In my latest Loonie Politics column I point out that Mark Carney’s slick verbiage is stunningly unreliable, not because he lies on purpose but because his colossal Donald-Trump-like self-regard bends reality for him in real time in very Trumpian fashion.
In my latest National Post column I urge Canada’s federal Conservatives to tackle their electoral and image problems by leaning into them, being the reality party instead of trying to be Liberal lite and having it fail for the umpteenth time.
“It was impressed on me by one of the best of mothers that ever lived that I must aim at being a thorough master of the work by which I had to get my living; and to be that, I must concentrate my whole energies on my work, whatever that might be, to the exclusion of every other thing. I soon discovered that if I ever accomplished anything in life it would be by pursuing my object with a persistent determination to attain it. I had neither the training nor the talents to accomplish anything without hard work, and fortunately I knew it.”
Canadian tycoon George Stephen, late in life, attributed his success to his Spartan training and singlemindedness, quoted in Pierre Berton The National Dream
“Organizations must be based on many issues. Organizations need action as an individual needs oxygen. The cessation of action brings death to the organization through factionalism and inaction, through dialogues and conferences that are actually a form of rigor mortis rather than life.”
Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals
“In 1925, one of the most popular cars in America was the 20-horsepower Ford Model T. According to the manual, the Model T tops out at 45 miles per hour. Not bad, but there’s a catch. The aerodynamics of the car are so poor that Road & Track likens it to a barn door. That’s a problem in 100 mile per hour headwinds.”
Cody Cassidy How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes p. 191 [the context being could you escape the March 18, 1925 Tri-State Tornado in one and the answer being that in such conditions a Model T could barely keep up with a running man].
During the South Sea Bubble “‘Every fool aspired to be a knave.’”
Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [he provides no source or citation for that marvellous line, however].
“If what you’re doing was easy, everybody would be doing it.”
J.C. Watts’ father, quoted in Ottawa Citizen “Citizen’s Weekly” December 20, 1998
“This [insistence that all people had dignity, and the most wretched especially] was the conviction that in 369, on the outskirts of a Caesarea ravaged by famine, prompted Basil to embark on a radical new building project. Other Christian leaders before him had built ptocheia, or ‘poor houses’ – but not on such an ambitious scale. The Basileias, as it came to be known, was described by one awestruck admirer as a veritable city, and incorporated, as well as shelter for the poor, what was in effect the first hospital. Basil, who had studied medicine while in Athens, did not himself scorn to attend the sick. Even lepers, whose deformities and suppurations rendered them objects of particular revulsion, might be welcomed by the Bishop with a kiss, and given both refuge and care. The more broken men and women were, the readier was Basil to glimpse Christ in them. The spectacle in a slave market of a boy’s sold by his starving parents, the one child sacrificed that his siblings might have some few scraps of food, provoked the bishop to a particularly scorching excoriation of the rich.... Basil's brother went even further. Gregory was moved by the existence of slavery not just to condemn the extremes of wealth and poverty, but to define the institution itself as an unpardonable offence against God. Human nature, so he preached, had been constituted by its Creator as something free. As such, it was literally priceless. ‘Not all the universe would constitute an adequate payment for the soul of a mortal.’… Gregory's abolitionism met with little support. The existence of slavery as damnable but necessary continued to be taken for granted by most Christians – Basil included..”
Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World [but you have to start somewhere, and abolitionism more or less started here].