Akaash Maharaj - Practical Idealism

The greatest threat to our democracy is not barbarians at the gate, but politicians amongst us ready to pursue their ambitions by demonising anyone who dares to stand up and speak out.

In modern military conflicts, the challenge has moved beyond winning the war, to surviving the peace.

An oft-overlooked aspect of the Indian independence movement shows that the path from hero to villain can be nothing more than hubris, and that no cause is so great that it should be pursued without humility.

Akaash warns that Canadian society is in peril of ceasing to be a meritocracy.

Akaash argues that the credibility, virility, and nobility of the giants of civil resistance lay in their willingness to suffer the consequences from those their lives defied.

In his Christmas message, Akaash argues that throughout our long and storied history, the actions born of our hope have always been Canadians' greatest gifts to the world and to one another.

Ultimately, active participation in the political process is the price that each of us must stand prepared to pay if we wish to be citizens rather than merely subjects. Because in a democracy, we never receive the nation we deserve; we only receive the nation we demand, and the nation we dare to create.

If the Liberal Party is to have any hope of recovering, it will need to find the courage to resist the lure of comforting self-deceptions and easy answers.

State suppression of free religious expression by free citizens is unacceptable in any secular democracy, and it is an offence against the free society that is the birthright of every Canadian.

In any one country, today may not be freedom's day. But that day will inevitably come. And when it does, Canadians will want to be able to hold our heads high in the knowledge that even in the darkest hours, we put aside our deals with the devils, and instead stood with the angels.

Our ability to successfully conclude the Afghan mission and effect an honourable departure is being prejudiced by an ignominious political retreat from the truth: the truth about why we went to Afghanistan in the first place and what we are actually trying to achieve there... I fear that the current government is unwilling to engage in an honest national debate about our objectives in Afghanistan, because it believes that Canadians prefer easy lies to hard truths. But Canadians are not the fools or the cowards that such politicians take us for.

In this, my second broadcast essay for TVOntario's The Agenda with Steve Paikin, I argue that the efforts by the federal government to place emotion above reason and shut down Insite are unworthy of our country's better traditions and higher responsibilities. It is little more than an effort to purchase easy political popularity at the expense of a wretched and unpopular segment of society.

In this, my maiden broadcast essay for TVOntario's The Agenda with Steve Paikin, I argue that freedom of expression is too fundamental a right to be casually abridged, and that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal must be stripped of its power to regulate public expression.

CBC Radio One's Fresh Air interviews me on whether Team Canada will be able to repeat our improbable dominance of tent pegging, the cavalry sport of horse, sword, sabre and lance, when I saddle up to ride for Canada once again at the 2010 International Championships in New Delhi.

Group Sword at the International Tent Pegging Championships - Akaash Maharaj Photocast