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National Post readers speak out on the issues of the day

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Re: Trudeau and other partisans should rein in the rage, John Ivison, Jan. 4

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While reading John Ivisons column, the concept of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few bounced around in my mind. Whether Dickens or Spock, the idea has clearly been lost on both the populist and progressive sides in modern (and dysfunctional) politics. In the past, politicians developed and implemented policies aimed at the needs of the many. Red Tories and Blue Liberals ensured their parties stayed focused on the centre that captured the vast majority of people also known as voters. Compromise was a critical capability of any successful government in developing, modifying and deploying policy changes that would benefit the greatest number of Canadians and maintain both a stable economy and a stable rich Canadian culture.

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How times change. The fallout from the Trump years continues to be felt everyday as a very vocal minority drives rage from the right, destroying any chance of a reasoned political discourse, replaced instead by an attitude that if you are not with us, you are against us. We Canadians and our system are clearly much better. But one doesnt have to dig very far to see we are in the same boat as America. It is simply leaning hard left instead of hard right, well off the centre that has traditionally been Canadas advantage. Justin Trudeau and his band of progressives clearly have the attitude that if you are not with us, you are against us. Instead of building a better, stronger, and more prosperous society for all, it seems they focus more and more on policies that benefit a very vocal minority at the expense of the majority of Canadians and seem hell bent on destroying what has made Canada great economically, socially and culturally. Whether the ship capsizes to the right or the left is somewhat academic. The rage builds up to a breaking point and the ship still capsizes.

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I, too, have great hopes for 2022 and pray the illiberal left reins in its rage. After all, the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few if Canada is to avoid the precipice the U.S. is heading towards at flank speed.

Stephen Gesner, Oakville, Ont.

Truer words were never spoken and I hope that the spreading of fear by the prime minister and others will end before this pandemic does. COVID has provided the perfect cover for Justin Trudeau to distract from rising inflation, his irresponsible spending, his war on fossil fuels and pushing woke ideologically driven policies. Using fear, now against the unvaccinated, continues to keep Trudeau in control of his radical agenda. COVID has in fact given the political class something they could only dream about having absolute power.

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Larry Comeau, Ottawa

Re: Schools open for Omicron except here in Canada, Chris Selley, Jan. 5

It is an axiom that you cannot manage what you do not or cannot measure. OMICRON has overwhelmed our ability to test, contact trace and measure its spread in the broader population. There is no way to know when to unlock the lockdown when the data we have used to date to manage lockdowns is no longer reliable, if at all available. OMICRON is now managing us, rather than the other way around, and business people and school-aged children and young adults are suffering inordinately as a result.

It is too easy to blame Ontario Premier Doug Ford for all of this, but it should be noted that neither Steven Del Duca, the Ontario Liberal leader, nor Andrea Horwath, the provincial NDP leader, have offered a different way forward. Both of these leaders have shown they are capable only of frothing at the mouth over the obvious failures of the current government. It would appear that the only winners in the Lockdown Games are the politicians who claim to be following the science and the public health officials who abet their failure to actually do so.

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Paul Clarry, Aurora, Ont.

Re: Open the damn country back up, before Canadians wreck something we cant fix, Jordan Peterson, Jan. 10

I would sharpen Jordan Petersons opinion that it is time for some courage in the face of COVID. People with no medical reason for not being vaccinated must have the courage of their convictions not to use our publicly funded medical system when they contract the illness. If these anti-vaxxers still want medical attention after contracting COVID, then courageous politicians must permit the private sector to provide it. This solution would recognizes the Canadian value of choice and ease the stresses COVID has caused our public health system.

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Dal Corran, Toronto

Re: I see it coming: Mandatory vaccinations on the horizon, federal health minister says, Jan. 7

I am a fully vaccinated Canadian, even boosted, but I see mandatory vaccinations and vaccine passports as a huge intrusion on our freedoms and basically useless, as proven by Omicron.

Here is a novel solution for our underfunded and very inferior health-care system that so many Canadians still think is superior to other models.

Why dont we prohibit smoking and require all obese people to go on mandatory exercise programs? The money we save in health costs could be used to treat COVID patients.

After all, if were not going to be concerned about personal freedoms, we should look at all options.

E. Arndt, Yorkton, Sask.

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Letters to the editor: Rein in the rage on the left and the right - National Post

The study of arguments is one of the thriving intellectual pursuits of a time and is it any wonder? Social medias business model depends on perpetual rancour and the amplification of extreme points of view. Twitter often reminds me of an old-fashioned cartoon of a bar fight: an impenetrable cloud of dust spiked with fists and boots. We argue about important things, like Covid policy, but also, with no less passion, the movie Dont Look Up or the depiction of goblins in Harry Potter movies. We argue about how we are arguing, and we do it every day.

This field of inquiry doesnt just include behavioural science books such as Jonathan Haidts The Righteous Mind and Ian Leslies Conflicted. James Grahams new play Best of Enemies, currently running at the Young Vic, and Jon Ronsons recent Radio 4 series about culture wars, Things Fell Apart, are in the same business. Both men are known for their empathy and even-handedness: Ronson has written thoughtful bestsellers about extremists and online shaming, while Grahams work for stage and screen gravitates towards periods of disruption and division. Taken together, their latest projects shed light on the crucial distinction between debate and dialogue.

Best of Enemies is based on a 2015 documentary about a series of landmark televised debates. In the summer of 1968, the struggling ABC network decided to build its slim coverage of the national party conventions around 10 debates between William F Buckley Jr, the editor of The National Review and host of Firing Line, and Gore Vidal, the novelist and playwright. Born just a few weeks apart in 1925, both men were sons of dynastic privilege who had run for office and attained considerable celebrity, both on screen and in print, by being as combative as they were erudite. But as Buckley later remarked: There is an implicit conflict of interest between that which is highly viewable and that which is highly illuminating.

Casting Buckley and Vidal was a vote for viewability. For one thing, they represented not Republicans and Democrats but the most radical expressions of conservatism and progressivism: what we would now call culture warriors. Neither, for example, cared for the eventual Democratic nominee, the cheerful moderate Hubert Humphrey. Electoral strategy and policy platforms interested them less than a battle for the soul of America.

For another, they displayed mutual disgust. Each man considered the other not just dangerous but obscene. Even before the vicious exchange of slurs that made their penultimate meeting notorious, the debates were a gruesome display of smirks and sneers, sly digs and barbed crosstalk. The host, Howard K. Smith, often seemed taken aback by the heat of their animosity. Vidal dubbed Buckley the leading warmonger of the United States; Buckley branded Vidal an agent for the end of democratic government.

The debates shot ABC from the bottom of the ratings heap to the top. In 1968, the spectacle of two very clever, eloquent men tearing chunks out of each other was a delicious novelty. Even today, in the play, many of the biggest laughs come from verbatim re-enactments of their showdowns, which Graham structures like the bouts in a boxing movie.

In hindsight, the two mens ideas and rhetoric seem impressively hifalutin but viewers tuned in for the sizzle not the steak, and that became their legacy. To this day, broadcasters like to frame debates as a spicy clash between two irreconcilable points of view. Im not the only journalist to have lost a radio booking by admitting that they dont entirely disagree with the other guest; the disappointment in the bookers voice is palpable.

On YouTube, meanwhile, the likes of Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson are billed as rhetorical gladiators who DESTROY and CRUSH their opponents. Vidal had it right in the final 1968 debate: I think these great debates are absolutely nonsense. The way theyre set up, theres almost no interchange of ideas, very little even of personality. Theres also the terrible thing about this medium that hardly anyone listens.

Some would say that the Vidal/Buckley clash was a crass corruption of the noble art of debate; but perhaps they merely tore the mask off. The value of adversarial debate is vastly overstated by politicians and journalists who belonged to the tiny of minority of students who participated in them at university (and are rarely sound advertisements for their educational benefit) because it is ultimately a sport rather than an exchange of ideas and a bloodsport at that.

Competitive debating takes arguments essential features and reimagines them as a game, wrote Sally Rooney about her time as a star college debater. For the purposes of this game, the emotional or relational aspects of argument are superfluous, and at the end there are winners. Everyone tacitly understands that its not a real argument.

The American novelist Ben Lerner came to similar conclusions about his own prowess as a competitive debater in high school: The speeches required decisiveness: clear rather than complex answers won rounds, and you learned to stud a speech with sources the way a politician reaches for statistics to provide the affect of authority more than to illuminate an issue or settle a point of fact. Although this experience appears to have done neither novelist any harm in the long run, Lerner did not like what the game did to him: I became a bully, quick and vicious and ready to spread an interlocutor with insults at the smallest provocation; I dominated; I made other debaters cry.

Debates have a place in election campaigns because the goal of both is to win and to leave your opponent, as Vidal said of Buckley, a bleeding corpse. More often, though, the challenge of politics is to resolve painful disagreements through dialogue and compromise. There is no perfect quip or killer statistic, flourished like a duellists blade, that will deliver an enduring piece of legislation. Law-making is not good television because it requires listening. Even the politicians who are most adept at Prime Ministers Questions resent the time it consumes because its theatrical aggression has so little to do with the rest of their job.

There are better ways to talk about the issues that divide us. In Things Fell Apart, Jon Ronson tells eight stories about formative moments in the culture war which still influence how we argue today. The most popular episode is also the most uplifting. A Miracle revisits the 1985 conversation between the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker and a gay priest with Aids named Steve Pieters. As Peters, still alive today, relates, Bakkers unexpected compassion built a bridge between evangelical Christians and gay men at a time of rampant homophobia and demonisation of those with Aids: People in that audience got to see a real live human being. Their conversation is the polar opposite of Buckley vs Vidal because Bakker really listened. (Fittingly, she is the subject of a stage musical that James Graham is currently writing with Elton John and Jake Shears.)

A Miracle chimes with Many Different Lives, which describes how a transwoman called Nancy Burkholder managed to foster a respectful (albeit short-lived) dialogue in the Nineties between the womens festival Michfest and her fringe gathering Camp Trans. Burkholders guidelines for fruitful debate are so self-evidently helpful yet so rarely followed that they are worth quoting in full: Listen carefully and remain calm and patient. Do not call anyone names or belittle their point of view or imply that they are irrational. An atmosphere of love and joy will attract people to us. Anger and hostility will turn them away. We are all on this planet trying to figure out a lot of complex stuff together. In these episodes you can hear Ronson, a culture war pacifist, exhilarated by the possibility of breaking a deadlock.

Like any war, a culture war is a failure of diplomacy. Unlike most wars, it can never be won, whatever the noisiest and most passionate combatants would like to believe. Polls consistently show that most people dont want to participate in culture wars, if indeed they even know what they are. They want compromise and settlement, without which a democratic society cannot function.

Binary extremism may reap viewers, clicks, followers and donations but it is also brutalising and corrupting. The more we have of debate as a game rather than debate as dialogue, the worse things get. As the conservative writer Jonah Goldberg lamented in a recent piece about January 6: The addiction to good-versus-evilnarratives pitting the honourable and decent us against the villainous and sinister them is as strong as ever and there is little appetite for the kind of argument and persuasion that sustains democracy.

Towards the end of Best of Enemies, Graham imagines the kind of honest, vulnerable conversation that Buckley and Vidal might have had when the cameras werent rolling: no performing, just talking, as another character says. Its an instinctive bridge-builders fantasy of good-faith disagreement, where the goal is understanding rather than victory. Ronsons series closes with a more explicit plea: I think people are just exhausted by how things have fallen apart and what theyre longing for instead is connection.

Buckley died in 2008 and Vidal in 2012. Neither sought a significant online presence. Yet it is on the internet where their 1968 desire to fight and win at any cost, to generate heat and damn the light, has become overwhelming. In the 2015 documentary, former ABC executive Richard Wald sadly observes: Argument is sugar and the rest of us are flies. What he doesnt say is that the sugar is poisoned.

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We have all lost the argument - UnHerd

With the Cardinals playoff game Monday night against the Rams, the practice schedule was pushed ahead so the team will be on the field beginning Thursday and through Saturday for the normal three days of work before a game.

That will be the first indication of where injured players are as the team hopes to have as many of the walking wounded as possible to be available.

For Sundays game against Seattle, five of the seven inactive players were injured: running back Chase Edmonds, wide receiver/kick returner Rondale Moore, cornerback Marco Wilson, defensive tackle Jordan Phillips and tight end Demetrius Harris.

Then, during the game, running backs James Conner (ribs) and Jonathan Ward (knee), and cornerback Kevin Peterson (concussion) exited with injuries.

Head coach Kliff Kingsbury said, We should know more on KP today, which sounded somewhat like hope that Peterson might clear the concussion protocol.

As for Edmonds, Conner and Ward, Kingsbury said, Once we get out there Thursday, we'll have a better idea. But as of now, I would just say day-to-day. I don't know how they're gonna progress as the week goes on.

In addition to the loss of wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins from the offense, Moores absence has also affected what the offense can do.

Rondale's a special talent, Kingsbury said. I think we've all seen that. He's dynamic, unique in space, all those things. Really gives us a spark, so it would be great to have him back if we can get him.

The Cardinals made two roster moves Wednesday, re-signing defensive tackle Zach Kerr to the practice squad and activating tight end Maxx Williams from reserve/COVID-19.

Kerr was waived Monday after departing the COVID list and was added after clearing waivers Tuesday.

Williams remains on reserve/injured, so his activation is immaterial to Mondays game. However, the Cardinals now have no players on reserve/COVID-19.

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Walking Wounded Hope to Practice and Play This Week - Sports Illustrated

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In Alberta, Indigenous police are patrolling non-Indigenous folks for a change

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First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Posts own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent direct to your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 6 p.m. ET (and 9 a.m. on Sundays), sign up here.

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Prior lockdowns have often seen Canada experience a rally round the flag effect as politicians and public health officials were held up as wise sages guiding the population through uncertain times. A new Leger poll has found that those sentiments are now headed out the window

Writing in the National Post, Rupa Subramanya pitched the case as to why lockdowns are probably doing very little to check the spread of Omicron . In this latest wave, the only European country to match Canada in terms of lockdown severity was The Netherlands. Subramanya noted that Dutch hospitalizations did indeed go down under lockdown but this was in spite of cases continuing to rise. Its not the lockdown that is keeping hospital and ICU admissions under control, but the simple fact that vaccines, and recovery from a prior infection, work to reduce the severity of the virus, she wrote .

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The Netherlands went for a hard lockdown Dec 19.But guess what, cases falling 1.8%/day on average for 3 weeks before lockdown and rising 6.7%/day since. And ICU admissions already falling before have continued to fall. Lockdown failed and was unnecessary. https://t.co/kyYz93OOIA

Former Senator Andr Pratte is currently living under curfew conditions in Quebec. In a column , he criticized the notion that Quebecs restrictions are based on science because the underlying data is becoming shoddy . Case rates are becoming increasingly arbitrary due to overwhelmed testing capacity, and even hospitalization rates have been corrupted by rising numbers of hospital patients who are admitted for other reasons but are marked down as COVID-19 patients after testing positive for an asymptomatic case.

And noted heterodox thinker Jordan Peterson is in the pages of the National Post with a much blunter assessment on the ongoing lockdowns: Open the damn country back up . Petersons chief observation is that nothing seems to work anymore in Canada : Parents cant rely on schools being open, travellers cant rely on airlines flying on schedule and shoppers increasingly cant trust shelves to be stocked. Were playing with fire Ive never seen breakdown in institutional trust on this scale before in my lifetime, he wrote.

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One of the signature experiences of the Omicron wave has been multi-hour lineups of cars queuing up for a COVID-19 test. In Burnaby, B.C., police saw a woman using her phone while in a 2.5 hour lineup and decided to slap her with a $300 ticket for distracted driving . In a statement , Burnaby RCMP said they had noticed ongoing issues among motorists in the constant crawl of test-site traffic, including using electronic devices and not wearing seatbelts.

Speaking of policing, for one of the first times in Canadian history, a First Nations police service will be policing a non-Indigenous community rather than the other way around . Albertas Tosguna Tsuutina Nation Police Service the official police authority of the Tsuutina Nation has just taken over policing duties of Redwood Meadows , a neighbouring community of 1,000 that has traditionally been serviced by the RCMP.

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After imposing vaccine mandates on health-care workers, air passengers and the civil service, Ottawa is now looking to make vaccination mandatory for American long-haul truckers crossing the border . The policy is expected to sideline up to 10 per cent of cross-border truckers, with industry groups warning that it would exacerbate rising food prices and ongoing supply chain backlogs. Everyone has been talking about inflation. And this is just going to continue to fuel that, one fruit importer told Reuters .

Trudeau government officials are getting progressively more comfortable with bad-mouthing the Peoples Republic of China . Most recently, that took the form of Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly telling Global News about Canadas new Indo-Pacific stategy a term that is essentially diplomatic code for Beijing-countering strategy.

Meanwhile, Canada might be sending weapons to Ukraine as the European country faces down a possible invasion from Russia . At least, Joly refused to deny as much when repeatedly pressed on the matter during an interview on CTV. In 2017, Ukraine was suddenly added to the list of countries approved for Canadian arms sales. Since 2015, Canada has kept a standing force of around 200 soldiers in Ukraine to act as military trainers.

Get all of these insights and more into your inbox every weekday at 6 p.m. ET by signing up for the First Reading newsletter here.

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FIRST READING: The questionably effective lockdown everybody hates - National Post

No. 7 USC is the fourth-tallest team in the country and the Trojans used that length to stay undefeated at the expense of Cal on Thursday night.

The Trojans converted eight offensive rebounds into 10 second-chance points in the first half. Then they merely attacked basket, making 11 of their first 16 shots in the second half on the way to a 77-63 victory at Haas Pavilion.

By the time it was over, the Trojans had scored 50 points in the paint.

"We didn't play well enough to beat a Top-10 team tonight," Cal coach Mark Fox says in the video at the top of this story. "We simply didn't rebound the ball in the first half. And in the second half we didn't force enough stops to even have our rebounding exposed."

Cal (9-5, 2-2 Pac-12) had won five straight games and nine in a row at home. And Bears played well during long stretches of the game.

They simply had no answer for the Trojans physical advantage, although Cal guard Jordan Shepherd said the Bears simply didn't measure up defensively.

USC (13-0, 3-0), with seven players standing at least 6-foot-9, overpowered the Bears in the second half. Isaiah Mobley, a 6-foot-10 forward, put up 19 points scoring on dunks, drives while also making both of his 3-point attempts.

The Trojans, who hadn't played in 18 days, used an 8-0 to push their lead to 46-35 on a drive by Ethan Anderson with 14:25 left. But the Bears did not go away.

Back-to-back 3-pointers by Jordan Shepherd and Jalen Celestine and a pair of free throws by Shepherd pulled Cal within 52-48 with just over 10 minutes left.

The Bears got no closer, and when Joshua Morgan scored a layup with 5:18 left the Trojans had their biggest lead of the night at 65-53. That margin reached 15 points before the Bears closed a bit in the final minutes.

Drew Peterson scored 17 points and Boogie Ellis had 14 points for USC, which shot 64 percent in the second half. Peterson and Mobley each had nine rebounds.

Grant Anticevich, who led the Bears with 19 points, says in the video below he feels like the Bears gave the game away. Cal, playing two top-10 teams in the same week for the first time since 1975, takes on No. 5 UCLA on Saturday

Shepherd, limited in the first half by two early fouls, scored 15 for the Bears and Andre Kelly had 13 points and 11 rebounds. Celestine added 10 points. Point guard Joel Brown dished a career-high nine assists and had zero turnovers in 36 minutes on the floor.

The Bears shot 40.7 percent from the field, the highest percentage any opponent has managed this season against a USC team that is second nationally, allowing just 35 percent.

Cal trailed 36-31 at halftime after allowing the Trojans to convert eight offensive rebounds into 10 second-chance points. They used their length to build a 23-14 rebounding advantage in the first 20 minutes.

Cal shot well early in a half that had 10 lead changes but the Bears closed the half by making just one of eight attempts to finish the period at 38 percent.

The Bears last lead the half was 17-16 after Celestine converted a drive to the basket with 11:22 left.

The Trojans built their biggest lead of the half with an 8-0 run that made it 26-20 with 8 minutes left. They scored two of those basket following offensive rebounds and another off a steal that became a breakaway dunk.

Kelly had eight points and six rebounds for the Bears at halftime and Anticevich had eight points and six rebounds. Celestine came off the bench to score seven.

Mobley had 12 points and six rebounds for USC and Peterson posted eight and six.

Cover photo of USC's Drew Peterson passing around Cal's Andre Kelly by D. Ross Cameron, USA Today

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

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Cal Basketball: Unbeaten USC Pulls Away From Bears in the Second Half - CalBearsMaven