By Jonathon Van Maren It shouldn’t be surprising that every media outlet in the Western world is scrambling to print a wildly-titled article on Pope John Paul II’s friendship with a female Polish academic, but it is tiresome and irritating. Every columnist within reach of a typewriter is salivating over two things: First, that a…
By Jonathon Van Maren Sorry for the late update this week—I’m still on a campus tour in Florida, so Internet connections come and go and it’s harder to find the time to review all articles! **** I was pleasantly surprised to see Ted Morton in the Calgary Herald last week, delivering a welcome broadside to…
By Jonathon Van Maren I can now tell you, with almost complete certainty, what the next several hundred online news articles about Donald Trump will be called: “Donald Trump finally goes too far.” Or perhaps: “This time, Trump has gone too far.” In a burst of creativity, some clickbait writer may even come up with:…
By Jonathon Van Maren The culture update is a day late this week, because I’ve just been driving across the United States to Florida to engage students on university campuses on the abortion issue—but better late than never! **** Melanie Phillips lamented in The Spectator that the idea of being “transgendered” was rapidly developing into…
By Jonathon Van Maren The news this week ranged from frustrating to nauseating—David Daleiden’s indictment, an evangelical leader’s endorsement of a biblically illiterate strip-club owner for President of the United States, and of course, the ongoing Rainbow Blitzkrieg. **** I was incredibly disappointed when Dr. Jerry Falwell Jr. of Liberty University, a bastion of conservatism…
By Jonathon Van Maren Shoot the messenger. It’s the oldest trick in the book. For abortion activists, this is sweet, sweet revenge. They spent 2015 making sweaty, panicked press statements insisting that they did not sell baby parts, they did not do anything illegal, and they would be cleared. Then they admitted that they did…
By Jonathon Van Maren This week marks the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the sprawling Nazi death camp tucked into the Polish countryside near a nondescript village called Oświęcim. The very name now carries with it a weighty darkness, as if the millions of souls sent off in excruciating horror to eternity somehow…
By Jonathon Van Maren For those of you still brave enough to be reading these weekly updates, here’s what you need to know from the last week. **** This week in the National Post, Barbara Kay (I’ve had the pleasure of her conversation on my radio show), writes quite a brilliant column on why monogamy…
By Jonathon Van Maren Another week gone by, and time for the culture update. The wheels of “progress” are ever turning. Big government, of course, continues its slow slide into totalitolerance. Especially in this century, since they’re in the business of legislating morality. Not morality based on science, like banning abortion, but the ideology of…
By Jonathon Van Maren George Jonas, one of Canada’s few great writers and public intellectuals, has passed away at the age of 80. I never had the privilege of knowing or meeting Jonas, although I had very much hoped to be able to interview him, but I had admiringly followed his work since I first…