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Atlas Toked: Why Prohibition is Dead in Canada

April 24, 2011 by · 5 Comments 

In Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged”, the United States’ taxed and over-regulated inventors and problem solvers go on strike. Having shrugged off the burden of carrying others – the burden of thinking for them and making possible the production of goods and services that make civilization possible – the rest of society falls into hunger, darkness, and violence. In the interim, the government attempts to prevent the strike with force of law and guns but it ultimately discovers that the human mind is sovereign; that no amount of law or physical might can force a person to think and work if he simply chooses not to do so. A recent decision in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice has now demonstrated that the same metaphysical fact faces the proponents of cannabis prohibition in Canada, which now appears destined to share the fate of Rand’s Atlas-forsaken United States. Read more

Review: SUN TV News' "The Source" with Ezra Levant

April 19, 2011 by · 7 Comments 

Technically, SUN TV News launched today at 4:30 PM (EST) with a profile of its various shows, but it truly took off at 5:00 PM with the first episode of “The Source”, featuring host Ezra Levant. I have to admit it: my expectations for Levant’s show were pessimistic.

In 2008, I wrote a column for The Western Standard’s blog – Levant had sold The Western Standard by that time – titled “Freedom Requires a Better Defence“. The central argument was that Levant’s arguments in favour of freedom were so poor as to leave the undecided thinking that freedom is not defensible. Imagine my horror upon hearing Levant explain, during SUN TV’s 4:30 PM programming profile, that “The Source” would be all “about freedom”. It was a horror that compelled me to watch episode 1 of “The Source”, if only to gauge how badly Levant’s show would undermine the cause of individual freedom. Read more