“Not that bore again.”
Queen Victoria on being told she must yet again send for the now-83-year-old William Gladstone to form yet another ministry, quoted in Conrad Black Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present
“What convinces mankind of a man’s sincerity is this: that every now and then he should go with his principles and against his feelings.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Oct. 10, 1907, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)
In my latest Epoch Times column I ponder the battling dispositions in public debate to refuse to believe things can be as bad as they seem, or to refuse to believe anything else, and the characteristic errors each can cause.
“I think Canada’s politics has sunk into deep ruts. I think we need fresh and serious thinking about what kind of country we want to be.... For a decade our political parties, our Parliament, our public service and the other institutions of our democracy have been putting more and more energy into forgetting how to make decisions. Instead they’re all-in for message amplification.... There’s a forced, hollow certainty to too much of our political discourse that barely masks timidity and confusion behind.... We’re building cults of personality around people with unremarkable personalities.”
Paul Wells email/Substack April 10, 2025 [https://paulwells.substack.com/p/what-an-election-wont-fix]
In my latest Loonie Politics column I deplore the manner in which Liberal MPs, and even cabinet ministers, now simply cut and paste windy PMO banalities into their press releases word-for-word no longer even pretending to think for themselves about how to justify policy let alone about actual policy.
In my latest National Post column I ask what Parliament and MPs are even for if the people we send to keep the executive branch in check holler that its policies are plunging us into catastrophe then cunningly give the Prime Minister the money he needs to carry them out.
In my latest Epoch Times column I ask what this fabled “Major Projects Office” is even for, if the Prime Minister graciously anoints certain projects, we peasants know not how or why, before sending them to the MPO which has no legal capacity to sweep aside, for His Majesty’s favourites, the laws and regulations that make all other projects impossible.
“Democracy as a failure is better than Dictatorship as a success.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted without further attribution by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #4 (March/April 2024)