In my latest Epoch Times column I suggest in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination that we all ask ourselves whether our own interventions in public debate are designed to lead people back to the light or drive them further into the darkness.
“Nigel Farage stood up in the House of Commons yesterday to ask how many British troops will be promised to Ukraine. A reasonable question. He was dismissed as being a ‘Putin apologist’ by both Conservatives and Labour. The uniparty are still two cheeks of the same ugly old arse.”
A post on X from someone I am not familiar with on March 4, 2025 [https://x.com/darrengrimes_/status/1896864773389869349] and yes, it bends my rule about vulgarity in public discourse but it’s funny and apposite enough to deserve it.
“The initial Canadian Expeditionary force of twenty thousand [in World War I] was organized by Sam Hughes, who was, as Borden informed him, ‘beset by two unceasing enemies. Expecting a revelation, he was intensely disappointed when I told him that they were his tongue and his pen.’”
Conrad Black Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present
“Accept people as they are, but place them where they belong. You are the CEO of your life. Hire, fire & promote accordingly.”
Emailed without attribution by a friend
“The burden of existence calls for a commensurate justification of our being. The fact that we are alive, that we have agency, that we are capable of such tremendous heights and depths emotionally, that our minds have such a capacity for love and creation and reason, that our subjective experiences appear to have irreducible meaning and value despite the fact that they are subjective – all of these things burden us. The beauty and goodness of our particular being demands some justification: What right do I have to such a life? Without a justification, we feel like phonies, frauds, failures, or, at best, lost.”
Alan Noble Disruptive Witness
“I Told My Wife I Wanted To Be Cremated. She Made An Appointment For Tuesday.”
Emailed by a friend without attribution
In my latest Loonie Politics column I follow up on my argument in the Epoch Times about the Liberals promising lavish austerity because they think all spending is investment by examining a flood of press releases boasting of things any rational exercise in fiscal restraint would at least have postponed if not cancelled.
“Far more renowned than Strabo in his time was Dio Chrysostom – Dio of the Golden Mouth (A.D. 40-120)... Dio left behind him eighty orations. For us today they contain more wind than meat; they suffer from empty amplification, deceptive analogies, and rhetorical tricks; they stretch half an idea to half a hundred pages... ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said the honest Trajan, ‘but I love you as myself.’... Probably what drew people to him was not his fine Attic Greek, but the courage of his denunciations. Almost alone in pagan antiquity he condemned prostitution; and few writers of his time so openly attacked the institution of slavery. (He was a bit vexed, however, when he found that his slaves had run away.)”
Will Durant Caesar and Christ