Kay: The scorpion in the Jewish world’s fireTuesday August 14th, 2018
In my reading of the Raj Quartet, Paul Scott’s magisterial series of novels chronicling the last days of empire in India, one incident continues to haunt me, due to its (unintended) Jewish symbolism.
At one point in the series, some Indian boys have isolated a scorpion and set fire to a gasoline-soaked perimeter around it. As the heat intensifies, the scorpion’s tail involuntarily arches, to th...
Humpty Dumpty deserved to fallThursday August 2nd, 2018
The fat, pompous egg sat precariously on the wall talking down to Alice and said, in a voice dripping with malign contempt: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Alice, a precocious girl who was not easily bullied, replied: “The question is whether you can make words mean so many differen...
The Danforth Shooter was Mentally Ill, but most Gun-Related Crime is Rooted in CultureSaturday July 28th, 2018
Donate All donations go to this article's author and this month's charity.The shootings on The Danforth in Toronto’s “Greektown” earlier this month, which killed two and injured 13, gave me a special frisson. My son and his family live a few blocks away from the incident. Five days earlier, on a balmy evening, I had taken four of my five granddaughters to Pappas Grill, where we lingered over ...
It’s time to bring some order, and safety, back to our classroomsTuesday July 24th, 2018
The term “tough love” was not yet in usage when I was in high school, but it was the prevailing attitude in terms of discipline. Chronic disruptors were expelled. Teachers had real authority — and admittedly at times too much. “Getting the strap” is long gone in Ontario schools, as it should be. But so, for students it would have constrained in my day, is fear o...
She gives Brazilians; “She” wants Manzilian: Let’s Call the Whole Thing OffThursday July 19th, 2018
Donate All donations go to this article's author and this month's charity.I wasn’t able to attend Idea City in person this year, but I did participate in a segment dedicated to freedom of speech via a pre-taped interview on the subject with the brilliant journalist Mark Steyn, who has spent decades beating against the current of identity politics and political correctness with trademark audac...
For the first time, Israel is the world’s most Jewish country — this is a game-changerTuesday July 17th, 2018
The announcement was not unexpected. On the contrary, for those who follow the subject, it was long anticipated. But the words themselves, spoken by Israel’s Immigration Minister, Sofa Landver, still carried emotional force: “Israeli Jews now constitute the largest Jewish community in the world.”Until now, the U.S., with its many millions of Jews, has been the most Jewish c...
Kay: The Yazidis of today are the Jews of yesterdayFriday July 13th, 2018
Khawla is a Yazidi woman from Dugri, Iraq. I interviewed her a few weeks ago, in the company of Mirza Ismail, the chairman of Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International, who acted as our interpreter.
Khawla, the eldest of four daughters, was 14 when, in August 2014, her girlhood and happiness ended with an ISIS assault on her community. The Kurdish Peshmerga, which was tasked with protectin...
One woman’s journey from social-justice warrior to free-speech championTuesday July 10th, 2018
When my son’s family took up residency in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood, previously unknown to me, I discovered a continually gentrifying urban paradise, rich in cultural diversity. In particular, families with homes bordering beautiful Withrow Park seemed to me to have hit the real estate jackpot.But in 1972, when my new friend Sarina Singh’s father bought a house on W...
Bill C-16, or The Transgender Identity Bill, is an act of “Velvet Totalitarianism”Sunday July 8th, 2018
The philosopher Voltaire famously observed, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” In Voltaire’s day, it was dangerous to criticize the Catholic Church and its dogmas. In our era, it is dangerous to criticize the Church of Gender Identity and its dogmas. In fact, in Oct 2017, Canada passed a law to protect this Church and its dogmas from criticism: ...
Suggestions for the new Ontario sex-ed curriculumTuesday July 3rd, 2018
Doug Ford’s victory was in some measure due to his promise — I believe a heartfelt one — to repeal the sex ed curriculum in Ontario schools. I assume there’s a replacement program in the works. A sex-ed vacuum is not politically tenable, or even what most conservative parents want.
What principles will undergird a Doug Ford inspired curriculum? I’d suggest four gu...
Progressives support Racist Policies targeting Asian-Americans to Protect the Big Lie at the Heart of MulticulturalismSunday July 1st, 2018
New York’s super-progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio has pledged to get rid of the Specialized High School Admissions Test, the rigorous entrance exam that has, up to now, been the sole determinant for entry into New York’s elite high schools.
De Blasio is concerned that the current demographics in elite schools like Stuyvesant High and Bronx Science, previously mostly white, is ske...
UBC had a #MeToo bloodletting. It was a disaster for everyoneTuesday June 26th, 2018
The Lottery, Shirley Jackson’s macabre 1948 tale illuminating the human tendency to conform with evil, ranks high amongst American short stories. The ending is unforgettably shocking: as the ritual climax to a harvest festival, a lottery “winner” is stoned to death by the victim’s fellow townspeople.Jackson’s cautionary tale sprang to mind with the cultural ston...
In Their Own Voices: Former feminists Explain Their Rejection of FeminismSaturday June 23rd, 2018
Last week in this space I reviewed the recently published, Sons of Feminism: Men have their say, an anthology of essays and narratives by men from all walks of life and provenance, describing the various ways in which feminism had negatively impacted their lives. As promised, this week I am reviewing Daughters of Feminism: Women supporting men’s equality, its companion volume, edited by gender...
In Their Own Voices: Feminism’s Invisible VictimsSaturday June 16th, 2018
A recent article in The Washington Post, entitled “Why Can’t We Hate Men?”, authored by academic feminist Suzanna D. Walters, contains many falsehoods. But Walters’ most ridiculous assertion therein was “The world has little place for feminist anger.” This is arrant nonsense. For on the gender file in the western world, at least, there is little room for anything else but feminist anger. In fac...
The male crisis that’s ruining our boys and no one cares aboutWednesday June 13th, 2018
Father’s Day approaches and with it the opportunity to consider the importance of fathers to their children.It is difficult to overstate both the positive effects of growing up with a father and the negative effects of father absence, especially for boys. These myriad benefits and perils are on record, undisputed and easily accessible. But in this gynocentric era, what is good or bad f...
Is Motherhood Mainly Motivation for Misery? The New York Times seems to Think SoFriday June 8th, 2018
Last month, the New York Times marked the occasion of Mothers Day with “Stories of Motherhood, Told by Six Women.” Women readers had been solicited to share their experiences of becoming a mother, and 1300 submissions came in, from which the editors chose six. All were thematically united in dissatisfaction or suffering, as the titles make clear: “The World was Hers. Then She Became a Mom”; “Wh...
Sarcasm is the Jewish swordFriday June 8th, 2018
Two American giants exited the literary world in May: Tom Wolfe and Philip Roth. Apart from their brilliance in mapping America’s social and cultural landscape, they could not have been more different in temperament and style. Roth’s writing was intensely personal, mordant and Jewishly obsessed; Wolfe’s was detached, exuberant and cosmopolitan. It is not by coincidence that Wolfe was a gentile ...
A celebrated figure today could well be the condemned sinner of tomorrowTuesday June 5th, 2018
It was a happy day for the Winnipeg Pakistani community at the recent official opening of a park named for Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan in 1948. The ceremonies were presided over by Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Canada, Tariq Azim Khan, in company with MPs Terry Duguid and Iqra Khalid, who congratulated everyone present on this milestone.Thirty years ago, such an even...
In its Obsession with Silencing Tommy Robinson, a Pusillanimous Establishment Abandons Treasured British Ideal of ‘Fair Play’Thursday May 31st, 2018
May 25 will be marked as a day of infamy for British justice. On that day, political activist Tommy Robinson was arrested outside a Leeds courthouse, where, as a citizen journalist employing normal journalistic strategies, he was livestreaming commentary to Facebook, as several Muslim defendants involved in infamous grooming gangs arrived for their trial proceeding.Robinson was doing nothing il...
Kay: The scorpion in the Jewish world’s fire
Tuesday August 14th, 2018
Humpty Dumpty deserved to fall
Thursday August 2nd, 2018
The Danforth Shooter was Mentally Ill, but most Gun-Related Crime is Rooted in Culture
Saturday July 28th, 2018
It’s time to bring some order, and safety, back to our classrooms
Tuesday July 24th, 2018
