This week I was on the National Post “Full Comment” podcast with Brian Lilley to talk about Donald Trump, Canada, and the sometimes unruly revenge of normal people.
In the Epoch Times this week I praised Tom Holland’s Dominion for arguing compellingly that values we consider universal, such as “human rights”, are actually specifically Judeo-Christian in origin and I warned that they are unlikely to survive the ongoing loss of faith.
On CJAD800 with Brian Lilley I discussed the history of jiggery-pokery and worse in U.S. presidential elections.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I take up my dusty cudgel on the crucial point that our whole system of government crumples if the legislators we elect cannot control the executive we do not elect. It was true in the days of Bad King John and George III, and it’s true in those of Justin Trudeau.
“To speak of Dickens is to think of Bumble the beadle, and that carries our mind at once to a whole crowd of thick-headed magistrates, interfering philanthropists, tyrannical administrators of the Poor Law, and the like. Have you ever noticed the fact that in Dickens, in Shakespeare, in Fielding, in the whole range of English literature, a person in petty authority, a minor official hardly ever appears, except to be made ridiculous? There seems to be a deep conviction in our minds that the man who carries some wand of office is more likely than other men to be half knave and wholly fool.”
Transcript from the improbably surviving one of two records used to transport C.S. Lewis’s May 1941 talk to Icelanders, which we don’t even know if it was ever broadcast, quoted in Harry Lee Poe The Making of C.S. Lewis
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself./ And stupid. We should be scared [expletive deleted] of stupid.”
Emailed by a friend as a graphic without further attribution
In my latest National Post column I say the reason neither party can pull ahead in the American Presidential contest is that they’re both right about how awful their opponent is and dead wrong about how good their candidate is.
“That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, lifeless wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference. God in His Word, greatly insists upon it, that we be in good earnest, fervent in spirit, and our hearts vigorously engaged in mercies.”
Jonathan Edwards quoted in Federalist Patriot No. 04-32 August 9, 2004 from Federalist.com.