Patrick Keeney

Stories
The U.S. education system has been hijacked by cultural vandals who have dismantled its core purpose of intergenerational transfer of cultural values, creating a nation without a unity narrative.
Stories
Jessica Yaniv, the self-described B.C. transgender activist, was in the news again recently, the RCMP searching her Langley, B.C. apartment after she brandished a prohibited weapon during an online debate. Yaniv, you may recall, is seeking redress from the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal after more than a dozen female aestheticians refused to perform a Brazilian Wax on her (his?] male genitalia. Yaniv’s claim appears preposterous. Yet as Patrick Keeney explains in this thoughtful essay, framing public morality exclusively in terms of human rights ushers in a certain logic, one which suppresses personal responsibility and allows any human desire to be transformed into a moral claim.
Stories
Perhaps befitting the leader of a party hunting middle-of-the-road votes, Justin Trudeau avoids ideology in his rhetoric and his platform. That’s for the other guys, the “extremists” to his left and right, who are so driven by partisan dogma that it blinds them to the virtues of “evidence-based” public policy. Promising to rely on experts and “hard, scientific data” may help Trudeau overcome doubts about his competence to be prime minister. But most voters want to know what their leaders believe in, writes Patrick Keeney, and the risk for Trudeau is that they will conclude he believes in nothing.
Stories
For many decades Canadian politics have maintained a sort of triangulated equilibrium featuring two centrist parties regularly swapping power while a centre-left party languished in opposition, occasionally holding the balance of power. Recent history suggests, however, that our democracy is edging towards a sharper left-right competition between “conservatives” and “progressives”. Patrick Keeney examines the origins of this divide in his review of The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and The Birth of Right and Left.
Stories
Everyone agrees the Charlie Hebdo satirists did not deserve to be murdered for ridiculing Islamist extremism. But as the frequency of terrorist attacks in western countries increases, everyone also agrees we must address the radicalization that is causing so much political violence in the name of Allah. Patrick Keeney writes that free expression must not be constrained in examining the connection between the Islamic religion and Islamist terror: Peter Stockland argues that a less confrontational approach focussed on Islamist ideology, rather than the Islamic religion, is less likely to provoke more radicalization and violence.
Stories
Artificial intelligence could bring about a totalitarian world state, largely by proscribing unpopular speech and eroding our ability to determine what is true. John Carpay and Michael Kennedy cast a gimlet eye at the suppression of contrarian ideas on campus and call for a cultural shift to remind Canadians why free speech matters.
Stories
Canada’s itinerant philosopher king reveals some home truths about modern Canadian politics.
Stories
Domestic students are paying a dialectical price in internationalized classrooms.
Stories
The left has long monopolized the debate on how best to conserve the environment. But Roger Scruton argues that environmental salvation depends upon the notion of personal responsibility rooted in a shared love for our home. Patrick Keeney reviews Scruton’s new book, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism…
Stories
In this wide-ranging account, the economic historian Niall Ferguson sets out to explain the rise of Western civilization, as well as defend its achievements from the enervating effects of multiculturalism, post-modernism and post-colonialism. Ferguson argues that the economic, social and political institutions of the West still provide the best hope for guaranteeing lives which are meaningful and rewarding, and for solving the problems the modern world faces.

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