Concepts with Shawn Whatley

Barry Bussey has spent decades thinking about freedom and working around the legal edges of it. Most people don't think about freedom until it's compromised. Barry thinks about it all the time.

Canada has led the world as a test case on the limits of freedom with our MAiD (euthanasia) legislation, approach to COVID, and the Emergency Measure's Act. These are complex legal issues.

I always learn something when I talk with Barry. Let...

Barbara Kay has written professionally about issues on the non left since the 1960s. We might want to say she had a 'front-row seat', but that would be wrong. Her writing went beyond simple observation. She helped shape conservative opinion in Canada for half a century.

Barb wrote a piece on Norman Podhoretz, when he passed in December. She mentions reading everything he had ever written: books and articles; editorials in his role ...

Prime Minister Mark Carney's Davos speech made liberals swoon and conservatives nod in admiration.

Are the accolades warranted? Or are we being fooled by eloquence?

I couldn't resist recording something about The Speech. In this episode I offer three big points:

1. Carney appears to use a sycophantic foreign policy strategy. Is it rational? Will it work?

2. Carney appropriates brilliance to serve his own ends. Is that fair or justi...

Cole Hogan is a political strategist who played key roles in the elections of Premier Doug Ford and Premier Jason Kenney. He's a student of Canadian politics past and present and frequent pundit on major media outlets in Canada.

Cole explains how Pierre Elliott Trudeau focussed on reshaping Canada. Economic issues seemed to bore him. PE Trudeau reshaped the Canadian constitution in his own image in the 1980s.

Conservatives have bee...

JJ McCullough offers a window into Canada. JJ keeps his 1 million followers front of mind. He speaks so they will understand. He focusses on what matters to them.

In that sense, JJ is a better politician than many politicians: he never forgets his constituency.

Don't be fooled by JJ's high-energy, youthful style. He puts a ton of research into his videos. 

The non left needs to pay attention when JJ speaks. You don't have to agree ...

This episode was a breakthrough for me. Conservatism is the mediation between the universal and the particular.

I know this sounds nerdy, but I think this is an essential challenge that thinkers on the non-left must work through. We believe that some truths are true everywhere, all the time, but that does not that mean, as liberalism asserts, that truth is true everywhere all the time in all places.

Are there truths that are only t...

What's wrong with Canada, and what can we expect to happen next?

David Leis has spent decades in Canadian politics, and he's worried. Canada is in decline. We need leadership to change course, not simply a change in government.

He packages his concern in terms of data, comparisons with other countries, and political argument. As President and CEO of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, he has a ton of evidence to draw upon. But h...

Does it makes sense to maximize liberty in the economy and yet limit it at a personal level? Is it even possible?

Alex MacDonald says it doesn't make sense. We never make economics the ultimate priority for family decisions, why do we think it's ok to prioritize economy at a national level?

This discussion gets to the heart of debate within the conservative movement. Of course, we need a strong economy. But should economic concerns...

Christmas greetings plus one big idea.

Why read? Better yet, why buy books you will never be able to read?

Don't overestimate what you know. Building a personal library of more books that you can ever read will remind you of how much you do not know. It creates a presence in your home of intentional ignorance.

I got the idea from this article: Umberto Eco's Anti-Library 

Thank you so much to my audience and guests! It has been far ...

Many of our most popular ideas today are medieval. We are all, in some way, medieval thinkers.

Dr. Michael Bonner applies his experience as a historian and political consultant to the current crisis of liberalism. He explains what's going on by reaching back several thousand years.

Although this episode is heavy, his book is highly readable. He covers 2000 years of history in 200 pages. It helps if you know the people he references...

I'm trying something new: this is a lightly edited transcript from the start of the episode:

Thanks for listening!

Shawn: What do young people want these days? Do they want total unfettered freedom or do they want to be challenged? Check it out.

Kate: This is what I love talking about with young people, because they are ready to rise to this challenge, right? Young people want to be challenged. T...

Here's the other half of the Koch-Speer debate. As usual, Sean Speer offers a nuanced response that seeks to learn at least as much as he hopes to inform.

This whole conversation is essential for Canadians right now, conservatives especially. Its outcome determines the entire cant of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Sean laid out his argument here also: Six reasons why a state-imposed conservative culture is a terrible idea. 

Book...

Anthony says conservatives don't understand politics. He argues in Without Diminishment that "The state is the architect of culture, not a spectator."

Conservatives will keep losing until they realise that the must pick a side, when they form government. They cannot aim to simply manage the state. They need to shape it.

This is a hot debate in Canada right now. Anthony says there is no such thing as a neutral institution. All insti...

Matt Spoke builds communities, develops housing, creates start-up companies, serves on boards of directors, plans grass-roots political conferences, and raises a family.

Matt embodies a conservative life. 

I first met Matt at the Project Ontario conference he organized (with help from others) in Toronto. He speaks well, listens closely, and can carry a conversation as though you've known him forever. I admired his polish and walked...

Ben Woodfinden is a former director of communications for Pierre Poilievre. He has practical experience inside politics mixed with theoretical study and work as a consultant.

When Ben speaks, people listen.

Debate about first principles has finally returned to the Canadian non-left. A new, mostly younger group of conservative writers and speakers have challenged the status quo.

Young people, especially, find that Canada does not wo...

Canada cannot continue unless we share a common sense of what we love.

In BC, young students learn from daily land acknowledgements that they can never really call Canada their own. It belongs to someone else.

Students in Vancouver sing two national anthems, Canada’s and another belonging to coastal indigenous people. This goes beyond education and cultural awareness. These students learn to venerate indigenous nations to which the...

Want to be active in the public square? Join the symphony. Get involved in what you love. Be public about your pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Ray Pennings has spent his life building a winsome and articulate defence of religion in the pubic square. It is not weird to admit we have religious beliefs (including non belief); it's weird to pretend we do not have them.

Canada and USA differ with respect to our approac...

Toryism has faded in Canada, but it still gets blamed for backsliding and bad behaviour in Conservative Party politics.

(Full disclosure: I have never seen myself as a Tory, neither High, Low, Red, Blue, or traditional.)

Political labels, especially old ones, mean nothing without definition. Even with working definitions, labels often bleed into each other at the edges, especially upon application to policy and law.

Since Toryism c...

Conservative voters around the world are leaning into culture and away from economic issues. Sam Routley's research found that Canadian conservatives cling to the 1980's fusionism of traditional social policies and libertarian economics.

Can the 1980's fusionism hold?

Will economic determinism help Conservatives to win elections today?

Links to articles

Decoding Canada's Conservative Coalition

Sam's Substack: The Country of Our Def...