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To be a serious Christian in modern Western culture is to be the favoured easy target of every progressive thinker and every half-witted comedian. It is to have your sensibilities and your deepest beliefs on perpetual call for taunts, mockery and desecration. At a time when all progressives preach full volume for inclusivity and sensitivity, for the utmost care in speech when speaking of others with differing views or hues, Christians, as Christians, are under a constant hail of abuse and disregard. There is nothing too low or too vulgar.

You hear it in every little encampment in every city that has a franchise in the current “Occupy” protests: The righteous tent-and-yurt people are against “greed.” They see greed as the demonic dynamo of a rapacious capitalism (and its maidservant, “income inequality”). And what represents greed better than mega-payoffs, dazzling bonuses and stock options, for very little actual work, and sometimes even when performance is far below par? It is only to be expected that the high-flying brokers, bankers and CEOs that cluster like flies around the honey pots of Wall Street, who waltz off with payoffs that would shame...

As the bad economic news continues to emanate from the United States — with a double-dip recession now all but certain — a reckoning is overdue....

The key imprint of George Eliot's masterpiece, Middlemarch, is its sadness. There is the sadness of Dorothea, the heroine, led by guileless idealism into a loveless marriage with the desiccated scholar, Edward Causabon. Eliot's craft is to present the Reverend Causabon, who in a less skillful writer's hands would have been a repellant bore, as a figure of much melancholy affect.  Causabon's relentless and sterile quest to write a universal book, the chimera of The Key to All Mythologies, first strikes the reader as vain and, then, as simply sad. Eliot's artistic triumph was to place Causabon and his mania...

The Harper steamroller CBC's The National By Rex Murphy May 5 2006 I'm not much good with numbers. Accountants with their hawk and scrutinous eyes terrify me. I'd rather chew sand than read a financial document. Even I can see the Conservative budget is all of a piece with the Harper machine's determination to press a hard, clear agenda onto the Canadian electorate. This is not a minority government we're dealing with. It's a steamroller. Actually we could have and did expect the GST cuts and the child allowance allotments, the budget plums. These, after all, are part of the...

Inside the strict faith of unfaithGlobe and Mail Rex Murphy March 18, 2006 Stephen Harper ended his address to the Canadian troops with what has become a signature salutation: “God bless Canada.” We must presume that when he says “God bless Canada,” that that is precisely what Mr. Harper hopes for. It is not rote. Mr. Harper is a Christian. He believes in God. And from everything I've read about the Prime Minister, his is a serious belief, not some decorative shawl worn to court others of similar persuasion, or an item affixed to the campaign bio to signal “community”...

A question of honour CBC.ca By Rex Murphy March 13, 2006 It's not just the prime minister's first major trip since winning office; it's his first major action. Stephen Harper, who's not a careless man, intends his reasons for the flight to and the stay over in Afghanistan to be laser-clear. He is underlining by this action not just his regard for Canadian troops engaged in a dangerous mission. That would be a given for any prime minister. But by launching his prime ministership more by deed than by word, and that deed a full day's interaction with Canadian troops...

Does a dark bird croak 'Nevermore' in Liberal ears?Globe and Mail By Rex Murphy December 31, 2005 The campaign gods are not smiling on the Liberals. The week of the Christmas break may turn out to be, for the Martin team, the bleakest week of the entire campaign. The day after Christmas was marked by the astonishing and outrageous spectacle of pure mayhem in broad daylight on Toronto's Yonge Street. Six people were injured, and one sweet young 15-year-old, in the company of her sister, was killed, as they went innocently about doing nothing more provocative than a little Boxing...

Perhaps Kyoto is Japanese for hypocrisyCBC by Rex Murphy December 6, 2005 It's been a strange week. I've been wondering why the global warming conference in Montreal is getting relatively little attention. Probably because of the cold weather. It's odd for another reason. Ten thousand people have come to Montreal, ten thousand. For a conference on reducing energy consumption. Now, ten thousand is a large number, elephantine, in fact. I don't suppose many delegates walked. As conferences go, this one is a real Leviathan. Just think of the Montreal summit's ecological footprint. Is there really a need to fly ten...

The price being paid for this charade By Rex Murphy CBC's The National November 21, 2005 "Useless" is not a difficult word, but it's worthwhile sometimes to check a dictionary even for the most common ones. For example, the Encarta Dictionary -- that's the online newbie of lexicography -- defines "useless" as "having no beneficial use, incapable of functioning usefully." Merriam Webster is terse. It just says, "ineffectual." The American Heritage says of useless, "incapable of functioning or assisting." That's a good one. The Shorter Oxford is economical and brutal. It says useless means "having no purpose." I was peering...

Election timing -- don't Scrooge with the voters By Rex Murphy Globe and Mail November 12, 2005 Who knew that Christmas in Canada was still important? Evidently it is so important that the mere idea of an election during Christmas, whatever its justification, is anathema. Like bingo at a funeral. The horror. Some of us may have thought that with Christmas having been neutered into the "holiday season" or the "winter festival" or whatever pastel formulation these prickly politically correct times oblige, it had been drained of all real or symbolic significance. If it is not a religious holiday, if...

Sell the Peace Tower to Wal-Mart?Rex Murphy for CBC's "The National" November 2, 2005 I don't know what else the federal Liberals could do to sully their party's reputation. Sell the Peace Tower to Wal-Mart? Turn the House of Commons into a time-share Club Med, with the proceeds going to a pool for David Dingwall's severance package? But outside of those extremes, they've hit the bottom of the barrel, dug underneath the barrel, and found an even lower place where there are no self-respecting barrels at all. Once an independent commission has fired almost a full thousand pages talking about...

One great pool for their partisan whims and fancies October 10, 2005 Rex Murphy It's kind of difficult stepping back into the stream as it's flowing. Certainly the House of Commons is in full wind-up mode – with everything from the Prime Minister getting 'stern' with the Americans on trade, Justice Gomery's potential hand grenade of a report about three weeks away, and of course the delightful saga of David Dingwall's possible half million in severance coming into collision with his "expensing" $1.29 for chewing gum. The Dingwall dilemma could be looked at as a kind of "opening act" for...

A great stew of opportunism and desperation By Rex Murphy Apr. 28 2005 This is a great country and a great government. Name another democracy that's had three budgets in less than a week. As of Sunday, Canada was still operating on the Ralph Goodale budget. "The principles of the budget are the principles of the budget, and we stand firmly by those principles." That was Mr. Goodale seven days ago. The word "firmly" has either been mugged or kidnapped since then, and "principles" has fled the dictionary all together. By Sunday night, the half hour meeting between the prime...

People who think George Bush is the stupid party ought to visit a mirror Nov. 17, 2004 President George Bush is officially to visit Canada on November 30th. This is really swift. After the frostiness of the last four years between Canada and the U.S. on a number of issues, but particularly on Canada's unwillingness to join the war to depose Saddam Hussein, a visit scheduled so quickly must be a sign that both our countries see some need to warm up the relationship. We do see some things differently than the Americans, and thank heavens that we do. There...