“Let the common man bend more of his attention, more at least than he is doing at present, to the preservation of some permanent reason for living, some permanent thing worth fighting for. Let him take care of his philosophy, and his civilization will take care of itself.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News August 4, 2006, quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani Chesterton University Student Handbook
This week I was on the National Post “Full Comment” podcast with Brian Lilley to talk about Donald Trump, Canada, and the sometimes unruly revenge of normal people.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the repellent UN “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967” has a point that Canadian politicians must either walk the walk on their “decolonizing” talk or walk it back.
In the Epoch Times this week I praised Tom Holland’s Dominion for arguing compellingly that values we consider universal, such as “human rights”, are actually specifically Judeo-Christian in origin and I warned that they are unlikely to survive the ongoing loss of faith.
On CJAD800 with Brian Lilley I discussed the history of jiggery-pokery and worse in U.S. presidential elections.
“Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best.”
Ragnar Lothbrok, quoted in an email from a friend, and it turns out to be from a TV series called Vikings, in 2015 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3623674/characters/nm1379938).
In my latest Loonie Politics column I take up my dusty cudgel on the crucial point that our whole system of government crumples if the legislators we elect cannot control the executive we do not elect. It was true in the days of Bad King John and George III, and it’s true in those of Justin Trudeau.
“To speak of Dickens is to think of Bumble the beadle, and that carries our mind at once to a whole crowd of thick-headed magistrates, interfering philanthropists, tyrannical administrators of the Poor Law, and the like. Have you ever noticed the fact that in Dickens, in Shakespeare, in Fielding, in the whole range of English literature, a person in petty authority, a minor official hardly ever appears, except to be made ridiculous? There seems to be a deep conviction in our minds that the man who carries some wand of office is more likely than other men to be half knave and wholly fool.”
Transcript from the improbably surviving one of two records used to transport C.S. Lewis’s May 1941 talk to Icelanders, which we don’t even know if it was ever broadcast, quoted in Harry Lee Poe The Making of C.S. Lewis