties of Education in the 1960s. Now they control the entire K-12 system and half (half!) of all state budgets. The Ed schools are among the worst faculties in the increasingly demented universities. Every bit of the "research" they have conducted in the last sixty years was a lie: whole word reading, multiple intelligences, self-esteem. Nothing but destructive. Their students are by and large lazy, unintelligent, uninterested and ideologically captured. The worst of them become administrators. These are the people to wh ..read more

  \ 'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade ..read more

  I am uncomfortable with the increasingly common use of the term “diaspora.” Before the 1960s, there was only one “diaspora” in common usage: the Jewish diaspora. Nowadays, everyone sees themselves as part of a diaspora. There is the African diaspora, the Irish diaspora, the Italian diaspora, the Chinese diaspora, and on and on. This implies we believe our proper home is elsewhere. This implies in turn a lack of allegiance to the community in which we reside, and an alienation from our neighbours. This is not a healthy attitude. It seems reasonable in cases when people are actually dr ..read more

  Those on the right are faced now with a common challenge: why is it they generally approve of shutting down the current pro-Hama protests, while they generally objected to shutting down the Freedom Convoy? No, it is not because the pro-Hamas protesters are advocating racism and genocide, while the freedom truckers were simply demanding their freedom and their right to make a living. I approve of the aims of the one protest, and oppose the aims of the other; but that is not the standard. Freedom of speech and the right to petition government applies to everyone. It is because the natu ..read more