In my latest Loonie Politics column I say since nuclear weapons are a crucial feature of geopolitics including the structure of deterrence that has prevented major wars for three-quarters of a century, it’s asinine or worse to be against making sure they work the way we expect them to.
“What convinces mankind of a man’s sincerity is this: that every now and then he should go with his principles and against his feelings.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Oct. 10, 1907, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)
In my latest Epoch Times column I ponder the battling dispositions in public debate to refuse to believe things can be as bad as they seem, or to refuse to believe anything else, and the characteristic errors each can cause.
“Confucius was the greatest of all agnostics, and he did really make an agnostic civilisation; for ages it has been remarkable for its spirit of order; but not even a lunatic would say it was remarkable for its spirit of reform.”
G.K. Chesterton “Resurrection” in G.K.’s Weekly April 19, 1936 reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)
“I think Canada’s politics has sunk into deep ruts. I think we need fresh and serious thinking about what kind of country we want to be.... For a decade our political parties, our Parliament, our public service and the other institutions of our democracy have been putting more and more energy into forgetting how to make decisions. Instead they’re all-in for message amplification.... There’s a forced, hollow certainty to too much of our political discourse that barely masks timidity and confusion behind.... We’re building cults of personality around people with unremarkable personalities.”
Paul Wells email/Substack April 10, 2025 [https://paulwells.substack.com/p/what-an-election-wont-fix]
“‘It is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent,’ but ‘shout and bellow with uplifted hand, pant, wag your head, smite your hands together, slap your thigh, your breast, your forehead, and you will go straight to the heart of the dingier members of your audience.’”
Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria according to Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“If you wish to have little spare time, do nothing.”
Anton Chekov, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail May 13, 2003
“If the evil is to be absent, it shall be because we have routed it; not because we have fled from it.”
G.K. Chesterton in Reveille November, 1918, quoted in “Evil and Other Evils” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #6 (July-August 2024)