In my latest National Post column I argue that the strange juxtaposition of wokism and vicarious debauchery in the New York Times is actually a logical and coherent consequence of being “nonjudgemental”… without being a message well-tailored to me.
“Looming behind Kennedy’s report [British surgeon Richard Hartley Kennedy’s 1825 account of suttee] was a horror of idolatry that reached back unbroken through Christian history. Cortez, confronted by racks of skulls and Tenochtitlan, and Boniface, venturing deep into the forests of Saxony, and Origen, scorning the blood-caked altars of Alexandria, had all borne witness to it. The venerable conviction that idols were raised to demons, witness to ‘the extent and power of Satan’s empire’, exerted a firm grip on British evangelicals.”
Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World [a conviction he appears to have believed, at least at time of writing, was unreasonable… but was it?]
“You would make a good lawyer.”
A fortune in a fortune cookie I received in 1999; I believe it was meant as a compliment.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I warn that Canadian public life is being swamped by a rising tide of mediocrity and we seem content to drown in it.
“Returning to the problem he identified in The Abolition of Man and De Descriptione Temporum, in the great change from one culture to another, Lewis [in The Discarded Image] suggested that something has been lost. Even as Plato and Aristotle once governed the direction of science, new philosophes of science govern the direction and application of science until ‘now, in some extreme forms of Behaviorism, the subject himself is discounted as merely subjective; we only think that we think. Having eaten up everything else, he eats himself up too. And where we “go from that” is a dark question.’”
Harry Lee Poe The Completion of C.S. Lewis
“Academics mock introductory ‘History 200’ courses that take students ‘from Plato to NATO’ over the course of an academic year, but the alternative to students you know about Plato and NATO is not students who read Gibbon or von Ranke, and Plato and NATO are things everyone should know about, so there is a case for covering the basics.”
Mark F. Proudman in Dorchester Review #34 (Vol. 15, #4) Winter 2025
“Over the years, I’ve had dealings with many universities around the world. I’ve funded research centres, chairs and programs related to entrepreneurship, business management, engineering and technological innovation. I’ve also served on a number of university boards and given guest lectures on campuses in Canada, the United States and Europe. But until recently, it never occurred to me to consider the overriding purpose of a university. In conceiving and drafting the framework of an ideal society, universities should look at all aspects — everything from the arts and sports to business and medicine. They should also consider the ideal structure of government — one that ensures individual liberty and places certain checks on the power of elected officials. One of the ways we currently do that is through our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But what about other rights, including, most importantly, economic rights? Why has no society ever enshrined an economic charter of rights, and what should those rights be? One thing is clear: democratic charters of rights need to be fortified with economic rights, because if a society’s economy is weak, then everything within society will suffer. If citizens can’t feed themselves or don’t have access to medical care because the economy has collapsed, then all the best government programs and philosophies don’t mean much.”
Frank Stronach in National Post May 14, 2024 [but it is surely extraordinary that he does not know Magna Carta does enshrine economic rights including to property or that the U.S. Constitution does].
“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”
“William Blake, 1757-1827” quoted in Gravitas Vol. I #2 (Summer 1994) without further attribution.