An American virus infects Brazil
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An American virus infects Brazil

No, this is not about COVID or some other physical malady. It’s about how excessive political polarization is negatively affecting two of the world’s largest democracies in a way that threatens to erode their political institutions. The United States has one of the oldest functioning constitutional documents in the world dating back to 1787, when…

Canadian Catalytic Conversations 2
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Canadian Catalytic Conversations 2

Four delegates representing every Christian Reformed classis in Canada, along with Canadian CRCNA staff, Canada Corp Board members and observers, met online on Saturday, January 29, via Zoom, for a meeting dubbed Canadian Catalytic Conversation 2 (CCC2). The stated purpose of the meeting was to “wrestle with the options put forward for ministry in Canada,”…

Gerrymandering injustice
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Gerrymandering injustice

Few news reports have infuriated me as much as the one coming out of Alabama, where the state legislature’s plan to redraw congressional districts was recently approved by a divided United States Supreme Court. Since 1790 the federal government has conducted a census every 10 years. Based on the resulting population statistics, each state is…

Dear American partners
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Dear American partners

We the North can be cold and prickly, especially when we talk about American cultural dominance. You see, Canada is a foreign country to you. We call it pop; you call it soda. Our favourite sport is played on ice, yours on grass. We count in metric units, mostly, and French words like poutine signify…

How 18th-century Virginians nearly made the United States more like Canada
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How 18th-century Virginians nearly made the United States more like Canada

Two-hundred thirty years ago America’s founders met in Philadelphia to hammer out a new constitution that would bring the 13 newly independent states together into an innovative kind of union: a federal union based on a separation of powers among legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. At least this is what Americans have been led to believe over the centuries.

Good guys with guns

Good guys with guns

The bottom line is that buying a gun to defend yourself from the “bad guys” should stop you cold. Not only because it is unlikely to work – which is true. And not only because you’re more likely to hurt someone close to you with it – which you are. But because buying a gun for self-defense means you’ve imagined a situation where you’d allow yourself to kill someone – and now you have the right tool for the job.

Hobby Lobby, pluralism and faith-based institutions
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Hobby Lobby, pluralism and faith-based institutions

Hobby Lobby was an interesting case, but it left us with more questions than answers and more challenges to face.