“Montcalm had brought artillery, and within six days had partly smashed the fort [“Fort William Henry, on Lake George” in August 1757], which, after a respectable fight, surrendered. Montcalm allowed the British to retire, leaving an officer behind as a prisoner for security, and with a guaranty not to return to the area for 18 months. Montcalm took all the stores in artillery and arms, and promised to return the wounded as they recovered the ability to travel. This did not conform to the Indian notion of how to treat defeated enemies, especially the notion of it they entertained after getting well into the spirit issue, both authorized and looted. The Indians chased after the retreating British, killing 200 and capturing 500. Montcalm personally led the parties of retribution to compel the Indians to honor his promises, and he got back all but about 200 prisoners, who were killed or dragged off by the Indians, including the boiling and eating of an English soldier in a public ceremony near Montreal.”

Conrad Black Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present [file it under “vibrant”]

In my latest Epoch Times column I suggest in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination that we all ask ourselves whether our own interventions in public debate are designed to lead people back to the light or drive them further into the darkness.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I follow up on my argument in the Epoch Times about the Liberals promising lavish austerity because they think all spending is investment by examining a flood of press releases boasting of things any rational exercise in fiscal restraint would at least have postponed if not cancelled.

“Far more renowned than Strabo in his time was Dio Chrysostom – Dio of the Golden Mouth (A.D. 40-120)... Dio left behind him eighty orations. For us today they contain more wind than meat; they suffer from empty amplification, deceptive analogies, and rhetorical tricks; they stretch half an idea to half a hundred pages... ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said the honest Trajan, ‘but I love you as myself.’... Probably what drew people to him was not his fine Attic Greek, but the courage of his denunciations. Almost alone in pagan antiquity he condemned prostitution; and few writers of his time so openly attacked the institution of slavery. (He was a bit vexed, however, when he found that his slaves had run away.)”

Will Durant Caesar and Christ

In my latest Epoch Times column I say the fatal flaw in the Carney cabinet’s lavish austerity program is their conviction that almost any government spending, however trivial and absurd or massive and wrongheaded, pays big dividends so we can’t afford not to.

In my latest Epoch Times column I say our homes used to be our castles and still should be.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the reason Mark Carney can’t pull us back from the left-wing idiocies of Justin Trudeau is that he holds substantially the same views and doesn’t even know it.

In my latest Epoch Times column I say from coast to coast Canada is turning away from trusting the people and abandoning self-government for meddlesome ineffective presumption.