Patrick Keeney

Political Violence
The brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk was shocking not only for its violence but for the chilling aftermath – the celebrations on the left, the gloating and the calls for more political violence. In searching for an explanation, Patrick Keeney argues that our culture has lost what Western thinkers long recognized as the “tragic vision” of human life – the idea that suffering is inevitable and even central to the human condition. Without that understanding of innate limits, politics no longer is about compromise or making the best of things but becomes pursuit of a utopia where the righteous are justified in demonizing and destroying their opponents. What is now desperately needed, Keeney argues, is a cultural renewal that accepts the tragedy of life and cultivates courage, charity and, above all, humility.
Immigration and Citizenship
For decades, Canada’s elites saw immigration as a kind of secular virtue, and any criticism of it as racist or xenophobic. But as Patrick Keeney writes in this provocative essay, that belief misunderstands what a nation truly is. The liberal globalist vision that drives blind faith in immigration sees people as bearers of rights and consumers of things, detached from place, history or culture. The conservative-communitarian tradition, Keeney explains, counters that love and obligation flow outward, and that a nation is a moral community bound by shared history, culture and mutual obligations. To love one’s own is not a moral failing, Keeney argues, but a legitimate reflection of human affairs, one that Canada must rediscover if it is to regain its cohesion and build a future.
On the Scene
People, cultures and landscapes vary greatly around the world, but totalitarianism’s black heart is basically the same everywhere. And so it is in long-suffering Myanmar – or Burma – where for most of the last 35 years a military dictatorship has frustrated democracy, crushed dissent, murdered opponents and sought to snuff out the very will to resist. In one of C2C’s occasional forays into global affairs, Patrick Keeney travels to the Thailand-Myanmar frontier to visit a place where long-suffering Burmese are tending to their physical and mental wounds and keeping alive the flames of justice, freedom and hope for a better future.
Culture and Spirituality
Human rights: we all have some, although many of us apparently want ever-more of them. Although they’re written into constitutions, they seem to be changing all the time. Activists demand new rights, human rights tribunals and courts discover or invent new ones almost out of thin air, and politicians are quick to take credit for granting or defending them. But where do human rights actually come from? And what are they based on? Patrick Keeney provides a timely reminder of Christianity’s essential role in providing the key ideas that established human rights, leading the Western world out of its darkest times, shaping a singular worldview and providing a priceless bequest for all humanity.
Freedom of Inquiry
As Canadian universities descend into apparent madness – hiring for skin colour rather than merit, enforcing draconian speech codes and unravelling the ancient protection of academic tenure – one voice has been resolute in demanding a return to higher standards in higher education. Mark Mercer, president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship since 2015, has proved Canada’s pre-eminent defender of Enlightenment values throughout the academy. In a wide-ranging discussion with C2C Journal’s Patrick Keeney, Mercer charts the origins of our current Woke revolution, the overarching significance of academic freedom and how its loss is affecting life both on and off campus. It may not be a happy story, but it is a necessary one.
Trends in Culture
Emotions and motivations are everything in current culture, facts and actions secondary at best. The most flamboyant unveilings of inner anguish are seen as understandable if not downright heroic. But how did we get to a state where restraint and privacy are considered not merely cold but signs of actual disorder? Drawing on his extensive experience in academia and long observation of cultural trends, Patrick Keeney finds a kindred spirit in Jesse Singal, who mercilessly but cheerfully lays bare the conceptual confusion, scientific pretensions and damaging effects of what he terms “fad” psychology.
Schooling Our Kids
It is clear that “progressives” are intent on rewriting, discrediting or wiping out the past. That context helps to clarify the left’s horror at Alberta’s proposed new K-6 school curriculum. Its fact-based approach to elementary schooling includes the history of Western civilization back to its beginnings, and to progressives, that simply cannot stand. With the curriculum’s comment period open until next spring, the controversy continues to boil. A lifelong educator, Patrick Keeney well knows what progressives have been up to. Keeney sees this as the moment when parents and all those who believe in a genuinely liberal education can take back our schools.
Culture Monopoly
Some of us are old enough to remember when the entertainment industry’s primary objective was to entertain us rather than indoctrinate or proselytize. If political causes were pushed, it was conducted subtly; open activism was relegated to a few mercurial directors. That, of course, was a long time ago. But now come signs the public has had enough of Hollywood’s incessant preaching. Patrick Keeney notes the recent travails of the movie business’ most famous awards shows and explores what might be done to move beyond an entertainment diet of all-leftism, all-the-time.
Death of Books?
Books – what are they good for, anyway? They’re bulky, they gather dust, they get frayed, they offer little that can’t be rendered digitally. Yet in the past, wars were fought over the people’s right to read, and spreading literacy became among society’s foremost social goals. Time was when some even risked prison to get their clutches on books they craved. Today, some see signs we’re about to turn our back on all of that. Patrick Keeney considers this civilization-threatening subject in his light-hearted meditation on his own voluminous collection of volumes.
Tyranny of lies
“The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought”, George Orwell wrote in his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. “In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” Orwell understood that whoever controls language controls political thought. And such an insight is as applicable to Myanmar in 2021 as it was to Oceania in 1984. Using Orwell as his guide, and relying on his extensive personal contacts throughout the country, C2C Journal associate editor Patrick Keeney takes a close look at reality and meaning in the recent coup in Myanmar.

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