“Many believed Lord Acton when he quipped that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This throwaway line has become one of our governing principles, so much so that Australia, and much of the West, organize virtually everything by committee and quail in the face of individual thumos outside of sport. We are suspicious of it. We see in every Great Man the shadow of the slave master. Nonetheless, power must be wielded... The wise man recognizes that life has fullest meaning in service to a good master, and that we all serve something — if not something or someone noble, then our appetites. Wartime is the most direct and prime example of service to masters; it is antiegalitarian in their sense, but egalitarian in ours, and together bound by duty and service in the most primordial sense. Against this the pseudo-liberated contemporary person feels a degree of contempt, which is why they enjoy stories of soldiers committing massacres so dearly. Nothing confirms their deepest-held beliefs more sordidly. Good masters are few and far between, because we no longer cultivate this ethic in our technocratic managerial elite. The truth is that in fleeing good masters we have not fled masters, but have merely ended up with bad ones. In attempting to achieve a self-reliant anarchy we have left open the door to those who are in fact most corruptible by power.”

Christopher Jolliffe “The Attack on ANZAC Day” in Dorchester Review #32 (Vol. 15 #2 Summer 2025)

“foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.”

Hubert Humphrey, quoted by Sheryl Saperia, “CEO of Secure Canada”, in National Post August 5, 2025 [NB I do not agree that it necessarily is let alone should be true, but it is certainly a possibility deserving serious thought]

“Compromise, in its sound and noble sense, used to mean the ignoring of small points in order to combine upon a large point; now it means ignoring large points in order to combine on small ones.”

G.K. Chesterton in Black & White, Mar. 7, 1903, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)

“No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work, – no man does – but I like what is in the work, – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”

Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

“Carroll’s widow, Anne... told us that G.K. Chesterton was not only fundamental to Warren Carroll’s thinking but to the philosophy on which he founded the college [Christendom College, in Fort Royal, VA, home to the world’s largest thurifer]. His two great precepts – ‘Truth exists’ and ‘The Incarnation happened’ – are engraved on his tombstone. Anne said, ‘That is distilling G.K. Chesterton into five words. Truth exists, the Incarnation happened.’”

Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)

“People say they fear public speaking almost as much as death (which raises the question why there aren’t more horror movies with names like ‘Podium’ and ‘Dry Mouth 2’).”

Andrew Palmer “Bartleby columnist” in The Economist September 13, 2025

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say someone like Jeffrey Epstein could only be a well-connected insider rather than a depraved and marginal freak in the strange modern Big Brother at the Playboy Mansion ethos of endless laws and regulations restricting our liberty combined with libertine social and especially sexual permissiveness.

“Incidents of political violence in America have been steadily ticking upwards for years.... among the general public, a poisonous and dangerous stew is bubbling, composed of ideologues, fanatics, antisemites, obsessives, mentally ill people and others being whipped up by the incitement relentlessly spewed out on social media. This is fuelling a culture that’s now descended into anarchy, nihilism, loss of reason and a total disappearance of moral compass.”

Melanie Phillips September 12, 2025 [https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/a-shocking-watershed-for-america] [and NB while I agree with her on everything else the insertion of “ideologues” into her list as usual just muddies the waters]