“Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.”
Emailed without attribution by a friend
“His [Cicero’s] incredible vanity appears more amiably here [in his letters] than in his orations, where he seems to be carrying his own statue with him wherever he goes…”
Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“To [the Marquis de] Sade, of course, it had all been folly. There was no brotherhood of man; there was no duty owed by the weak to the strong. Evangelicals, like Jacobins, were the dupes of their shared inheritance: their belief in progress; their conviction in the potential of reform; their faith in humanity might be brought to light. Yet it was precisely this kinship, this synergy, that enabled Castlereagh, faced by the obduracy of his fellow foreign ministers, to craft a compromise that was, in every sense of the word, enlightened. Unable to force through an explicit outlawing of the slave trade, he settled instead for something at once more nebulous and more far-reaching. On 8 February 1815, eight powers in Europe signed up to a momentous declaration. Slavery, it stated, was ‘repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality’. The language of evangelical Protestantism was fused with that of the French Revolution. Napoleon, slipping his place of exile three weeks after the declaration had been signed, and looking to rally international support for his return, had no hesitation in proclaiming his support for the declaration. That June, in the great battle outside Brussels that terminally ended his ambitions, both sides were agreed that slavery, as an institution, was an abomination. The twin traditions of Britain and France, of Benjamin Lay and Voltaire, of enthusiasts for the Spirit and enthusiasts for reason, had joined in amity even before the first cannon was fired at Waterloo. The irony was one that neither Protestants nor atheists cared to dwell upon: that an age of enlightenment and revolution had served to establish as international law a principle that derived from the depths of the Catholic past. Increasingly, it was in the language of human rights that Europe would proclaim its values to the world.”
Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
“The danger to [country X] is not [the incumbent], but a citizenry capable of entrusting a [person] like [him or her] with the [office]. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of [his/her time in power] than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a [person] for their [leader]. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than [the incumbent], who is a mere symptom of what ails [the country]. Blaming the prince of fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a [name of incumbent], who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their [president/prime minister/etc].”
This item circulates online claiming to be “From a Prague newspaper” and targeting various leaders from Barack Obama to Justin Trudeau and has been doing so since at least 2009. But while I deplore fakery of all sorts, I quote it because I do think the warning it contains is valid and important across a wide range of countries
In my latest Epoch Times column I warn that politicians becoming too slick for words is a classic example of improving something until it is utterly ruined.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that Musk’s flameout as a deficit and waste cutter reveals just how hard it is to rein in overspending, especially because people give so little thought to why it really happens.
In my latest Epoch Times column I call growing skepticism about vaccination a logical if deplorable consequence of governments trampling our rights while insulting our intelligence over COVID.
“Politics are now so corrupt that everything they touch is corrupted. We are long past the point of protecting our government from the degrading influences of trade or professionalism. If anything, we have to protect our trades and professions from the degrading influences of government.”
G.K. Chesterton in New Witness November 5, 1920, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #1 (September-October 2024) [and I need hardly add that we did not and it has therefore gotten far worse in the intervening century]