The Writer
T. G. Kelemen writes nonfiction, essays, plays, poetry, and fiction about power, denial, self-deception, and the polite lies people mistake for virtue.
Debut Nonfiction
Lawful But Awful
How Canada traded liberty for comfort and called it virtue
We know what hard dictatorship looks like. We are less good at seeing the soft democratic version.
Lawful But Awful argues that Canada is not becoming openly tyrannical. It is becoming tutelary: governed by a style of power that speaks in the language of protection, harm reduction, process, and safety while making independent action harder, slower, riskier, and less normal.
The result is a country in which Canadians remain formally free, but increasingly live by permission.
The book gives that governing style a name — Big sMother — and shows how it works through institutions, rules, and everyday life.
About T. G. Kelemen
Canada's most impolite conservative
The Background
A former private-placement and restructuring dealmaker for owner-managed companies, he writes with the eye of someone who has seen the darker side of both institutions and people.
The Work
His work cuts across politics, culture, psychology, law, and moral collapse — without jargon, committee language, or the fake piety of approved opinion.