Words Worth Noting - January 30, 2026

Having been called an Optimist in his youth because of his opposition to fashionable youth pessimism “after naturally enjoying the daylight, I came to be troubled with the twilight…. All that there is, in substance, on the other side, is a row of official optimists, boasting of the liberties they have not got, and defending the religion they do not believe.”

G.K. Chesterton somewhere in G.K’s Weekly Vol. 22 (3/10/35 to 12/3/36) quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)

Words Worth Noting - January 28, 2026

“It may be a strange sight to see the blind leading the blind; but England provides a stranger. England shows us the blind leading the people who can see. And this again is an under-statement of the case.”

G.K. Chesterton in “A Glimpse of my Country” in Tremendous Trifles, quoted in “The Golden Key Chain GKC on Scripture Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)

When incompetence met unwillingness

In my latest National Post column I say the Canadian state has become so profoundly incapable that when politicians and bureaucrats don’t do something they claimed they were going to, it’s nearly impossible to tell whether they didn’t want to, couldn’t, or both.

Words Worth Noting - January 25, 2026

“The modern humanitarian began by saying, ‘The Gospel according to St. Charles Dickens is good enough for me; I do not need to go to Bethlehem if I can go to Bob Cratchit’s home and see Tiny Tim enjoy the turkey; or to Dingley Dell and drink punch with men of real goodwill like Pickwick and Wardle.’ I quite understand that and even sympathize with it up to a point. Anyhow, the modern humanitarian sympathised with it and said it; and then immediately went off to put up a placard threatening to jail anybody who drank punch in prohibited hours and to join a society for proving that it is cruel to kill turkeys for food. In other words, he first boasted that he preferred the Pagan part of Christmas to the Christian part; and then he himself started furiously abusing and abolishing the Pagan part.”

G.K. Chesterton “A Question about Christmas” reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)