“In Britain, such openings [Throne Speeches] are preceded by a ceremonial inspection of Westminster Palace for explosives, a relic of the foiled 1605 Gunpowder Plot. A ceremonial hostage is taken by Buckingham Palace to ensure the safe return of the King. Perhaps most notably, before delivering the British speech from the throne, King Charles III is required to wait in a room that is specially decorated to warn him of the potentially fatal consequences of subverting Parliament. The official Robing Room in which the King dons his state crown before delivering the speech features a conspicuously framed copy of the death warrant of King Charles I. In the words of the BBC, ‘if ever there were a symbol to express the end of the divine right of kings and the limits of a constitutional monarchy, that document is it.’”

Tristin Hopper in National Post May 28, 2025 [and in my files under the heading “Say, Chuck, about your head…”

“The Ontario government’s finances are a paradox. The PC government regularly boasts about ‘historic’ levels of spending, but faces constant complaints about underfunding, especially from the health-care, education and post-secondary sectors. What’s the real picture? In fact, budget figures show that revenue and spending have increased dramatically since Premier Doug Ford was first elected.”

Randall Denley in National Post June 20, 2025

“Life’s short. Make sure you spend as much time as possible on the Internet arguing with strangers about politics.”

An image emailed by a friend without attribution June 9, 2025

“Those pairs could only have been made by one who saw before him the Soul of Boot…”

John Galsworthy regarding a particular bootmaker’s samples in William Bennett The Book of Virtues

“Students of popular science… are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism”

G.K. Chesterton “Art and Religion” reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)

“A man is drunk when he feels sophisticated and can’t pronounce it.”

Joe Sullivan quoted in “Other Suspects – II Quotes not by GKC” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)

“Die ganze Auffassungsweise von Marx ist keine Doktrin, sondern eine Methode...”

Friedrich Engels according to https://oe1.orf.at/artikel/677431/Friedrich-Engels-Der-Fabrikant-der-den-Marxismus-erfand [“schreibt Engels wenige Monate vor seinem Tod”]; I was alerted to this claim by Xi Jinping The Governance of China.

“Nazism was an attempt to lie beautifully to the German nation and to the world. The beautiful lie is, however, also the essence of kitsch. Kitsch is a form of make-believe, a form of deception. It is an alternative to the daily reality that would otherwise be a spiritual vacuum. It represents ‘fun’ and ‘excitement,’ energy and spectacle and above all ‘beauty.’ Kitsch replaces ethics with aesthetics. Kitsch is the mask of Death. Nazism was the ultimate expression of kitsch, of its mind-numbing, death-dealing portent. Naziism, like kitsch, masqueraded as life; the reality of both was death. The Third Reich was the creation of ‘kitsch men,’ people who confused the relationship between life and art, reality and myth, and who regarded the goal of existence as mere affirmation, devoid of criticism, difficulty, insight. Their sensibility was rooted in superficiality, falsity, plagiarism, and forgery. Their art was rooted in ugliness. They took the ideals, though not the form, of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century avant-garde, and of the German nation in the Great War, and by means of technology – the mirror – they suited these ideals to their own purpose. Germany, the home of Dichter und Denker [Poets and thinkers], of many of the greatest cultural achievements of modern man, became in the Third Reich the home of Richter und Henker [Judges and hangmen]: the incarnation of kitsch and nihilism.”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era