“Whenever a moral issue is raised, the reflex of many people is to spout, ‘Who is to say what is right or wrong?’ This is the wrong question. The right question isn’t ‘Who is to say?' but 'How can we find out?’”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” July 1, 2024 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/the-moon-is-made-of-cheese]
“At dinner he [Nero Wolfe] started on automation. He has always been anti-machine, and on automation his position was that it would soon make life an absurdity. It was already bad enough; on a cold and windy March day he was eating his evening meal in comfortable warmth, and he had no personal connection whatever with the production of the warmth. The check that paid the oil bill was connected, but he wasn’t. Soon, with automation, no one would have any connection with the processes and phenomena that make it possible to stay alive. We would all be parasites, living not on some other living organisms but on machines, arrived at the ultimate ignominy. I tried to put up a stiff argument, but he knows more words.”
Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue in Rex Stout A Right to Die
In my latest Epoch Times column I deplore the tidal wave of linguistic sewage engulfing us from social media to the pages of daily papers as evidence of mental and moral decay.
“The German experience lies at the heart of the ‘modern experience.’ Germans often used to refer to themselves as the Herzvolk Europas, the people at the heart of Europe. Germans are also the Herzvolk of modern sense and sensibility.”
Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era
In my latest Epoch Times column I warn against chasing trends in fashion, food or public policy.
“The creation of a new creature, not ourselves, of a new conscious center, of a new and independent focus of experience and enjoyment, is an immeasurably more grand and godlike act even than a real love affair; how much more superior to a momentary physical satisfaction. If creating another self is not noble, why is pure self-indulgence nobler?”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly Sept. 27, 1930, quoted in “Why Do You Keep Asking Me Rhetorical Questions?” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)
In my latest Epoch Times column I unearth and reprint a set of principles I outlined when the 21st century was young and fresh to guide is through an uncertain future, and claim that I have been largely vindicated. I also challenge my fellow pundits to do likewise (and scoff at politicians’ forecasts) because I say you should listen to the person who gets it right not the one who offers soothing but inaccurate platitudes.
“he is a self-styled public-relations counselor – one of the various modern activities that are an insult to the dignity of man.”
Nero Wolfe to Inspector Cramer about Floyd Vance in Rex Stout The Father Hunt