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Testing, testing
Re Alabama Senate Race Puts Trump Populism To Test (Dec. 11): To overlook serious charges against a candidate in order to "win" is a reminder that democracy, in the wrong hands, is as fragile as a thin, glass ornament on a tree.
Giselle Déziel, Cornwall, PEI
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Roy Moore's bid for a U.S. Senate seat doesn't put Trump populism to the test, it puts someone who has been accused of sexual harassment and yet can run for a Senate seat to the test.
Douglas Cornish, Ottawa
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Santé, Mr. Comeau
The quixotic case of R. v. Comeau shows that in Canada, it is still possible for a private citizen to take on both the federal and the provincial governments and get a hearing before the highest court in the land (Canada's Beer Smuggler Is Our New National Hero – Dec. 9).
Ironically, on the very day the Comeau case was being heard, the PM was still in Beijing trying to negotiate a free-trade deal with China. Meanwhile, back in sleepy Bytown, his Attorney-General was in the Supreme Court (not in person) arguing against free trade within Canada.
So, in answer to your question – "Is Canada a real country" – no, it is not.
R.H. Addington, London, Ont.
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Who better to stand as a national hero than a Canadian willing to fight for the right to buy cheaper beer in one province and bring it home to drink in another? We're naming our next batch of home brew after Gerard Comeau. It will be an appropriate tribute, substantial and hop-forward like its namesake, if the last batch is anything to go by.
Émilie Pelletier, Montreal
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The 'Still' years
Re How To Retire: Lessons From My Husband (Dec. 9): When people who no longer need to work for financial reasons decide to hang on simply because it gives them "something to do" (as if there aren't enough volunteer positions with charities), it blocks passage for young people to find long-term work.
For instance, as a retired teacher, I feel it is ironic (and hypocritical) for retirees to continue supply teaching when the very students they taught – and encouraged to work hard and get good marks so they could get into teachers' college – can't even get on the supply list (much less find full-time positions) because the spots are already filled by retirees. Meanwhile, these kids (details available upon request) are teaching part-time in Nunavut or taking positions in the worst of England's schools, or giving up to work as jail guards.
If baby boomers need to keep working – perhaps to take care of unemployed young adults living in their basements? – then they should do so. However, if their financial obligations are under control, they should move out of the way to give the kids – their own, perhaps – the same opportunity they had to earn a living, buy a home, and raise a family.
Gino Nicodemo, London, Ont.
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As an entrepreneur of 40 years in the independent book-selling world, with eight stores and more than 60 book lovers on staff, I identify with Margaret Wente's topic. I have no desire to retire.
I love what I do and have entered what Gloria Steinem calls the "Still" years: Over and over, people come to me saying, "Are you still working?"
Hell yes, and loving almost every day. Do what you love till you do not want to.
Cathy Jesson, Black Bond Books, Surrey, B.C.
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Everyone is replaceable and everyone deserves a turn.
It may be hard to retire, but finances permitting, it is the proper thing to do.
Mary Burge, Toronto
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Milestones of rage
Re Civil War (Dec. 9): In a few short years, the United States appears to have devolved from the audacity of hope to the propensity for tripe.
Chris Clark, Uxbridge, Ont.
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Congratulations are due to to Omar El Akkad, and a thank you for elevating the discourse away from the individual "tribal leader" – President Donald Trump – and broadening it to the American nation.
Using lenses of identity – race, culture, religion – he clearly shows how the pendulum swings, and the turmoil that occurs each time the pendulum is at a maximum point; how the U.S. "tends to unleash its most self-destructive impulses" in those times, in "wrathful reaction" to "an America changing too fast" in trying to address its "systemic inequities."
Mr. El Akkad suggests that this reaction happens when the United States moves too quickly "in the direction of its better self" for the population to accept. He clearly identifies "tribalism," the "rage" against and "hatred" of the other, as today's key issue in America, and leaves the question open as to what comes next …
Are we – not just in America, but in every country, including Canada – destined to swing forever like a pendulum, and at each inflection point have "reactionary" wrath, fear, and insecurity leading us yet again into tribal violence?
Michael A. Tukatsch, Toronto
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Rational discussion
Two recent opinion pieces (The Myth Of The Radical Canadian University – Dec. 8; No, Postmodernism At Universities Isn't A Vile, Cancerous Doctrine – Dec. 9) assure us that concerns about leftist ideological indoctrination on campus are misguided, a mere chasing of "phantoms."
The real problems, we are told, come from the right: corporatization and Trumpian denial of fact. But the existence of these (quite real) problems does not show that these concerns are baseless, and to suggest this in the wake of the Lindsay Shepherd affair is brazen indeed.
Deflection and denial seem unlikely to restore public confidence in our universities.
Recently, I overheard some students studying in the library. "What is political discourse?" one asked. The correct answer, apparently, was: "The techniques of political persuasion." The reality is that many of our students are being taught that rational discussion in the pursuit of truth is simply passé. This is a dangerous idea, wherever it occurs on the political spectrum.
Glenn Parsons, MA Program Director, Philosophy Department, Ryerson University
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Ahead, looking back
Re Comics Return (Dec. 11): In the 1970s, a bunch of us students at Toronto's Huron Street Public School were lucky enough to find, behind a radiator in the school's old Annex, copies of The Globe from the 1930s.
What was most interesting to us in those papers was the still- charming social observations of Fontaine Fox in his "Toonerville Folks" cartoons. So, on behalf of anyone in the distant future who might find today's Globe and Mail, thanks for bringing your comics back.
The politics of our time are sure to be incomprehensible. But the soul, found in good comics, is timeless.
David Collier, Hamilton