Caylan Ford
@caylanford
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A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this.
Calgary, Canada
Joined July 2010
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School-aged me played sports, refused to wear dresses, and vehemently rejected feminine-coded toys. If I was a child today, some adult would no doubt try to persuade me that I was actually a boy, and sent me down a path of lifelong medicalization. That's terrifying.
Transgender children may start to identify with toys and clothes typical of their gender identity from a very young age, a recent study suggests.
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I struggled for a long time to understand why people are often ‘cancelled’ for making true statements in good faith. This didn’t compute for me; there’s nothing immoral about saying true things.
After lots of conversations w/ ‘cancellers’, I understood the problem…
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Sadly for them, and happily for the rest of us, the fundamental order of being can’t be actually changed, because it lies outside man’s control. In the war against reality, reality always wins.
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Proponents of cancel culture believe that if they can stop the accurate observation and description of reality—e.g. by corrupting the meaning of words, delegitimizing hard sciences, and through the threat of social ostracism—they can actually change reality.
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People in thrall to ideology do not believe that truth is a good. They don’t think the universe is well ordered, or that the laws governing it are just. Because they perceive reality as defective and wrong, appeals to truth are meaningless. It has no moral authority.
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As I was once told by someone who participated in my own cancellation: it doesn’t matter what’s true. What matters is what *should* be true.
In Marxian terms, “philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
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I consider truth to be a form of the good. It’s noble to try to apprehend the order of the cosmos and the laws of nature—which are beautiful and just—and attune ourselves to them. In a disagreement, I take for granted that truth is an authority to which both parties can appeal.
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This is fascinating: "High-empathy people view the out group more unfavorably (relative to their own group) than low-empathy people [and] they may even take more delight in the suffering of some out-group members."
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When I was cancelled 4 years ago, I was left with no way of earning a living, and no platform to defend myself against false accusations.
But I did have a background in documentary filmmaking. This is my story.
WATCH NOW:
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“Cancellation is not the worst fate. Failing to live with integrity is worse. Quietly acquiescing to tyranny and sacrificing your principles is worse. If you are faithful to the truth, there may be costs. But they are not the worst of costs.”
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Mass immigration was supposed to lower Canada's mean population age. Instead it's suppressing family formation by making housing wildly unaffordable. Our TFR is 1.33 children/woman — and falling.
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This is a good time to remind everyone that all (ok, *most*) of the best people in history were "cancelled," whether through exile, imprisonment, or being put to death unjustly: Socrates, Dante, Cicero, Dostoyevsky, Ovid, Su Shi, Solzhenitsyn, Seneca, Boethius...it's a long list.
I am getting inundated with messages from young people--students & young academics--who are scared of the mob at their universities & feel despair for their futures. Absolute despair.
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Not so long ago, mayor Nenshi declared that I am completely bereft of humaneness or decency, and should be driven from the public square. Beware the uneven application of mercy.
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I don’t know how anyone could survey the history of 20th century medicine—a history that included eugenics, forced sterilizations, a lobotomy craze, and lethal human experimentation—and not understand the importance of conscience rights for medical practitioners.
Jason Kenney's party, having already rolled back LGBTQ protections, backed 1st reading for bill that empowers doctors to refuse and not even refer for services like abortion or medically-assisted suicide.
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This interlocutory decision published today relates to my $7M defamation claim against the NDP and others.
For years, the Alberta NDP has escaped legal accountably. That seems to be coming to an end.
The mills of the gods grind slowly, &c
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Without knowing the details, I can’t help but think that Calgary’s interminable water emergency is a symptom of this phenomenon: an elite class that disdains skilled labour, and forfeits physical reality for a world of abstractions and images.
BREAKING NEWS: Water main repairs could take 3-5 more weeks, after scans reveal deficiencies in the pipe
#yyc
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The good news: I get my $40K back, the federal NDP’s application for summary dismissal was refused, and the Alberta NDP has 30 days to gets its house in order. And after 3.5 years of delay, the defamation case against the NDP can finally move forward.
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Unless you took a wagon train to establish a homestead on virgin land, built yourself a sod shack, set trap lines to procure food and animal pelts, or fought grass fires with gunny sacks, calling yourself a "settler" is stolen valour.
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I have some new followers today, which is lovely.
For anyone interested in my experience of ‘cancel culture,’ this is a little essay I wrote, focusing on its consolations and the sometimes-redemptive value of suffering.
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Kudos to
@macleans
for acknowledging their mistake and issuing a quick retraction.
Relatedly, I’m entering the final discovery phase in my $7M defamation claim against the CBC, Toronto Star and others, who failed the contrition test and stood by their erroneous reporting.
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Calgary Classical Academy held faculty PD yesterday, and I was asked to lead a seminar on Book VII of the Republic.
The Republic isn't taught in education faculties, and it’s easy to see why: it cuts against every modern & progressive orthodoxy. Some points of departure... 🧵
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“We speak of totalitarianism as the image of the boot stomping on the human face forever. This is not a boot, but an algorithm in the cloud: emotionless, impervious to appeal, silently shaping the biomass.”
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Undoubtedly the maddest feat of the year: rezoning was approved this morning for the new Edmonton Classical Academy. The building inspection passed three hours ago. And tomorrow we welcome our first students in a new city.
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@pegobry
@Vertumne1
A hypothesis, borrowed from E.D. Hirsch:
In 1989, the French government stopped requiring elementary schools to adhere to the knowledge-rich national curriculum. Academic achievement plummeted.
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The Alberta government has gone back to the drawing board on its ‘social studies’ curriculum. Union bosses are already celebrating the abandonment of world history.
Here’s a Calgary Classical Academy teacher on why historical knowledge still matters:
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Canada is getting its first classical charter school!
Pre-enrolment for grades K-6 open now 👇
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In most faculties of education, teachers-in-training are more likely to learn Marxist social reconstructionism than they are to learn about classroom discipline, direct instruction, or the science of reading.
My latest for the Hub ⬇️
.
@caylanford
: Universities have a monopoly on teacher training. They don’t deserve to keep it
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People who demand forced apologies are not concerned with the redemption or moral improvement of their targets.
Forced apologies are about power —specifically, the power to make people lie.
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Twenty years ago, the Chinese Communist Party launched a genocidal campaign against tens of millions of people. Almost no one seemed to care.
In this article, I try to explain why. (Thread)
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For the entire time that the Alberta NDP was the governing party of Alberta, it was operating with no legal standing. It could commit fraud, defamation, or breach contracts, and the victims would have no recourse.
In my reading, this also contravened the Elections Act.
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It’s always interesting to see which aspects of our charter school philosophy people find offensive.
In this case, intellectual humility, curiosity, and clear reasoning are apparently thinly veiled white supremacy.
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"[Jivraj's] motives were based on jealousy and spite. His wish to harm Ms. Ford had nothing to do with the politics other than to destroy the political aspirations of a former friend who was finding success in contrast to Mr. Jivraj's own failures."
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Anyway, time for bedtime stories. My kids don’t know that ancient civilizations aren’t supposed to interest them; the 8-year-old’s current favourite is
@holland_tom
on the Greco-Persian wars.
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Schilling suggests that learning about ancient civilizations is inappropriate for young children. But instruction on race, sexual orientation and gender identity, should apparently begin “at a very young age.”
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Progressive activists lobbied Alberta school boards not to pilot a new curriculum, calling it backwards and racist.
One of the few school boards that did pilot it saw “on average two full years of growth in math and three full years in literacy.”
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Tl;dr: In 2019 the Alberta NDP defamed me in an apparent effort to force me off the ballot.
But the Alberta NDP doesn’t legally exist. Its registration as a political party is based on an invalid 1977 trust deed. The trustee also doesn’t exist. So I had no one to sue.
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Opponents of the bill seem to think that current moral fashions cannot possibly be wrong, and so moral minorities don’t deserve protection. The most cursory study of history should disabuse us of this kind of hubris.
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A couple times a week I get little glimpses into what the kids are learning in their classical school.
Yesterday morning it was my five-year-old, who overheard a conversation about an 18th-century painter.
“The 1700s! That is when Mr. Mozart lived. But he was in Austria.”
And
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I’m excited to be joining
@BarbaraRKay
and
@NewWorldHominin
next month in Calgary to talk about outrage culture and its corrosive effects on social trust and political discourse. We have some stories to tell. Tickets available here:
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At one point, before the applications judge, the Alberta NDP agreed to name and indemnify someone as a litigation representative to stand on it behalf.
But when you have no legal standing to sue or be sued, it’s pretty hard to find someone who will accept your promise of
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Thanks to
@sarkonakj
for reporting on this decision, and for so ably condensing such a sprawling story into 800 words.
(Though I will gently object to the headline for eliding the distinction between justice and revenge)
Jamie Sarkonak: The revenge of Caylan Ford after hit job ended her political career
nationalpost.com
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In a recent essay in
@theammind
, I wrote about enduring cancelation, and the consolations offered by literature and philosophy.
The essay draws on the writings of four historical exiles, but there are many more I wasn’t able to include.
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Since doing this interview, it has come to my attention to that Progress Alberta, an NDP-affiliated PAC, is organizing a coordinated protest against Smith’s show for having the temerity to interview me. Heaven forbid I should be allowed a platform to respond to false accusations.
This is a shorter and less esoteric interview. We didn't have time to address all the questions people may have had, but hopefully it's the start of a more productive, good-faith discussion.
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If you are a person with no fixed principles or convictions, who changes your opinions to conform to whatever is popular or expedient, you’ll never have to worry about being on the wrong side of power.
But everyone else should be wary of the precedent this sets.
If you are a peaceful, law-abiding Canadian citizen not involved in any movement to try and overthrow the government of Canada you don’t have to worry about having your bank accounts or credit cards frozen. Fact.
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@primalpoly
Yes, and the demand for simulated friendliness and conviviality is made so much worse by the absence of the real thing.
She's probably not retiring to a pub with friends at the end of a hard day; she's going back to an empty apartment with only a smartphone for company.
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But the Alberta NDP’s constitution identifies it as a section of the Federal NDP. So my lawsuit named the federal entity.
The Federal NDP then responded that they are not liable for their provincial sections. They sought a summary dismissal, and $40K in costs against me.
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8yo daughter is a master of bedtime stalling. The trick is to come up with irresistible questions about metaphysics or history.
I just spent 1.5 hours discussing the lineage of Alfred the Great, the role of longbow technology in the battle of Crécy, and the death of Joan d’Arc
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Hard to overstate how many dystopian social schemes originate from the desire to conquer suffering.
1⃣ To start, the author believes that pregnancy is an evil akin to measles whose eradication should be an avowed goal of medicine. My letter did not address this comparison, but it reveals the impetus for suggesting - wanting - WBGD as an alternative.
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There seems no surer way of suffocating a child’s curiosity and love of learning. Measured in terms of impact, it’s also discriminatory towards students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, who are most likely to benefit from a curriculum that is rich in historical knowledge.
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"Cancel culture is a culture of intellectual and moral inversion, where the performance of false virtues is celebrated at the expense of the real thing."
Andrew is a good sport for having me on again, especially after what happened last time...
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Opposition to surveillance capitalism is now a “far right” concern.
Susan Delacourt: America’s far right is operating in Canada. Why don’t we consider that foreign interference?
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At risk of sounding a touch conspiratorial, digital health passports seem like a plausible way that a China-style social credit system could be rapidly institutionalized in the West.
Is there a way for someone to easily show that they have been vaccinated - like a bar code they can download to their phone? There ought to be.
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For those interested, I wrote here about how, and why, cancel culture needs to be resisted:
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Friends,
An excess of pride makes it very painful for me to ask for help; it’s much easier to give it than to receive.
But I’m now ~2 years into a defamation claim against deep-pocketed defendants who ‘canceled’ me, and I could use your support.
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Divorcing words from their proper meaning is not an act of communication; it is a lie, whose effect is to deprive the other party of their “share and portion of reality, to prevent his participation in reality.”
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A feature in
@theammind
asks how to survive cancellation.
My answer: spend time in conversation with dead men, and contemplate eternity.
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@JJ_McCullough
This episode might be a good example of the “luxury beliefs” phenomenon. Cherry’s offence is only perceptible to members of an educated managerial class. So performing outrage is not just about signalling one’s values, but also social class. I’m speculating here.
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This is such a sad way to approach the world. There is no wisdom we could ever draw from the past; there is only awfulness to be repudiated.
Can a child 'educated' in this way ever allow themselves to love Shakespeare or Aeschylus? Will they even know their names?
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There is a certain type of person for whom morality consists not in treating other people with compassion, but only in holding the correct opinions.
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1. The task of educators is not to make material “relevant” to students. It is to turn their souls toward the light of truth, and to bring them out of the cave of shadows and illusions.
This obviously necessitates recognition that objective Truth exists.
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No. Cancel culture involves highly committed, vocal minorities using quasi-coercive tactics to intimidate and silence anyone who disagrees with them.
It’s not democratic. It’s a preference falsification machine.
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The approach Schilling advocates is called the “expanding horizons” model. It assumes children are too uncurious and solipsistic to be interested in faraway times and places. The world must centre on them, be shrunk to their own frame, and made relevant to their daily lives.
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“After all, what’s wrong with the workers of the world uniting?” thought the greengrocer, as he partook in his own degradation...
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This is why young women (and men) should read the procreation sonnets.
I am truly not trying to be mean but I really think a lot of the high-tenor furor around aging and the insistence that you’re as good looking at 45 as 25 is that so many are still looking for the things 25 yos ought to be - marriage & family. If you’ve built those things already,
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Plato’s noble lie is that citizens of the good city are autochthonous (i.e. indigenous; not migrants or descendants thereof). The myth is ‘noble’ because of its civic function: it inspires love, loyalty, and a sense of brotherhood & comity.
The inverse lie, that everyone is
It gets tiring to remind folks that everyone in GB is either an
#immigrant
...or descended from one.
Why isn't this taught in school?
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Further or in the alternative, they don’t believe in the objective existence of truth. The “givenness” of reality is denied, and the order of being is imagined as something that is essentially under man’s control. Truth is whatever (human, earthly) power says it is.
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“Kinney also happens to be a principal defendant in a massive $7 million defamation suit you’ve probably never heard about…no respectable news organization is covering the proceedings before Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench.”
Probably b/c they’re all implicated. Thank you, Terry
As charged by Edmonton police, "progressive" Alberta pamphleteer Duncan Kinney got his scoop about a defaced statue because he did it himself. That's not even the half of it:
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I’m afraid the problem runs deeper: many conservatives no longer have a coherent moral vocabulary of their own, and so are stuck playing a game whose rules are set by their cognitive antagonists.
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And a thank you to the minister for joining us!
It was great to celebrate the grand opening of Classical Academy’s third campus in Calgary Currie!
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“To accept the idea of collective guilt and collective responsibility means directly or unwittingly to weaken the guilt or the responsibility of individuals.”
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Several years ago I came into possession of a book of sermons delivered by my great-great-great grandfather in Kilbride Scotland, along with letters from his parishioners after he died unexpectedly at 56. The erudition of these 19th-century housewives stung me.
I remember one
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“Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs. Those who care for something else more than civilisation are the only people by whom civilisation is at all likely to be preserved.”
(C.S. Lewis, on living in an atomic age)
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Theodore Dalrymple on the ‘moral monstrosity’ of the self-esteem movement:
“Sometimes when patients would say to me, ‘I have low self-esteem, doctor,’ I would reply ‘Well, at least you’ve got one thing right, then.’”
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The Chinese Communist Party launched a massive propaganda blitz to promote draconian lockdowns, and then pivoted to promoting BLM protests and fanning racial resentment. Almost like they want to incapacitate and destabilize Western democracies. Hmmm...🤔
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"right wing moral panic."
There are no death panels.The red scare was fictional. Pizzagate was a hoax. Obama is an American citizen. Sandy Hook was not an inside job and neither was 9/11. You are participating in a right wing moral panic.
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I’m a bit skeptical of the claim that one can love Mankind in the abstract without loving actual men.
Fascinating paper from Adam Waytz and colleagues:
Beyond being more or less moral overall, liberals and conservatives report different moral and emotional "ranges."
Cons care more for people close to them, Libs more universally.
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@BarbaraRKay
Whoa. The full exchange is remarkable. What a weirdly inverted moral universe this is.
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Relatedly, I’ve been thinking a lot about how “sex education” in schools takes sterility as a goal; good (or “safe”) sex is defined as sex that is neutered and consequence-free.
What if we instead taught people how to form families and have children?
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Conservatives tended to oppose lockdowns because they acknowledge the inevitability of trade-offs arising from any human intervention, whereas progressives believe perfection is possible with the right interventions (and full social compliance with them).
Lockdowns forced swimming pools to close and swim lessons to be canceled. There was a spike in drowning deaths among young people. These deaths were predicted and unnecessary.
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Daughter’s grade 2 homework assignment, with a very interesting take on the correct spelling of “Carthaginian”.
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We say yes. We want free students from what Chesterton called the ‘degrading servitude of being a child of one’s own time.’ That means teaching about eternal truths, while eschewing smart phones, current events, popular culture, and the whole spectacle of shadows on the wall.
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Albertans once again living up to the stereotype as a congenitally quarrelsome bunch. We've become ungovernable.
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My goodness, enough.
Covid is no deadlier to kids than seasonal influenza.
It’s an endemic virus that everyone caught anyway.
There’s no evidence masking children kept them safe or reduced community transmission.
It was not a “minor inconvenience.”
Kids are so much more resilient than our political leaders give them credit for. In times of crisis we should do everything we can to protect them and if that includes the small inconvenience of wearing a face mask to stop the spread of a deadly virus then so be it.
#ableg
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Just how low does Canada’s TFR have to go before our political class stops promoting chemically-induced sterility as the normative ideal?
Women should be free to choose the contraceptives they need without cost getting in the way.
So, we’re making contraceptives free.
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I’m convinced that there is some connection between generation Z’s support for in-home surveillance, and the incapacity of many members of that generation to conjure images inside their minds.
If you have no inner world, you have nothing to hide.
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More importantly: this insistence on ideological conformity is lame. Intellectual diversity and a respectful exchange of ideas is necessary if you want good public policy.
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Credit to the CBC for reporting on this story, and for their partial acknowledgment of the role they played in enabling this man's harassment and public deception.
There's much more they're not saying on that point, but that will be fully canvassed in the defamation trial.
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6. “critical thinking” should not be the purpose of primary or secondary education. When indulged too much in tearing apart arguments, children risk becoming insufferable nihilists who cease to believe in anything, and who make a game of contradicting the truth.
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What I can disclose: both CBC and Press Progress deceptively edited/ redacted the private messages leaked to them by Jivraj.
They also had information at the time of their reporting that he was not reliable, but granted him anonymity anyway, and didn’t inform their readers.
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Found some pretty good spots to meditate today. And, a bit uncharacteristically, brought a (phone) camera.
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“Like any piece of property, a child has value to conservative activists. They are key to a future the conservative wants to win.”
This is the fantastical projection of a childless, self-described socialist.
The parental rights movement actively threatens the safety and wellbeing of children and by extension, democracy itself:
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