Concepts with Shawn Whatley

Is it time to abandon Canada's Human Rights Tribunals and Commissions? Colin May was appointed as Chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission only to be dismissed shortly after appointment. Political activists dug up an academic book review as proof that May as Islamophobic and, thus, unfit to continue in his role. Cancellation hold less interest for media these days, but it has not gone away. It...

Conservatives need to put more emphasis on aesthetics. Sage MacGillivray has spent her career in art, first as a metal fabricator, now as a studio director. In many ways, craft is the embodiment of conservatism. Craft overlaps physical reality with experience, skill, the limits of reality, meaning, insight, intuition, transcendence, and much more. It demands humility in its quest for awe. I'd love...

Healthcare is the headline that keeps on giving in Canada. As Canadians, we have redefined ourselves as the people who get free care. We live with two medicares: one that we imagine will be there for us when we get sick, and another medicare that actually exists. Josh Dehaas has a deep understanding of the legal issues around healthcare legislation. His report of the legal challenges helps give us...

It's easy to be smug about the Alberta Referendum scheduled for Oct 19th. The questions aren't simple. The Alberta Independence campaign can't match the resources and expertise of the 'remain' voices. And the referendum itself isn't even a referendum on whether or not to leave. Professor Bruce Pardy has followed this issue closely. He's even written a short book about it: Articles of Freedom .  In...

Liberty is a fragile and precious thing. Thoughtful libertarians know that it requires more than simply No Rules! Matt Bufton is a winsome libertarian. Listening to him helps you understand why libertarian thought has such a big influence on the non-Left. He's the Executive Director and co-founder of the Institute for Liberal Studies . Libertarians keep us accountable. They force the rest of us to...

The Conservatives seem lost after Mark Carney stole economic liberalism from the CPC. Trump's tariffs keep voters distracted, while separatism grows in Alberta and Quebec. All of this promises an exciting fall session with the Alberta referendum and elections in Quebec and B.C. Cole Hogan spends his life watching these events. We try to find the concepts and assumptions behind the excitement. Let...

Just when you thought Red Tories had gone extinct, Mark Graham and colleagues start an online journal called the Red Tory Standard . Very few people run around with Tory banners, but then again, Torys aren't the running-around types. But if they were, I suspect we still wouldn't see very many of them. Mark Graham worked to prove me wrong. For someone who grew up in Northern Ontario, as I did, I fo...

The Honorable Jason Kenney has spent his life observing, critiquing, and serving in Canadian politics. He offers wisdom you won't find anywhere else. Kenney reflected on how he has changed. He said, "GDP growth...is not a metric of human happiness or fulfillment or necessarily a health society." Let me know what you think! AI Chapters: Host Shawn Whatley interviews former Alberta Premier and longt...

Robert Nisbet is not a communitarian in the modern sense. He combines an older view with a resolute concern about state power.  Nisbet offers the best and most readable resources for thinking about community from a non-Left perspective.  Prof. Luke Sheahan wrote the forward to a re-release of Nisbet's Social Philosophers. The book is more like a review of intellectual history through the social le...

Post-liberalism hasn't been tried and found wanting. It's been found confusing and left untouched in Canada.  Post-liberalism has been around since the 1980s in theology and at least since the 1990s in politics. It only became popular in the 2010s. Conservatives need to go deep into post-liberal thought. We need to know what bits align with intellectual conservatism and what elements of post-liber...

Marshall McLuhan said we were sleepwalking through civilizational change. Danny Randell, PhD student in intellectual history at University of Buckingham, says Western civilization is already dead. Conservatives have been telling us to wake up decades before anyone had heard of being woke.  But Randell doesn't offer the same old, dour observations. He confronts the most dire predictions, then he ge...

In France, the progressive Left has invented a new history, identity, and legal framework. French people no longer feel at home. The France they knew has disappeared. Sound familiar? We need to pay attention to other countries, especially those in Europe. A similar process is happening in North America. There's no reason, yet, to see why we don't end up in the same place. Dr. Nathan Pinkoski has s...

Jonah Goldberg never leaves you wondering what he thinks. Clear, bold, and exciting, Goldberg makes politics more fun than should be allowed.  Goldberg has been a keen observer of conservative politics for nearly four decades. You might say he was the voice of Republicanism in America before President Donald Trump. He thinks deeply, reads widely, and is willing to change his mind. Don't miss this...

Social media posts about conservative debates aim at the sizzle but miss the substance. Dimpee Brar and Matt Spoke invest a ton of their own time and resources into saving Canada from Leftist nonsense. They aren't just offering opinions devoid of effort. Is patriotism a 'conservative value' that demands devotion to Canada, even when Canada is ignoble? Should we defend the prime minister, because h...

Rusty Reno offers insight into "our crisis of solidarity" that I haven't found anywhere else. In his book Return of the Strong Gods , he tackles the post-WWII liberal consensus that Karl Popper called The Open Society. It is an essential resource to help you understand our times. Reno is also articulate on post-liberalism. It's not the simplistic idea you see dismissed in most of the legacy media....

Profound political differences exist between national and cultural traditions. This episode is an introduction to the 4-part audio documentary created by Cardus: The Nation and the Veil: Quebec’s Struggle with Secularism and Religion. A few hightlights: 1. French republicanism carries markedly different presuppositions than English liberal traditions. 2. We cannot ignore the political differences...

The data and demographic argument in support of slowing immigration is overwhelming. Even when people enjoy new neighbours, it takes years to build understanding and trust. Canada, especially, has pretended that demography and assimilation don't matter. All that matters is world-leading levels of immigration. Dr. Eric Kaufmann is another refreshing academic who speaks plainly, and he has suffered...

Conservatism is experiencing a renaissance in the West. It is gaining a new self image beyond its historic passion for economics. Dimpee Brar has entered the scene in high gear. Over the last few months she has written provocative pieces at a rate of roughly one every two weeks. She's been on panels, podcasts, and interviews. I hope she can maintain her output! A few of her articles include: Why I...

Most civilizations prioritize space or time. They either choose empire and expansion (space) or permanence (time).  Durable civilizations choose both. Harold Innis was a giant in Canadian academia in the early 20th century, but most people have never heard of him. He offers deep and helpful insights on civilization, progress, and culture. Professor John Bonnett wrote his thesis on Innis and introd...

Christine Van Geyn captured the central debate around freedom of expression vs state control and put it into a children's book.  As Interim Executive Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, Van Geyn has the deep knowledge and experience required to explain the essential elements of free expression in a short book titled, Maple's Garden: A Canadian Freedom of Speech Story . We also discus...

How do we unify the very different voices on the non-Left? Do our differences mean we are doomed to a soft tyranny of centralized messaging? Josh Lewis has been wrestling with this, and many other issues, for the last 9 years on his podcast, Saving Elephants . He's hosted many of the biggest influencers in American conservatism, including a number of voices from Canada and Europe. The conservative...

Professor Joshua Mitchell is courageous. He argues for his positions even when they go against the grain of politically acceptable thought. Mitchell says conservatives have done a good job at addressing the debt and tradition economies. We are strong on fiscal policy, and we stand up for the debts we owe to our fathers. But we are almost completely blind to the more profound, urgent, and critical...

Professor Elizabeth Corey says conservatism is about far more than fighting. In fact, its major emphasis lies outside politics altogether. Corey offers a thick view of intellectual conservatism. She invites us into something challenging and deep.  I tried to push her on whether she was asking too much. Was her approach practicable? Should we never ever fight? What role does conflict play in a cons...

Tim Haggstrom doesn't just promote theory. He bears the personal scars of legal practice. He leads an organization focussed on legal theory, while fighting (personally) for free speech. This caught me off guard. I thought Tim was simply an exemplary leader of a noteworthy organization. I had no idea that he was also personally up to his neck in litigation about the legitimacy of race-based scholar...

Update on the quest to define conservatism! After almost 100 episodes, I see a way to articulate conservatism coming into view. I hope to capture it all into a short book/long essay later this year. In the meantime, I offer a recap of liberalism and contrast it with conservatism. I also touch on inheritance, myth, and experience as themes within conservatism. I also tackle a summary of neoconserva...