By Jonathon Van Maren Autumn is a strange time of year, when color erupts from every hillside in an explosion of death and beauty. As I drove the backroads to work the other day, the trees caressed by the Midas touch of approaching Winter seemed to dance and glow in the morning sun, and I…
By Jonathon Van Maren Only a decade ago, the gender ideology that progressive educators now insist is sacrosanct was taught nowhere but a few fringe university departments. Even those advocating for gay marriage often insisted that transgenderism was not part of the package they were promoting, and the idea that children could tell adults they…
By Jonathon Van Maren Debates on the rights of parents as first educators as well as the rights of Christian and Catholic schools—presumably schools founded by similarly socially conservative faith traditions will eventually attract notice, as well—are raging right across Canada, from Ontario to Alberta to BC. Progressive politicians are discovering, to their shock and…
By Jonathon Van Maren I’ve been waiting a long time to see a politician stand up and defend social conservatives against the relentless smear machine of the progressives, who love to scapegoat Christians as a way of distracting from their abysmal economic records and plummeting political popularity. With Jason Kenney’s leadership victory this weekend, Rachel…
By Jonathon Van Maren Tonight is a very bad night for Rachel Notley, for David Eggen, and for the rest of the accidental NDP government that many Albertans just can’t wait to get rid of: Jason Kenney, possibly the most formidable conservative politician in Canada, has won the leadership of the United Conservative Party by…
By Jonathon Van Maren Earlier this week, as both Education Minister David Eggen and Premier Rachel Notley raged that Alberta’s Catholic schools would be forced to withdraw the sex education curriculum that they’d proposed because it was Catholic, a viciously slanderous accusation began surfacing. From the Calgary Sun: Certain people lost their minds Wednesday. All…
By Jonathon Van Maren We’ve all known it for a long time, even though progressive politicians have insidiously denied it: Their true purpose in implementing “modern” sex education curriculum in schools across Canada is to ensure that those children who enter school still holding the traditional beliefs of their parents—Muslim, Sikh, or Christian, for example—will…
By Jonathon Van Maren After reading and reviewing traditionalist writer Rod Dreher’s much-discussed manifesto The Benedict Option this year (and his memoir The Little Way of Ruthie Leming earlier), I decided that I should probably read a few more such books—books that didn’t simply make the case for one political philosophy over another, but focused…
By Jonathon Van Maren It’s no secret that I’ve always admired George W. Bush—as I wrote in a column earlier last week, he has always been a man of fundamental decency, honesty, and integrity. Interestingly, it is now virtually impossible to make note of Bush’s positive character traits without people accusing you immediately of bashing…
By Jonathon Van Maren The election of George W. Bush and the vote-counting fracas that followed make up some of my first conscious political memories, with the exception of a few hazy conversations amongst the adults about the various pelvic peccadillos of Bill Clinton and whether they would prematurely end his presidency. Bush, on the…