Aug 20 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — We are all endeavouring to enjoy the fading days of summer before the hyper-activity of the federal election fires up. The political parties have used the warmer days to hit the hustings in an attempt to tenderize voters for the melee that is about to ensue. But this election will be held against a backdrop […]
Aug 15 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — We know it’s coming and it will be confounding. The use of fake news, “Black Ops,” and digital algorithms designed to skew reality are about to become part and parcel of the next federal election campaign scheduled for a few months from now. We look on, aghast, at the social media shenanigans south of the […]
Aug 5 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — “Well, Mr. Pearson, you might be in the wrong business.” Deepak Obhrai said the words in such a genial manner that I could only smile in return. It was early in my political time as an MP in Parliament when Obhrai stopped me on my way down the stairs leading to the underground tunnel between […]
Jul 16 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Like it or not, and whether it is indeed an accurate assessment, the terms “populism” and “class war” are increasingly creeping into our political language the closer we get to this fall’s federal election. Numerous pundits have spent the past year assuring Canadians that nothing like Brexit or the Trump phenomenon would happen here in […]
Jul 2 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — During my former parliamentary tenure (2006-2011), there were those rare occasions when we would commiserate as MPs from different parties about just how caustic political life was becoming. There were inevitably expressed concerns about how long the public would tolerate the kind of mean partisanship displayed in the House and on the news. We knew […]
Jun 19 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — “I have become radicalized … I now think the rampant individualism of our current culture is a catastrophe. The whole cultural paradigm has to shift from the mindset of hyper-individualism to the relational mindset.” These words, coming from one of America’s great conservative commentators, are revolutionary in their own way – not so much a […]
Jun 4 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Writing in the Washington Post this past week, Fareed Zakaria noted that the hard edge of populism might be on the wane. Citing a lessening in tensions on the issues of immigration and lack of economic opportunity, he nevertheless wrote: “In both cases, the crisis appears to be over, but the fury remains.” Indeed it […]
May 23 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Sometimes we can all be pretty dumb. Seriously, we make assumptions based upon our belief that our positions are well thought out and we wonder how those with opposing views can be so naïve. I’ve encountered a lot of this lately, as a conservative mindset sweeps across much of the world. Those holding to such […]
May 17 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — It’s tough to blame him. In its own way it seemed kind of inevitable. Francis Fukuyama was little known to the outside world in 1989, but his star was rising within the American State Department. And his timing was perfect when he published The End of History and the Last Man six months prior to […]
Apr 30 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Is it true? Is a Blue Conservative wave sweeping Canada as in so much of the rest of the world? Andrew Cohen provided some clues in his Ottawa Citizen article when he wrote that, provincially, five provinces led by Liberals or NDP have been defeated by Conservatives in the last three years. Jason Kenney’s win […]
Apr 23 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — It frequently gets agitating listening to someone say that times were so much simpler in the old days. It’s a kind of naïve way of both dismissing the past and providing excuses for the inactions of the present. The world has always been on the verge of some calamity or another, but the fragile years […]
Apr 16 2019 — Glen Pearson — GlenPearson.ca — I encounter Conservative friends and associates every day. Aware that we all have different leanings, we nevertheless roll up our sleeves and get to work building our community, our world. So many of the London Food Bank’s volunteers, donors and clients are conservative in temperament and in political leaning and they help the organization to […]
Apr 2 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Is the affluent west running the danger of losing its own narrative? It would seem likely, given that some of its most powerful examples are in the process of domestic immolations that threaten the very kind of internationalism they were trying to construct over the last few decades. Britain, America, France, Germany and Canada, with […]
Mar 20 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — It’s not just Brexit, the riots in France or the growing divisions in America. Everywhere, crisis after crisis erupts and we’re left to wonder if politics in general, and governing specifically, are losing their ability to hold the respective centers together in what were normally stable nation states. This isn’t some wild prediction. An entire […]
Mar 13 2019 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — The Trudeau government’s SNC-Lavalin controversy is a goldmine of sorts. For opposition parties and hyper-partisans, it has proved a gift from the gods, great enough to effectively move polling numbers and turning the next federal election into something of a free-for-all. For the media, the intricate mix between elected representatives and senior bureaucrats and the […]