Mar 31 2020 — Glen Pearson — GlenPearson.ca — In an interview with our local paper yesterday, I was asked at its conclusion if I felt any sense of optimism at all during this crisis? I even surprised myself a bit when I replied in the affirmative. The thing is, there is a case whereby our collective exodus from these dark and lonely days […]
Mar 29 2020 — Glen Pearson — The Environmental Protection Agency in the George W. Bush era, in attempting to assess air quality regulations, reported that the value of the life of a 70-year old person was 37% percent less than the life of a younger person. This caused some politicians to suggest that seniors consider sacrificing themselves to save the economy. […]
Mar 23 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — It seems almost too surreal to be true, but back in 1950, a group of America’s top political scientists got together and wrote a 98-page paper that was featured on the front page of the New York Times. Titled “Towards a More Responsible Two-Party System,” it concluded with a challenge, which today’s politically inclined would […]
Mar 18 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — In his book The Good Society, author Robert Bellah says that institutions are “patterned ways of living together.” He reminds us that we often overlook the fact that our institutions are more than mere social associations but structural necessities that help us get from one age to the next. It’s been in vogue in recent […]
Mar 10 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Ezra Klein’s new book, Why We’re Polarized, effectively turns people’s political presumptions on their heads. He challenges our thinking in ways that are provocative as well as researched. In doing so, he has ripped open conventional thought in ways that are exceedingly uncomfortable. One of his key assertions is that modern voters are more linked […]
Mar 3 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Refugees can be forgiven for feeling that the world has forgotten them. In just a few short years, affluent nations have gone from opening their arms to outcasts from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, to closed borders, limited corridors of movement and declining global assistance. And now, with the introduction of the Coronavirus terrifying […]
Feb 20 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — It used to be the word socialism was a political term – just not one most people would take to. In turns, it was deemed as too expensive, too populist, too extreme, and, in the end, too impractical. And so it remained relegated to the left end of the political spectrum, where it retained significant […]
Feb 14 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — He’s one of the godfathers of the Democratic Party and he’s just a little incensed. James Carville’s voice is being raised at a crucial time for a party desperately in search of a leader that can prevail in the November elections. H appears to be losing it when he actually makes a lot of sense. […]
Feb 10 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — The media hinted that the knives were out the moment Donald Trump was acquitted and that’s just how it played out. There’s no need to go over the bloodletting that has now infused the White House with that “revenge is sweet” demeanour; it’s incessantly on our news feeds and doesn’t require a retelling here. But […]
Feb 3 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — When I first heard of it, I thought it was bogus. But then an old Ottawa associate sent along a link to a Peter MacKay leadership ad that showed me speaking in the House of Commons about how he was a hero to one particular family. Why was this suddenly emerging a decade after the […]
Jan 3 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Millions went to bed fearful last night and woke up this morning even more so. We understood that it was inevitable that America would need to militarily respond to the killing of an American contractor in Iraq. It came in the form of U.S. rocket attacks on Iranian sponsored military camps in Iraq, which then […]
Dec 30 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — When novelist/journalist Chuck Palahniuk noted that this generation could be “remembered more for what we destroy than what we create,” he could just as easily be describing the unfolding of events in 2019. To be sure, a lot of good things happened. Austria named its first woman chancellor and the European Union elected its first […]
Dec 17 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — It’s the secret glue that has held democracies together in ways we never fully understood – at least until now, when so much stability seems to have evaporated in the midst of crisis after crisis. It’s called “convention” and, along with the rule of law, it was successful at establishing a ground rules that permitted […]
Dec 10 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — The captured scene of Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson quietly conferring on the actions of Donald Trump created its own sensation, but in many ways served as a microcosm of current global tensions. It was an unfortunately timed incident that nevertheless exposed inevitable realities. The nature of power in a world of nation […]
Dec 3 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — We’ve been hearing it for years, even in the decade before Donald Trump – the end of the American Empire. The analogies to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire have been plenteous and concerning. The America we knew – the better part of it – is gone, we are told, and all that’s […]