“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]

“Much history-telling casts our ancestors as stupid or villainous, who deserve our pity and scorn accordingly. This helps us swallow contemporary notions of ourselves, which are unheroic and uninteresting.”

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

“Lewis spoke to these questions two years before he and Tolkien launched their barbed wire university [it was under the British Red Cross/Order of Saint John of Jerusalem “Joint War Organisation” “Educational Books Section” program]. In a sermon titled ‘Learning in War-Time,’ which he preached at Oxford’s Church of St. Mary the Virgin on October 22, 1939, he addressed whether humanistic learning was irresponsible when England faced hellish threats and Europe’s liberties hung in the balance. If in the past ‘men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure,’ Lewis observed, ‘the search would never have begun.’ We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life,’ he continued, adding ‘Life has never been normal.’ Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. And – he could have added a few years later – strive for an Oxford ‘First’ in English Literature, while imprisoned in a Nazi POW camp. Why does man make such efforts – search for truth and beauty in the midst of great adversity? Lewis’ response is simple: ‘This is not panache, it is our nature.’”

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

In my latest Loonie Politics column I take aim at the 20th-anniversary Harper revisionist rationalizations that he never intended to implement conservative policies, just build a winning party… which he didn’t even do anyway.

“To paraphrase Japanese Emperor Hirohito after the detonation of two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, in the light of this week’s events, it is time for the ‘unthinkable.’ (The Japanese emperor acknowledged that the war had not gone ‘entirely as we had hoped.’)”

Conrad Black in National Post June 28, 2025 [re Gaza and Iran]

In my latest National Post column I say the Canadian state has become so profoundly incapable that when politicians and bureaucrats don’t do something they claimed they were going to, it’s nearly impossible to tell whether they didn’t want to, couldn’t, or both.

“Pilot, you’ll never get anywhere in this life if you only do what is wise.”

Lt.-Cmdr. Ninian Scott-Elliot, who had a distinguished wartime career with the Royal Navy (and uttered this phrase when warned that his plane was pursuing a U-boat too close to shore) before moving to the Solomons where he died age 86, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen April 19, 1998