Do none of these Edmonton ingrates realize how much fresh lemons cost?Monday November 19th, 2018
The world is going to hell in a handbasket, as we know, but to preserve our sanity we must periodically step back from the sturm und drang of hard-core news, without entirely depriving ourselves of food for thought. A good way to do that is to focus our attention on some of life’s more picayune issues.
Picayune-issue wise, you can’t do better than the story of New York Bagel Caf&ea...
For culture warrior David Horowitz, deplatforming is no deterrentTuesday November 13th, 2018
An opinion columnist nowadays could take campus disruptions or deplatformings of conservative speakers as his or her sole weekly topic and never run out of material.
The latest example comes to us out of New Hampshire’s elite Dartmouth College (tuition US$75,000 a year), where formidable conservative polemicist David Horowitz — soon to celebrate his 80th birthday — was recent...
KAY: Britain’s refusal of asylum to Asia Bibi is the modern equivalent of Canada’s rejection of the MS St Louis JewsSaturday November 10th, 2018
Almost ten years ago, Asia Bibi was an obscure farm worker in Pakistan, whose name would, in the normal course of events as we understand them in the West, remain completely unknown apart from her family and local fellow Christians throughout her entire life.
But if you are not Muslim in Pakistan, there is no such thing as a “normal course of events.” You keep your head down and yo...
Kay: The politics of saying sorryWednesday November 7th, 2018
In 1939, the MS St. Louis departed Germany with 907 Jewish passengers, who were seeking haven from Nazi persecution. Cuba and the U.S. turned them away. Canada was their last hope. Yet Canada’s “none is too many” sentiment governing Jewish immigration prevailed and the refugees were forced to return to Europe, where about half were received by Allied countries and the others ended up in Germany...
In defence of the nation-state, and democracyTuesday November 6th, 2018
Although not on the ballot, America’s midterm elections were all about Trump. Not his policies or unique personality, but the trend throughout the West — loosely defined as populism — that he symbolizes. This was the topic of last Friday’s Munk Debate between David Frum and Stephen Bannon: “Resolved that the future of Western politics is populist, not liberal.&r...
KAY: Who really won the Munk Debate on populism – and whySaturday November 3rd, 2018
Friday night’s Munk debate between David Frum and Stephen K. Bannon at Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall had, as its topic, “Be it resolved, the future of western politics is populist, not liberal.” It was a remarkable event for a variety of reasons.
The debate was a win for free speech
First, because it actually took place in this era of easy deplatforming. Bannon is a cont...
Kay: Is eating meat antithetical to Jewish values?Wednesday October 31st, 2018
One of the most talked-about Jewish books of the season is Jonathan Neumann’s To Heal the World: How the Jewish Left Corrupts Judaism and Endangers Israel.
The book’s tone, as one can tell from the title, is muscular. The boldly stated theme is that tikun olam (to heal the world), a phrase used once in our liturgy and never given exegetical significance, is now, as interpreted by p...
Trump’s rhetoric didn’t cause this massacreTuesday October 30th, 2018
The Sabbath massacre in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue was the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, but it is not the first time Jews in the United States have been targeted for attack while at worship.
In 1960, a 16-year-old boy threw a bomb into a synagogue in Gladsden, Ala., but it didn’t explode. The would-be massacrist then shot and injured two people fleeing the bui...
KAY: “What’s in a Residential School’s Name?” – The Talk that the University of Winnipeg Club Didn’t Want Their Members to HearSunday October 28th, 2018
On Oct 23, the University of Winnipeg Club, a dining and social club, with membership open to all university employees, cancelled an Oct 25 talk scheduled as one of its “Hot Lunch Speakers Series”.
The deplatformed speaker is University of Manitoba Sociology of Education professor and Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Rodney Clifton. The topic...
Canada is better for having the Post — and far more interestingSaturday October 27th, 2018
The birth of the National Post 20 years ago had a profound impact on our national conversations about politics, the economy and our swiftly evolving culture. The Post was meant to be a journalistic disruptor, and it accomplished that goal.
Long before I joined the Comment section as a weekly contributor in 2003 — indeed, for months before the Post’s official launch — I was ac...
KAY: Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test – mocked by Trump and rejected by the CherokeesSunday October 21st, 2018
Elizabeth Warren seems to have definitively thrown her political hat into the 2020 presidential ring. As of now, she’s out there front and centre.
Elizabeth Warren seems to have definitively thrown her political hat into the 2020 presidential ring. As of now, she’s out there front and centre.
One thing she knew she had to deal with proactively was the issue of her alleged Cherokee...
Did #MeToo activists target a top Canadian prof for his blunt lessons about Islam?Friday October 19th, 2018
McGill University, my grad school alma mater, has, in my opinion, acted dishonourably in a recent and unusual case of tenure denial to a brilliant and popular professor.
When I learned of Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim’s story, I was fortunate to receive a remarkable trove of evidence: his supporting documents for a defamation lawsuit he launched this summer against a student and a professor in his...
A few ‘toxic’ anti-male women are derailing the validity of #MeTooWednesday October 17th, 2018
According to a survey in the latest Economist magazine, the effect of the #MeToo movement has been to elevate Americans’ skepticism over sympathy for victims. Among other findings, the survey notes that between November 2017 and September 2018, while the perception that false allegations of sexual assault are a greater problem than unreported or unpunished sexual assault remains a minorit...
An Academic Mobbing at McGillTuesday October 16th, 2018
Editor’s note: More than 200 pages of supporting documents have been gathered by Professor Ibrahim for use in a defamation lawsuit he is engaged in against a student and a colleague. These documents include both the Minority and Majority Reports issued by the Departmental Tenure Committee, student testimonials and affidavits, as well as a variety of departmental communications involving P...
KAY: Should Brett Kavanaugh have stepped down after being confirmed, as Jordan Peterson suggests?Monday October 15th, 2018
Some Facebook threads I started by posting pro-Kavanaugh pieces ended up occupying a good part of my time last week. With comments split pretty evenly between sympathy for him and sympathy for her, the subject became a kind of gender Rorschach test for the #MeToo era.
What impressed me in these exchanges was the absolute faith invested in personal demeanour as a litmus test for arriving at mor...
Another school, another recording, another free-speech crisisThursday October 11th, 2018
The old adage has it that “a picture is worth a 1,000 words.” But, as former Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd showed Canadians last November, in academia 1,000 words — unexpectedly recorded — can paint a culture-capturing picture.
By now, the infamous interrogation Shepherd endured after exposing students to Jordan Peterson’s views on...
Kay: The view from the balconyWednesday October 3rd, 2018
As new members of a modern Orthodox congregation, the experience my husband and I had on the High Holidays this year was a striking departure from the previous 46 in a Reconstructionist synagogue. We’re rather old for such a dramatic change in affiliation, but, having recognized the need for personal Jewish renewal, we took the plunge.
We felt instinctively drawn to Montreal’s Shaa...
Diluting the meaning of ‘woman,’ to appease transgender activists, is misogynyThursday September 13th, 2018
In his writings on totalitarianism, George Orwell powerfully exposed the link between the manipulation of language and the erosion of individual liberty. Ideologues understand that linguistic control precedes, and is crucial to, political and cultural power. The novel 1984 illuminated the shame in being compelled — figuratively — to endorse the lie that two plus two is five.
For th...
The Villain in the Trans Mountain Fiasco – and Other Fiascos since 2004 – is the Supreme Court of CanadaTuesday September 11th, 2018
The Trudeau government was clearly taken by surprise at the Federal Court’s nullifying of their approval of the 1,150-km Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Otherwise they would not have signed a deal with Kinder Morgan that explicitly stated any adverse court decisions would not be deemed to constitute a “material adverse effect” that could change the deal’s terms.
No w...
Do none of these Edmonton ingrates realize how much fresh lemons cost?
Monday November 19th, 2018
KAY: Britain’s refusal of asylum to Asia Bibi is the modern equivalent of Canada’s rejection of the MS St Louis Jews
Saturday November 10th, 2018
Kay: The politics of saying sorry
Wednesday November 7th, 2018
An Academic Mobbing at McGill
Tuesday October 16th, 2018
