My first year at McGill was a real challenge. While everybody else seemingly had extant CEGEP friends or dormmates, I lived with family members, which meant I didn’t casually run into colleagues. However, living with my grandparents during undergrad proved a great gift, allowing me to tap into an inheritance of wisdom I otherwise would’ve missed out on, one that Michael Brendan Dougherty communicates in his 2019 memoir.

This went beyond an undying loyalty to Cristiano Ronaldo over whatever team he plays for (hence my evolution from a Man U fan to a Real Madrid fan to a Juventus supporter)…

In the UK, as in many Western Democracies, institutional trust has collapsed over recent decades. Whether it be the press, banks, the government, the EU, citizens have lost faith in many elements of British society, not without reason in some cases. The 2020 Trust Barometer reveals that Britain is the least trusting society aside from Russia, with 60% losing faith in democracy itself as an effective form of government and over 50% seeing capitalism as more harmful than beneficial. Layered onto this general trend, the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic insecurity have strained the social fabric and killed small businesses…

A few years back on a spring break trip home from Montreal, I took my brother to the library with the hope of scoring cheap reads at the Friends of the Library store. As I walked through the door, my eyes darted to a “closed” sign on the used bookstore — but I refused to drive home in vain. Instead of leaving, I decided to have a conversation with the bored-looking police officer serving as library security. We chatted for a good 15 minutes about various issues, and he told me (this was about 2017, so the height of America’s…

The True and Only Heaven is Christopher Lasch at his best. Master of the run-on sentence, Lasch crams an obscene amount of history into one voluminous work unified by its reverent examination of those who questioned the dogma of progress. It’s quasi-sequential but not really, flowing beautifully through figures largely forgotten and/or misremembered. Lasch’s brilliance constantly shines through. He finds the little-known works, the buried ideas espoused by great thinkers (from Georges Sorel on the left to Martin Luther King Jr. to Thomas Carlyle on the right), and merges them with surprising continuity.

Across 500+ pages, Lasch conveys that the…

Three different ideas, three very different groups of supporters. One appeared in the neo-Hamiltonian journal American Affairs (which I recommend subscribing to), descended from the pro-Trump Journal of American Greatness. One was touted by New Jersey Senator Cory Booker on the Presidential campaign trail. One is proposed by 2012 Republican Presidential Nominee and Utah Senator Mitt Romney and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet. What on earth could unite these three ideas? Each of them represents a sort of a child allowance that holds promise for combatting racial inequalities, fighting poverty, supporting stable household formation, and helping create new political coalitions. Increasingly…

We’re still learning about COVID-19’s precise mortality rate, but we sadly do know that the virus has wreaked havoc on the non-chain restaurant sector. Most states forced eateries to shut down during the initial wave of cases. While this was necessary to contain the pandemic and save lives, we can’t pretend it was without consequences. According to the National Restaurant Association in March, 3% of American dining spots had already closed permanently because of the pandemic, with potentially 11% more doing so within the next month. It’s only gotten worse as the lockdown drag on. Bank analysts at UBS grimly…

Many an article has been written about the historical figures who presaged Donald Trump. Figures like Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, William Jennings Bryan, Democrat Jim Traficant (probably the closest politician to Steve Bannon’s worldview), and George Wallace all come to mind. The media has driven home these names, but a few other Republicans who ran for President in recent elections share notable parallels with the current President, some in style, some on the issues, and some on both counts. Of course, I could have gone back farther in time to list members of the 19th century Know-Nothing Party, but understanding…

By Andrew Figueiredo On May 10, 2019

Originally posted: https://www.mironline.ca/the-catholic-case-for-andrew-yang/

What would politics in the internet age be without memes? From the classic “Jeb! Wins” format, satirizing what a 538-electoral-vote sweep by the former Florida Governor would have looked like [he fell far short, dropping out early in the primary cycle, on February 20th, 2016], to the comical comparison of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, memes provide entertainment as they circulate online. However, this election cycle’s current meme fixation seems to be gaining traction, perhaps because of his growing internet presence. …