Veteran British journalist Suzanne Moore has been hounded from The Guardian for her supposed “transphobia.” Paul Stanway, reviewing Mark Milke’s The Victim Cult, discusses Milke’s argument that foolishly elevating claims of weakness, suffering and hurt to virtues compels us to focus on what divides rather than unites us.

Putting numbers to nearly everything is the postmodern world’s way of separating facts and knowledge from mere opinion or superstition. This not merely reflects a cramped view of knowledge, it is false and immensely damaging to rational inquiry, discussion and the dissemination of knowledge. David Solway mounts a counter-argument for quality over mere quantity. Although nominally about the social sciences and aimed at its practitioners, Solway’s essay serves up food for thought for any consumer, customer or target of the social sciences: students, their parents, business people, employers, government officials, voters. In short, all of us.

The homeless are quite susceptible to the Covid-19 virus. In Winnipeg, the Main Street Project has opened a new facility for people who need to isolate. For James Percy, drugs and the addiction dynamic largely account for Canada’s homelessness epidemic. Ultimately, governments need to articulate policies which lead to greater personal accountability.

Who’d have thought the rotary-dial phone and kung fu could help save late 22nd-century humanity? These were just a couple of the charming wrinkles in a sci-fi thriller that captivated audiences with its innovative special effects and ambiguous religiosity and mysticism. The oddness of the combination perhaps helps explain The Matrix’s staying power. Aaron Nava first saw the film at age nine, triggering a lifelong devotion that, two decades and many viewings later, continues to nourish his moral reflections.

Smear, denounce, attack, delegitimize and wreck their career. The twisted toolbox of today’s left – including here in Canada – should be growing familiar to conservatives, for victims in virtually all walks of life topple almost daily. One of the latest is sociologist Ricardo Duchesne, long of the University of New Brunswick but, as of last week, no longer. David Solway illuminates the sordid saga of a solid researcher and author becoming the left’s racist du jour.

Prime Minister Trudeau is pushing for increased immigration next year despite a poll finding only 17% of Canadians favour such a step. Bradly Betters argues that in Canada as in other Western nations, rational thinking about immigration has been clouded by a universalist hyper-moralism that conflates a nation’s interests with racism.

The future belongs to Canada. And it seems it always will, at least going by the many failed predictions of Canada’s imminent emergence as a praised and respected world-class nation. That’s because it’s not really about Canada in the global community, it’s all about us and our insecurities, writes Benjamin L. Woodfinden. That’s also why Woodfinden expects prodigious commentator, author and former news media magnate Conrad Black’s prescription to transform Canada into a “laboratory” – though a “sensible” one – for great new policies, or at least policies Black thinks are new and great, to go the way of similarly grandiose historical attempts.

Another ostensible barrier tumbled when Chrystia Freeland was sworn in as Canada’s first female finance minister. Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell noted, “It’s one of those portfolios that for some reason or other people don’t see women in.” Tasha Kheiriddin argues that advancing female representation shouldn’t be about virtue-signalling but ensuring we get the best and brightest of both sexes.

Disasters – natural or otherwise – have a way of bringing out extremes in human behaviour and emotions. And so it was with the Easter Week fire at Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Paris: from the Catholic priest who risked his life to save irreplaceable relics and artwork, to French businessmen pledging grandiose sums for rebuilding, to the almost psychotic architecture some proposed for the restoration. For Patrick Keeney, the near-catastrophe triggered deep reflection on our era’s tense relationship between science and spirituality.

Official regret – often delivered with a perfectly moistened eye and quavering voice – has been expressed by our prime minister for a seemingly endless parade of old injustices. Native schoolchildren, gays and lesbians, Sikh immigrants, Jewish refugees, six British Columbia chiefs hanged following the Chilcotin War and Inuit populations suffering from tuberculosis have all received a mea culpa from Ottawa. But does such federal self-abasement correspond to what actually happened? Peter Shawn Taylor casts a gimlet eye at Mexico’s efforts to blame 16th century Spain for present-day complaints and finds that the truth sometimes comes down on the side of colonialism.