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Charlie Kirk’s voice is everywhere. The Zohar teaches that righteous persons are found more in this world after their passing than when they were alive. The righteous live for something larger than their merely mortal self. They emulate the model of continuous self-transcendence that God sets before all His creatures. The things to which the righteous dedicate their lives transcend mere mortality. Their dedication defines their identity, and so their lives transcend mere mortality, and endure and triumph. The final word is not with those who see the whole world as a meaningless competition for power. In a recent podcast, Kirk was engaging a student who was telling him that diversity is the most important of all desiderata. Charlie had a keen sense of when someone’s ideas were not thought through. He had an even keener sense of how to win hearts, not just arguments. He employed facts and logic, but more importantly, his words and demeanor conveyed impeccable respect. He made a space in which his interlocutors felt able to listen, reconsider, and internalize his critique. He did that to perfection in this snippet, proposing to the student that today, a better case could be made for unity than for diversity as our supreme aim. In an age in which diversity has become a shibboleth, Kirk’s criticism was apt and hit home. The diversity that Wokeism promotes is no transcendent value, but rather a word wrenched into a very specific and narrow meaning. It is the linchpin of a kind of modern-day caste system in which one’s social rank is assigned according to one’s group’s standing in a non-debatable hierarchy of victimhood. This woeful system is familiar enough to The American Spectator readers to forgo devoting further space here to its outlines. Kirk’s presentation of the opposite claim was made with such simplicity and understated authority that it revived the concepts of unity and diversity in their natural usage in language, reviving with that a whole world of thought that Wokeism had intentionally obscured.  Unity has a powerful pull to it, enough so that our national motto testifies to its worth — E pluribus unum — out of many one. And any participant in Wokeism knows that its doctrines brook no dissent — in fact, merely to question it is tantamount to heresy. Wokeism demands conformity even in thought; like the Marxist manure that fertilizes its thought, it considers wrong thinking to be a violent assault — and so is ready to use violence to stop thought with which it disagrees, at the very least by creating explicit permission structures for those who will choose to be beloved martyrs of the Woke cause. The biblical tradition that is the foundation of Western civilization has long taught that all of existence is upheld by a Singularity. In the language of the great medieval thinker Moses Maimonides, “The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there is a First Existent through whose true existence all existing things come to be.”  This master concept allows a proper unfolding of a consciousness: the scientific endeavor to probe beneath the outer phenomena of the world for organizing laws; and the moral endeavor to flourish through offering a supreme exemplar of generosity and love — the Creator of Genesis who grants being and consciousness to things which otherwise would not even exist. More profoundly, the love is evident not only in His bearing with His creatures through their inevitable errors but in offering them the possibility of redemption — if only we will take it up. All that was present in Charlie’s simple words. As they so often did, those words hit home and opened up a whole new light in the heart and mind of Charlie’s questioner. The Biblical tradition is quite clear. No one descriptor exhausts all meaning. As in Isaiah’s divine message to King Cyrus of Persia, “I am the One who forms light and creates darkness, who makes peace and creates evil.” Light and dark are mere polarities, each one a partial and complementary expression of the great Oneness. And in light of that complementarity, Isaiah then sets forth to Cyrus the pre-eminent oneness that is God alone: “I am the Lord, and there is no other.” This is the sense of oneness and unity that informed Charlie Kirk, who as he moved forward, came to understand himself more and more as a person of faith, whose loyalty was to God in the first place and to all else only as set in order by that supreme allegiance. For in the biblical standpoint, the value of all things are as they stand within God — light as it serves God’s purpose and darkness as it serves His purpose as well. No more can one thing exist without another than could one have beautiful music with no rests; or than we could discern anything at all with our eyes after looking straight into the sun; or than we could use the power direct from the dynamo at Niagara without stepping it way down before plugging in our laptop. It’s not likely that Kirk was really plugging unity as the supreme concept either. The Nazi slogan ran: “One People, one Reich, one Führer!” That kind of oneness tolerates neither freedom nor freedom’s God. The enforced unity that is the hallmark of every dictatorship, and that is aspired to by the wanna-be totalitarians of Woke is a mockery of the pre-eminent divine unity.  The Unity at the core of biblical civilization is the source of law and its order. It is equally the source and foundation of love. In the Bible, love and law are not contradictory, but complementary. The Biblical Creator brings into existence beings He knows in advance will err, disobey, or rebel. He supports their being even as they rebel against him — they would not exist otherwise. He sees this world in all its imperfection as good and says so six times before the first chapter of His book is through, even saying at the very end “Very good!” An ancient rabbinic tradition, set down in writing not quite 2,000 years ago, declares that “Very good!” was God’s response to His creation of the drive to do evil in the human being. The meaning of this is not the demonically obtuse idea that God wants evil, but rather that there is nothing better in the world than overcoming evil. God is willing to allow contradiction and rejection for the mere possibility of our freely choosing to embrace God and goodness. This is a profound concept of unity. The One includes within Himself the entirety of the universe, which He still continuously transcends. The oneness is at one with the entire world of change and difference and individuality. The oneness is only more profound for this absolute commitment to the goodness of creation.  This oneness informs us from within and from without that we are the likeness of God and He is invested in us all. Within our granted powers, we can meaningfully choose to emulate God’s own self-transcendence and include the lives of others within our own. We can find our own core identity that makes a dynamic, unfolding whole out of our own inner chaos. Simultaneously, we can find the point of unity in the midst of the chaos of our human societies, which we still see consumed by the constant clash of the Hobbesian war of all against all. That was the message Charlie Kirk was bringing to his young counterpart. The final word is not with those who see the whole world as a meaningless competition for power, in which the only moral rule is deference to whoever has higher status in an arbitrary intersectional hierarchy. It is a world without hope, all meanings subverted in advance, so that the least questioning triggers fear and even violence. Charlie made God’s reality palpable to people, speaking with a whole heart and mind. He offered his thoughts to the internal verification of those who would accept his challenge. He needed no coercion. He was demonstrating how the politics of liberty is built upon the “foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdom.”  His presence is felt even more now than in his mortal life. Everyone who gets his message knows he or she must share it.  We will. READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: The Religious Foundations of Freedom and Democracy Empty Words From Western Allies We Can and Will Triumph Over the Subversion of Language and Thought  

For centuries, Catholics around the world attended the celebration of what is often called the Tridentine or Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and was more recently called the Extraordinary Form of the Mass by the late Pope Benedict XVI. The English author and Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh wrote, shortly before the liturgical reforms promulgated by the Second Vatican Council, of the TLM’s influence on generations of Saints and martyrs. “This was the Mass for whose restoration the Elizabethan martyrs had gone to the scaffold. Saint Augustine, St. Thomas à Becket, St. Thomas More, Challoner and Newman would have been perfectly at their ease among us; were, in fact, present there with us,” Waugh wrote. “Their presence would not have been more palpable had we been making the responses aloud in the modern fashion.” Francis’s decisions have empowered modernist bishops to ban priests from celebrating the TLM. While the TLM was quietly carried on by a minority of Catholic priests following the late 1960s, when the Novus Ordo missale became the new standard for the Catholic liturgy, it experienced something of a renaissance in 2007, when Benedict XVI liberalized the celebration of the old Mass with his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. In 2021, however, the late Pope Francis issued his own controversial motu proprio, Traditionis Custodes, largely restricting the celebration of the TLM that so many had come to know and love over the previous decade-and-a-half. Many of those devoted to the TLM wondered why such a reverent and revered gem from the Church’s liturgical treasury would be snatched away from them. For many, the TLM was a uniquely mystical experience, shaping or reshaping body, mind, and soul to contemplate Christ and to place themselves in His presence. In fact, a recent study in the Catholic Social Science Review confirmed that more traditional liturgical practices, including receiving the Eucharist on the tongue, the ringing of consecration bells, and the celebration of the TLM, all serve to foster a more fervent belief in Christ’s true presence in the Eucharist, a core tenet of the Catholic Faith. The study asked participants — English-speaking adult Catholics in the U.S. — to rate their belief in the true presence on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 corresponding to a belief that “bread and wine are symbols of Jesus; I am certain that Jesus is not really present” and 5 indicating that the respondent is “certain that Jesus is really present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.” Catholics who at least sometimes attend the TLM had a higher rate of belief in Christ’s true presence in the Eucharist (an average mean of 3.83 out of 5) than those who have never attended a TLM (3.07 out of 5). The study also found that Catholics who never receive the Eucharist on the tongue, always receive the Eucharist in the hand, insist that the Eucharist should be received in the hand, have never heard consecration bells used, and have a negative perception of the TLM had the lowest rate of belief in the true presence, never rising above an average mean of 3. While not all those who do or ever have attended the TLM are ipso facto predisposed to be saintly and not all those who attend even more secular Novus Ordo Masses are predisposed to be progressive villains, the data does demonstrate that Catholics who attend the TLM have a measurably greater sense of reverence for Christ in the Eucharist and a firmer belief in one of the central pillars of the Catholic Faith. Why, then, is the TLM dying out? In part, as noted, the waning of the TLM is due to Traditionis Custodes. While Benedict XVI’s reign allowed parish priests around the world to offer their congregations this timeless liturgical treasure, Francis’s decisions have empowered modernist bishops to ban priests from celebrating the TLM and make it nearly impossible for parishioners to attend the Mass. One recent example is that of Bishop Michael Martin of the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina. Several parishes in Martin’s diocese had offered the TLM, drawing crowds of hundreds to St. Ann’s and St. Thomas Aquinas’s parishes. On September 28, the last Sunday before Martin’s restrictions were to take place, Catholic News Agency reported that a cumulative 1,200 parishioners attended the two parishes. Despite the flourishing of these parishes, Martin decided to limit celebration of the TLM in his diocese to the Chapel of the Little Flower in the St. Therese Parish in Mooresville, North Carolina, which can seat 350 and is a lengthy drive (nearly an hour from either St. Ann or St. Thomas Aquinas) for most parishioners. In another example, just days before leaving the Diocese of Monterey, California for his new assignment replacing Bishop Joseph Strickland in Tyler, Texas, Bishop Daniel Garcia stripped the faithful of the TLM. In Brooklyn, Bishop Robert Brennan has had to cut down the number of TLMs available — in this case, not due to the restrictions of Traditionis Custodes but because of a dwindling number of priests available to serve parishioners. Ironically, the problems that are causing the waning of the TLM — both progressive or modernist bishops and their harmful, unnecessary restrictions and the low number of priestly vocations — might be remedied were the TLM more widely available. There, good Catholic men and good Catholic women could start good Catholic families and raise good Catholic sons who would go on to become faithful priests and even faithful bishops. After all, as Waugh observed, it was the beloved TLM that inspired centuries of martyrs to cling to their Faith, even at the expense of their lives. Such fervor, one might think, would be a welcome component of parish life for Catholic bishops. READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: How the SPLC Targets Catholics and Other Christians Chicago’s Cardinal Doubles Down on Honoring Pro-Abortion Politician Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Is Evidence of Spiritual Warfare

While Georgetown University administrators should be lauded for removing the violence-promoting recruiting flyers that were posted throughout the Catholic campus for the ANTIFA-affiliated John Brown Club, it is important to determine how the hateful flyers were allowed to be posted on buildings and bulletin boards in the first place. Carrying the slogan  “Hey Fascist, Catch This!” along with a recruitment QR code,  Georgetown students, staff, and faculty were confronted with the flyers as they walked through campus last week. Taking their name from the famous — and violent — abolitionist John Brown, several of the chapters have now adopted a pro-trans ideology. Emerging on September 24th on flyer boards in Village A, a Georgetown student housing complex, the second wave was posted in broad daylight the next day on campus activity boards and public posting areas throughout “Red Square,” the Georgetown University central free speech area on campus. Obviously fearful of retaliation for attempting to remove the violence-promoting posters on a campus that has stifled the speech of many conservative students for decades, no one attempted to remove the hateful posters until sophomore student  Shae McInnis, Treasurer of the Georgetown College Republicans, discovered the posters and reported them to university authorities. Describing the posters as threatening and explicitly referencing the assassination of Charlie Kirk, McInnis stated that the flyers were a “direct threat to conservative students” and called attention to their violent rhetoric, including slogans such as “Hey fascist! Catch!” The posters proclaimed themselves to be the “only political group that celebrates when Nazis die.” In a comment to reporters at Fox News, McInnis said: I read this immediately as a threat, not only for me but for everyone on this campus … Every conservative, everyone that just doesn’t subscribe to the prevailing leftist orthodoxy. This is a direct threat against them. It means that there are students on this campus who would want to see conservatives dead rather than engaging with their ideas. The Independent reported that the QR code on the hateful flyers posted at Georgetown led to a contact form which reads: “We’re building a community that’s done with ceremonial resistance and strongly worded letters. If you want to make a real change in your community, let us now [sic] below.” Activists from the left-wing Georgetown John Brown Club — likely an affiliate of the John Brown Gun Club — most likely chose the university as a “safe space” for their hateful recruiting posters because of the its long history of promoting progressive causes, and the school’s historic willingness to stifle the speech of campus conservatives. There have been several attempts to silence conservative voices on campus including a well-publicized 2017 incident when a Catholic student group called Love Saxa came under fire for publishing an op-ed in the student newspaper promoting Catholic teachings on marriage between one man and one woman. Accused of promoting hate speech, the LGBTQ organization on campus demanded that Love Saxa lose student affairs recognition and funding from the university. And although the group was able to retain its funding from student affairs budget, the group never recovered from its stigmatized status on campus. As of 2025, Love Saxa is no longer publicly listed among Georgetown’s active student organizations and there is no recent evidence of its continued presence on campus after the attempts to shut it down. Due to a growing number of speech-related controversies, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has given Georgetown University a poor rating for campus expression. In its 2026 College Free Speech Rankings, Georgetown received an overall “F” grade, placing 129th out of 257 institutions. Ironically, Charlie Kirk had been scheduled to speak at Georgetown University but the event was cancelled due to progressive protests on campus and “concerns for safety.” Because of the difficult environment that conservative students face on campus, it will likely be even more difficult to determine exactly who posted the hateful flyers. What is clear is that the John Brown Gun Club is rapidly expanding its presence on social media and making inroads onto progressive college campuses. With provocative slogans like “Gun Rights are Trans Rights,” the group promotes armed resistance and has circulated rhetoric that appears to endorse violence against ideological opponents. While the John Brown Gun Club may present itself as a loose coalition of community defense groups, its reach is anything but marginal. Dozens of chapters operate across the United States, from Puget Sound to Central Florida, with active cells in Texas, California, Ohio, and the Northeast — as well as the Washington DC metro area. They are quickly spreading throughout the United States.  A chapter in West Virginia, John Brown’s Mountaineer Gun Club, launched in August 2022 and has amassed 1,180 followers just on Twitter.  Describing themselves as providing “leftist direct action,” and committed to  “anti-racist, queer liberating, fash-bashing, rural representing” causes. What is identified as the DMV John Brown Gun Club affiliate — referring to the regional chapter of the John Brown Gun Club operating in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) area — is part of the network of far-left, anti-fascist groups that promote armed community defense, often with a focus on racial justice and opposition to police and state authority. The DMV John Brown Gun Club gained some publicity back in in 2022 when a member of the DMV chapter tweeted that, “The Supreme Court justices should not know a moment of comfort.” Though loosely affiliated, all chapters of the John Brown Gun Club share a common ideological framework rooted in anti-police, anti-fascism, and armed resistance. Originally formed in Kansas in 2002, the John Brown Gun Club has since spun off into an assortment of John Brown Gun Club groups that purport to be heavily armed and devoted to promoting racial equality and social justice. Taking their name from the famous — and violent — abolitionist John Brown, several of the chapters have now adopted a pro-trans ideology. On several of their websites or Twitter pages, John Brown Gun Clubs display posters proclaiming that “Gun Rights are Trans Rights.” The Elm Fork chapter of the John Brown Gun Club, based in Texas, is one of the most vocal and visible branches advocating for trans rights. Known for its left-wing armed presence at drag events and LGBTQ+ gatherings, Elm Fork positions itself as a defender of marginalized communities, particularly trans individuals.  A few years ago, armed members of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club provided armed guards at the Drag Show Brunch in Texas. While other John Brown Gun Club chapters may share similar values, Elm Fork stands out for its public activism and willingness to use armed resistance to anyone who is protesting Children’s Drag Queen events. This alignment between armed resistance and trans advocacy underscores the group’s broader strategy of blending progressive identity politics with militant tactics. On February 25, 2025,  The Washington Post reported on the movement of transgendered activists to advocate for arming their community. The article caused concern for many of its readers because the published interviews with photos of gun-toting trans individuals in the article revealed suicidal — and even homicidal — ideation. One of those interviewed, May Alejandro Rodriguez,  told a Post reporter that:  “A lot of trans people kind of share the sentiment of death before detransition … If our hormones are taken away, we’d rather just kill ourselves. So, we’re not going out without a fight.” Once they were notified, Georgetown’s leadership acted swiftly to end the extremist messaging on its campus bulletin boards. In addition to the recruitment posters, there were posters on campus explicitly celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk with a photo of his face with his eyes blacked out and the words “Follow your Leader” and “Rest in P*ss” under his picture. The  fact that the flyers for the John Brown Club were posted and allowed to remain for two days — while the entire community walked past them — suggests that the university’s ideological intimidation has chilled speech sufficiently so that no one, except for the courageous Shae McInniss, felt compelled to do anything about them. READ MORE from Anne Hendershott: Can Artificial Intelligence Reduce the Left-Wing Bias in University Classrooms? Not in the Neighborhood: Ms. Rachel’s Radical Departure From Mr. Rogers’ Moral Compass Furries Are Having a Dangerous Cultural Moment

I just finished teaching Viktor Frankl’s masterpiece, Man’s Search for Meaning. A day later, Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus, much like the one that I teach at. Charlie Kirk and those like him have been repeatedly portrayed as fascists and Neo-Nazis, though they are neither. However, since this premise has been used to justify and celebrate his assassination,  I offer the lessons of a man who survived Nazism and the death camps as therepeia — a healing — for my damaged country. Frankl’s lesson is clear, biology is not what drives human existence, meaning is. In the final pages of Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl recounts the story of walking with a friend of his after they were liberated from Auschwitz. Walking arm in arm, his friend pulled him through a field of green crops. Frankl, for his part, managed to stammer something about not crushing the crops, which sent his friend flying into a rage. “You don’t say!,” raged the friend, “And hasn’t enough been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed … and you would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats.” The words strike at the heart, for being wrongly imprisoned, tortured, and losing a spouse and child are all horrible things that can befall a human being. I imagine they struck Frankl in such a way, which makes what he said next almost unbelievable. Only slowly could these men be guided to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been worse than the loss of a few thousand stalks of oats. Let that sink in. Frankl claimed the idea that no one has the right to do wrong, even those who have had wrong done to them, was commonplace. Yet as I watch the videos of people celebrating Kirk’s murder and listen to people calling him horrible names, I cannot help but conclude that what was once commonplace is no longer common. To watch and read these reactions is to glimpse the face of the lost and morally destitute man from Frankl’s story. I see the fury of one who feels they have been victimized for no reason and who concludes, wrongly, that this justifies his conduct in destroying that which belongs to his neighbor. I see the inhumane treatment of a thing was enough to prompt correction from a survivor of one of the world’s human atrocities — the Holocaust — and I am left to wonder what Frankl would say if he were alive to see the reaction to Kirk’s murder. I think Frankl would remind us of three things. First, Frankl would say that there is no absolute metric that we can use to measure suffering. Frankl describes suffering like a gas, it fills the entirety of the space where it has been unleashed. For those of us who have listened to truly depressed people, we well know that depression and despair seep into every corner of the soul. If suffering saturates man’s inner world, it follows that suffering cannot be compared in a meaningful way. If one thinks back to the times they have compared their suffering to another’s, one cannot escape the conclusion that we only compare our suffering to another’s when we wish to belittle either them or ourselves. Second, Frankl would likely tell us how he and his fellow prisoners could tell who would die next with frightening accuracy. It was not physical hardiness that kept people alive, it was the meaning they found in bearing their (pointless) suffering. When they imagined they would soon be set free, only to have their hopes dashed, some could no longer sustain a sense of meaning, and they passed on in short order. Frankl’s lesson is clear, biology is not what drives human existence, meaning is. Where are we to find this meaning? That seems to be the question my gen z students seem most perplexed by. Our culture orients our aims and aspirations and it provides us with the tools we need to explain the meaning of our lives to ourselves and our fellows. At present, our culture orients all of our attention inward, towards our desires, our happiness, and our frustrations. Such a culture cannot cultivate the virtues necessary to sustain a democratic republic. Finally, I think Frankl would say that America civilization is floundering, and we have a responsibility to turn its course so that it might catch a strong headwind and sail into the future. Just as the wind can be harnessed to power a ship across the ocean, so Frankl would remind us that our common moral intuitions are what drives civilization. Those whose only possession was their naked existence, whose only freedom was found in how they bore their sufferings, they understood they were still called to be saints. They were called to suffer well and to suffer for something greater than themselves. That is why Frankl reprimanded his friend who pulled him into an oat field, because there is nothing moral about responding to injustice by committing injustices of your own. I have found myself pondering these lessons as I consider the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk. He handed a microphone to people and asked them what they thought about things. He regarded these people as his fellows and he showed them the respect of disagreeing with them publicly. In short, he pushed them to question their assumptions because he intuited that the discourse in most classrooms only pushed in a leftward direction. Kirk, therefore, offered a service to universities that they were loathe to offer themselves — a religiously informed defense of America’s founding ideals and principles. Kirk was fearless in saying what he believed to be true given his considerable time spent reading, thinking, and writing about political, cultural, and religious issues. He could have chosen death for his opponents, but he chose dialogue instead. After Auschwitz, that is the responsibility of all people who would live in a free society. READ MORE: Operation Divide MAGA Charlie Kirk and America’s Crisis of Meaning Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Exposes the Depth of America’s Moral Crisis  

Canada should be one of the world’s best countries to live in, and for many people it once was. Possessing vast natural resources and reserves of energy (exceeding those of the U.S. on a per capita basis), endless natural space (as the world’s second-largest country), adequate infrastructure, no enemies, a parliamentary democracy, and an educated population, it should face no problems beyond the winters. A third issue is that Canada is now nearly unaffordable for most of its citizens. The property prices in Vancouver and Toronto are among the world’s highest, so that an average house costs $1.7 and $1.4 million dollars respectively. But a decade under the former Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has reduced a first-world country to the level of a failing, although not yet a failed, state. The strains of O Canada are giving way to cries of Woe Canada, while the recent book by the journalist Tristin Hopper (Don’t be Canada: How One Country Did Everything Wrong All at Once) documents the national malaise with many examples of stagnation, incompetence, and folly. Epithets such as “a woke dystopia” and “the sick man of North America” are now heard. Where did it all go so wrong? Canada’s most urgent self-inflicted problem is the stagnant economy, which has been ailing since 2015. Canada has the largest increases in government spending and the second-slowest growth in GDP per capita in the G7, averaging a mere 0.6 percent per annum for two decades, or half the U.S. rate. Chronic under-investment has produced low productivity, and even government pension plans direct much of their investment towards more profitable U.S. companies in a slow death spiral as manufacturing capacity is hollowed out. Business is mired in red tape, and the jobless rate is at 7 percent. Household debt relative to GDP is the highest within the G7. Gross national debt has grown faster than in all advanced countries for the last decade, now increasing at $109 million per day and amounting to over $40,000 per taxpayer for federal debt, plus a similar figure provincially.  The pale pink Liberal government under Mark Carney plans to run huge deficits for the next four years ($57 billion p.a.), much higher than under Trudeau, whose deficit for the last year before Covid was then the largest in seven years at a mere $25 billion.  The Canadian dollar, once at parity with the U.S., today is worth about 70 cents. The economist Dave Chapple describes Canada as the “worst developed country in the world,” with:  – The housing costs of New York – The wages of Mississippi (but the prices of California) – The same-sized economy as Alabama – Taxes higher than in any of the 50 United States.  A second problem is bloated government, and an unbound sense of entitlement among the nomenklatura. Public servants comprise nearly a quarter of the population, each costing $172,000 annually on average. Canada is over-regulated, but under-governed. The ten provincial governments have mixed records, but the federal government falls between lame and broken, as shown by the analysis of the political commentator Andrew Coyne in his book The Crisis in Canadian Democracy. Canada flounders under weak and semi-functional central government, so that, for example, after 160 years it is only now attempting to lift interprovincial tariff barriers to trade.  It also struggles with gerrymandered ridings, highly inequitable representation, cronyism, and a sometimes corrupt selection process for candidates and party leaders. These failings are mainly due to the inflated role of the Prime Minister, who functions not only as the head of government but also as de facto head of state, with powers exceeding those of the U.S. presidency. The PM controls almost everything as a personal fiefdom, including the legal and financial systems, and knows that the MPs of his party will never contradict him, so that he rules over an obedient legislature as a “democratic” dictator. Thus the Liberals, the perpetual ruling party, in 2015 selected as their leader the photogenic Trudeau, a 43 year-old former drama coach lacking experience or wisdom, and MPs acquiesced as he turned Canada into the world’s most woke country, with disastrous policies for the economy, energy, the law, indigenous issues, and mass immigration. (The public was less impressed: abuse was heaped on him by angry crowds by the end of his reign). National institutions such as the postal service, the public broadcasting network, passenger trains, and Medicare, are all dead or moribund, but devour billions in ever-rising public subsidies. The “Conservative” party offers alternatives which roughly correspond to the policies of the UK Labour party. A third issue is that Canada is now nearly unaffordable for most of its citizens. The property prices in Vancouver and Toronto are among the world’s highest, so that an average house costs $1.7 and $1.4 million dollars respectively, while wages have fallen well behind, and family incomes average $74,000. (Three quarters of Canadians live in large cities, where these problems are the worst). Food and transport are also a problem for most people, as are very high taxes. About a tenth of the population has to rely on food banks.  Young people, facing straightened futures in rental accommodations, are now more conservative in polls than their elders: socialism is not working for them. Seniors suffer because the Medicare system is slowly dying, so that despite paying taxes for Medicare they are often forced to use semi-licit private clinics, where they receive good care at a premium price.  The fourth failure is seen in the snarled, inept justice system, which has devolved into a system based on “inverse culpability” (IC). Minor misdeeds, like traffic violations, are punished briskly and there are fines for not turning off the motor promptly or for failing to brush all the snow from one’s car. But repeat drunk-driving offenders continue to reoffend regardless. Likewise, speech that is deemed hateful can lead to years of imprisonment, but actual assaults or homicides often result in no more than a slap on the wrist. Corruption, often semi-legal, is pervasive, and bail is almost automatic, even for violent criminals. Judges must apply the “Gladue principle” that mandates lighter penalties for indigenous miscreants due to their victimhood.  The extremes of IC are exemplified by the way that an angler in Nova Scotia risks a fine of $100,000 for failing to kill a small invasive fish, or $500,000 for a second offence. Amy Hamm, a gender-skeptical nurse, was recently fined $93,000 for putting up a billboard saying “I ♥ J. K. Rowling.” Compare this with the six-year prison sentence given to Inderjit Singh Reyat in connection with the bombing of Air India flight 182, which killed 329 people in 1985. A fifth problem is a recent flood of immigration. Canada has admitted half a million newcomers annually (half from Asia), one of the world’s highest rates, thus contributing to severe housing shortages; a quarter of the population is now foreign born. Many immigrants become assimilated and succeed in areas like business, academe, and the professions. But not all cultures are equal to the challenge: dozens of lethal ethnic gangs have proliferated in cities like Vancouver and Toronto, and murderous conflicts between Sikhs and Hindus simmer. Over half of all Canadians believe that the inflow of migrants is too rapid.   There are other national failures: the perennial English/French/Aboriginal lack of national unity, the substandard conditions of life on reserves, the lawless homeless encampments in big cities, an epidemic of opioid deaths, and rising rates of crime and drug abuse (car theft is rampant). A common factor, the sentimental national characteristic of wishing to see everyone (except white males) in the best possible light, means that every failing is attributed to victimhood, producing a ludicrous woke culture.  There is embarrassment, not pride, over Canada’s past accomplishments, so that statues of her national founders like Sir John A. McDonald are hidden away behind plywood sheets on grounds of political incorrectness. The mighty projects of the past, like the “impossible” transcontinental railroad, the Trans-Canada highway, and the St. Lawrence Seaway, which brings ocean-going ships into the heart of the continent, are almost unthinkable in today’s climate of national self-doubt, self-hatred, attacks on “white privilege,” and performative displays of virtue. Although some national projects are now mooted by Carney, recent billion-dollar publicly funded fiascos such as failed battery plants raise doubts, as do the foolish choices made by bureaucrats in handing out public money (for example, $9 million for a company that produces edible crickets, or $20 million that will “focus on improving gender-responsive and climate-resilient agricultural practices” in Tanzania).  Canada’s problems resemble those of countries such as Australia or Germany (although worse), and appear insoluble without major upheaval. Conrad Black has noted that most countries go through periods of regression, predicting that Canada will eventually shake off its politically correct obsessions and recover a sense of purpose. If this reset occurs, it would be a nice irony that Donald Trump, although reviled here for his attacks on Canada, DEI, anti-patriotism, transgenderism, and public disorder, may through them have spurred a national reawakening for Canada.  READ MORE: Steelmanning Tariffs The UN Wants a New State Bent on the West’s Destruction The Empire Strikes Out on Canada Leo Standing is a retired experimental psychologist and academic.

Aesop’s Fables have been a tool to shape the morals and minds of children for generations, possibly none more than “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” When a shepherd boy, bored of keeping his flock, calls for aid from the village when no wolf threatens his safety, he was left with no one willing to believe him when the wolf finally came to pasture. While the allegorical shepherd boy was meant to warn us of the dangers of making false claims, the abortion lobby apparently was raised without this same moral guidance. Their newest cry: restrictions on abortion in pro-life states are fueling the OB-GYN shortage.  Leading up to the Dobbs decision, frenzied further by the leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court in May 2022, the abortion lobby told all who would listen of the dystopia that would result from the overturning of Roe. Women would be forced to return to coat hanger abortions in the dark back alleys. They cried contraception would be wiped from the shelves and the Court would not stop at stripping away “reproductive rights,” but rights previously upheld under the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses would be the next to fall.  While restrictions on abortion have been proven a sheep in wolves clothing, abortion advocates must now face … the permanent loss of public trust. While we rightfully should be concerned with the safety of women and basic human rights — which abortion is unequivocally not, there has yet to be a wolf when the world comes to the aid of abortion advocates. Since Dobbs, the abortion lobby has been making a similar cry to prey on the empathetic American, purporting that legal restrictions on abortion are driving physicians, particularly OB-GYNS, from pro-life states.  Abortion advocates wish to obfuscate the very real issue of maternal health deserts in rural parts of our nation, ignoring the confounding variables to blame shift this gap in care onto abortion policy. Recent attention has been on the story of Bonner General Health in Sandpoint, Idaho where the hospital announced ending its obstetrical care due to the “legal and political climate” of the state. However, the hospital’s press release on the matter does not cite obstetrician staffing as a contributing factor, instead noting the loss of pediatrician coverage for neonatal and perinatal care as well as changing demographics resulting in a “nationwide decrease in births.” Idaho has been more broadly a talking point for abortion advocates as the state has lost nearly a third of their obstetricians since 2022. One study of Idaho obstetricians found the majority who left the practice in 2024 retired, moved from rural to urban practice within the state, shifted their practice to gynecology only, or moved to another part of the state to practice. Even if the others who moved to a less abortion restrictive state to practice did so merely due to the pro-life laws in Idaho, that only highlights the motivation for their practice: placing their ability to perform an abortion over the needs of women facing maternal care deserts.  Correlation does not equal causation, and, in reality, Idaho is simply an outlier. Another study that noted the increase of physician concern about providing “reproductive healthcare” also found the number of OB-GYNs was increasing nationally, opposing the narrative abortion advocates wish to spin. States without access to abortion or those where some restrictions are in place actually are increasing their OB-GYN care at rates higher than those who have enshrined abortion protections following Dobbs.  Trends show dying rural healthcare economies, spurred by socioeconomically disparate populations lacking access to health insurance, are far more often the culprit for these deserts. Given the data, it would be intellectually dishonest to attribute increasing maternal health deserts to abortion law. Instead, we must work to ensure equal access to healthcare by closing the gap for the uninsured and establishing new federally qualified health centers equipped to provide comprehensive obstetric care.  The abortion lobby is crying wolf, and now, we must learn from the villagers. We must not trust the cries of those proven to mislead the proverbial village and take up watch for wolves ourselves. While restrictions on abortion have been proven a sheep in wolves clothing, abortion advocates must now face a wolf of their own creation: the permanent loss of public trust. If you cry “wolf” enough times, you might just summon one.  READ MORE: Catholic Cognitive Dissonance Illinois Law Mandates On-Campus Abortion Services Enforce Comstock: End ‘Mail-Order’ Abortions Gavin Oxley is the Media Relations Manager for Americans United for Life. Follow him on X @realgavinoxley.

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize has gone to María Corina Machado, one of the most prominent faces of Venezuelan opposition. The committee’s language is familiar — “rights,” “peaceful transition” — but the story behind it is not. Machado’s record combines volunteer election networks with long-running feuds over foreign funding which antedate Maduro; her name has appeared in cases allegedly tied to efforts to unseat the government — charges she rejects. If the Nobel Peace Prize still holds any measure of significance, Trump should have won — without hesitation. The award lifts an internal struggle onto a global stage and drops it into a fresh context: for much of the year, chatter about a “Nobel for Trump” hung in the air, and the very idea of what counts as peacemaking is once again up for debate far beyond Caracas. From Steel Dynasty to Political Underground María Corina Machado is an engineer by training and a figure in Venezuela’s opposition over the past two decades. Born in Caracas to a family linked to the industrial group SIVENSA, she studied at the Andrés Bello Catholic University and later at IESA, Venezuela’s leading management school. Early exposure to the family business and an affinity for market-friendly ideas shaped her public profile: an emphasis on entrepreneurship, privatization, and integration with global markets. Her biggest surge in politics came in 2023, when she won opposition primaries by a wide margin. Banned from running in federal elections, she and her team faced inspections and arrests. Since 2024, Machado has been largely absent from public events; her statements come via video with her whereabouts undisclosed. Why Oslo Chose Her In announcing its decision, the Nobel Committee said it was honoring María Corina Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” The Nobel announcement landed amid one of the most charged moments in U.S. – Venezuela relations in years. The Trump White House has initiated a military intervention strategy as a “war on narcotics” and a push to restore regional stability — with an eye directed at Maduro’s Venezuela. Against that backdrop, the Nobel Prize for Machado carries added meaning. For those on the “left,” it looks like moral recognition of a dissident whose cause aligned with the language of freedom and democratic rights. For much of the year, Washington hummed with talk of a “Nobel for Trump.”  Supporters pointed to a record of accomplishments that few modern leaders could match. The Abraham Accords, signed during his first term, had already redefined Israel’s ties with its neighbors. Machado’s recognition is notable given the growing number of voices throughout the past year that called for the American president to receive the prize. The leaders of the governments of Israel, Cambodia, Rwanda, Pakistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Gabon have all publicly stated they would support Trump receiving the prize, recognizing his role in ending conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and now the Israeli-Hamas war.  Moreover, he is credited with having stopped wars between Thailand and Cambodia and the real possibility of war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. Mostly unmentioned but perhaps most significantly, Trump’s destruction of the Iranian nuclear program must be credited with being the most potent action against nuclear proliferation and regional instability in decades. When the Oslo announcement finally came, the first official reaction was from White House communications director Stephen Cheung, who wrote on X: “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.” The response inside the administration captures the reality of what happened — the award to Machado was meant to send a political message rather than recognize concrete results. Asked about the decision during a press conference in Tajikistan, even Russian President Vladimir Putin took a more measured view: “Whether the current U.S. president deserves the Nobel Prize, I don’t know,” he said, “but he really does a lot to resolve long-standing crises that have dragged on for years or even decades.” Putin added that the Nobel Committee had previously given the Peace Prize to people who had “done nothing for peace,” a remark that many interpreted as both an acknowledgment of Trump’s efforts and a subtle critique of the committee’s politics. A Symbolic Jab at Trump? For many observers, the decision in Oslo was less about the politics of Machado than about the ongoing tug-of-war between Donald Trump and the modern liberal establishment. Trump represents the opposite of what the Nobel Committee traditionally rewards. He stands for a more forceful, nationalistic approach to international politics, not the liberal globalism Oslo prefers. The Peace Prize long ago turned into a political award for loyalty to the global liberal order — exactly what Trump has spent his career challenging. If the Nobel Peace Prize still holds any measure of significance, Trump should have won — without hesitation. As the Nobel Prize website itself states: “With regard to the Peace Prize, the will of Alfred Nobel stipulated that it was to be awarded to the person “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Only Donald J. Trump satisfies that criteria today. Trump the Anti-Hero No doubt Machado is fighting for a worthy cause, but she is a participant in a domestic political fight, not a peacemaker ending global conflicts. Yet, it really does not matter: the Nobel Peace Prize has not been relevant to peacemaking for generations (winners of it, Barak Obama and Yasser Arafat, come to mind). It has been hijacked by “woke” interests pushing political agendas — not genuine efforts towards peace. And, there still remains an ideological obstacle staring us all in the face. The Peace Prize, in practice, has come to reward what could be called liberal internationalism. That wasn’t what Alfred Nobel originally envisioned, but over time it’s been interpreted through that “lens.” From that vantagepoint, Trump is an “anti-hero,” the very opposite of that orientation. But if one returns to the older, more classical notion of peacemaking — ending wars by whatever means available — then Trump fits the bill. In that sense, he could win next year, if the committee began to think the way it did a century ago — as Alfred Nobel originally intended. READ MORE from F. Andrew Wolf Jr.: Science Has Finally Come For Transgenderism France: A Country Perpetually at Odds with Itself New Study Shows Trump Might Be Right on Tariffs