“That history bore witness to a war between light and darkness, aeons old, and demanding from those on the side of good an unstinting watchfulness against evil, was a conviction that Tolkien shared with the Nazis. Admittedly, when articulating the mission of National Socialism, its leaders tended not to frame it in such terms. They preferred the language of Darwinism. ‘A cool doctrine of reality based on the most incisive scientific knowledge and its theoretical elucidation.’ So Hitler had defined National Socialism, a year before invading Poland and engulfing Europe in a second terrible civil war.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

“This growth of arbitrary government in our country is a very real thing. The power of the Censor is a strong example of it, but not necessarily even the strongest. Judicial equity has become more and more a question of the judge and less and less a question of the statute. The very phrase ‘judge-made law’ either means nothing or it means personal despotism. If anyone said ‘King-made law’ we should start. The very importance of the legal mind is an instance; for lawyers necessarily thrive upon the absence of law.”

G.K. Chesterton quoted, without further attribution, in “News with Views” (“compiled by Mark Pilon”) in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #1 (September-October 2024)

In my latest Epoch Times column I denounce the Temporary Foreign Worker program as a bizarre and disgraceful alliance of progressives and big business to exploit foreigners while wrecking our economy and society.

“I have noticed that, with few exceptions, men bungle their affairs. Everywhere I see incompetence rampant, incompetence triumphant.”

Raymond Hull’s introduction to Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, The Peter Principle

“It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat

“The follower of Rousseau tended too much to say: ‘I am born in a state of innocence, and therefore I can be as guilty as I like.’ But the new skeptics, who also deny Original Sin, seem rather to be saying: ‘There is no Original Sin, because everybody can be born bad and behaves as badly as possible without it.’ The modern humanitarian believes in Total Depravity without any Fall to explain it.”

G.K. Chesterton in New York American March 25, 1933, quoted in “The Bad” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #1 (September-October 2024)

“SORRY ABOUT THE TRAFFIC / I HAVE TO GO TO WORK TO GET ON VIDEO CALLS”

Bumper sticker on car in front of me November 21, 2024

In my latest Loonie Politics column I lampoon the Procurement Ombud boast that in seeking value for money the Canadian government no longer seeks value for money… and add that it couldn’t if it tried. And while I’m at it I ridicule “Ombud” as a job title.