You would think, given the intersectional ideology that seems to have gripped the imagination of North America’s chattering classes, that the persecution of a woman who happens to be of Lebanese descent would be a pretty big deal. After all, we’ve heard repeatedly that Western democracies are domineering patriarchies. Anti-Muslim bias is a blot on the Canadian body politic. So if any Canadian institution (let alone a university) targeted a Lebanese-Canadian woman, you would think there would be righteous indignation. But not so fast! Rima Azur is an associate professor at Mount Allison University. I’ll let you guess her gender…
There is a particularly pernicious and stupid proverb that I hear repeated mindlessly and it drives me crazy: “It takes a village to raise a child.” What does that mean? It asserts that the key success factor for raising healthy and happy children is a community, the macro-environment. One problem with that theory, however. It’s a lie. Everything we know from social science screams that the single most important factor is an intact family, a unit where there is husband and wife living with their biological children under the same roof. I encountered the following statistic that divides the American…
I am writing this blog-post on the morning of Saturday April 18th after learning that a stay-at-home order has been extended in Ontario until May 20th. At one time I was charitable and attributed the actions of all three levels of government to incompetence driven by at its core a legitimate fear. But it’s past time giving these authoritarians the benefit of the doubt. They are ignoring the science. They are ignoring the objective and incontrovertible facts. Nietzsche, who understood the human condition, said it best: “There is will to power where there is life… the will to power is…
This past Sunday afternoon, Minneapolis police officers pulled over 20-year-old Duante Wright for a traffic violation. Body-cam video shows that he was taken from the car and one policeman was trying to handcuff him when the young man broke away and jumped back into the driver’s seat of his vehicle. A second officer, Kim Potter, came to her partner’s aid and several times threatened to “tase” him before she fired, as it turned out, not a taser but a handgun. She pulled the trigger once, then seemed to realize with horror that she had put a bullet into Mr. Wright…
United Airlines made an announcement several days ago that has caused a bit of a stir, at least in some circles: “Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color.” This led Tucker Carlson (a commentator that more often than not hits the nail on its head) to criticize the policy. To summarize Mr. Carlson’s argument: It’s hard (i.e. impossible) to justify how this policy will make flying safer. …
Last week, US President Joe Biden laid out plans to raise the US corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 28%. This would roll back the cuts that Donald Trump had enacted several years earlier. It is almost certain that the Republican Party, seemingly directionless, will oppose this change. And as a general rule, I would agree that this specific proposal is a bad idea. High taxes (relatively speaking) on corporate profits damage an economy. It’s not hard to understand why: Capital is far more mobile than labour, and if taxes are lower in one nation, money will water-like…