“To [the Marquis de] Sade, of course, it had all been folly. There was no brotherhood of man; there was no duty owed by the weak to the strong. Evangelicals, like Jacobins, were the dupes of their shared inheritance: their belief in progress; their conviction in the potential of reform; their faith in humanity might be brought to light. Yet it was precisely this kinship, this synergy, that enabled Castlereagh, faced by the obduracy of his fellow foreign ministers, to craft a compromise that was, in every sense of the word, enlightened. Unable to force through an explicit outlawing of the slave trade, he settled instead for something at once more nebulous and more far-reaching. On 8 February 1815, eight powers in Europe signed up to a momentous declaration. Slavery, it stated, was ‘repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality’. The language of evangelical Protestantism was fused with that of the French Revolution. Napoleon, slipping his place of exile three weeks after the declaration had been signed, and looking to rally international support for his return, had no hesitation in proclaiming his support for the declaration. That June, in the great battle outside Brussels that terminally ended his ambitions, both sides were agreed that slavery, as an institution, was an abomination. The twin traditions of Britain and France, of Benjamin Lay and Voltaire, of enthusiasts for the Spirit and enthusiasts for reason, had joined in amity even before the first cannon was fired at Waterloo. The irony was one that neither Protestants nor atheists cared to dwell upon: that an age of enlightenment and revolution had served to establish as international law a principle that derived from the depths of the Catholic past. Increasingly, it was in the language of human rights that Europe would proclaim its values to the world.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

“The portrait of mankind as painted by the cynical evolutionist is a dreary one. Draped in a ragged costume of skin and bones, driven by primeval instincts and chemical imbalances, this poor excuse for an organism provides us with little cause for celebration. They litter the continents with war and with industrialization, pollute the atmosphere, and eternally suffer under the horrors of famine and bloodshed. Yet the eyes of G.K. Chesterton spy wonders even in the midst of chaos.”

Monica Larkin, “Essay Award Winner, Chesterton Academy of the Twin Cities” Class of 2024, in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #6 (July-August 2024)

In my latest Epoch Times column I denounce the Temporary Foreign Worker program as a bizarre and disgraceful alliance of progressives and big business to exploit foreigners while wrecking our economy and society.

In my latest Epoch Times column I call it the height of mendacious hypocrisy, not to mention fatal to national self-confidence, for Canadian elites to keep insisting that the country is on stolen land they have no intention of giving back.

“As the [c. March 1208 papal] interdict was declared, John ordered books to be sent from Reading Abbey, which were delivered by the hand of the abbey’s sacrist. John did not explain why he chose this moment to catch up on his reading, but it is worth considering what he wanted to have with him at a moment of extreme crisis for himself and for the kingdom. There were six volumes containing the whole of the Old Testament. This was a particular favorite of medieval kings since they liked to model themselves on the bellicose David in particular. The sacrist also brought Hugh of St. Victor’s On the Sacraments of the Faith, the greatest work of one of the greatest minds of the twelfth century; since the pope was withdrawing the” “sacraments from John and from his people, it is not surprising that Hugh’s book was on John’s reading list. There were also more esoteric works, including the Letter of Candidus to Marius Victorinus. Marius was an early Christian theologian who adapted Stoicism for Christian purposes: John would have to be stoical in the face of the pope’s onslaught, so this text was a good place in which to find inspiration. Another text that John had brought to him from Reading Abbey was Valerius Maximus’s Memorable Deeds and Sayings. Written in about AD 31 to provide moral guidance to his Roman readers, Valerius’s work covered such topics as Courage, Endurance, Determination and Self-Confidence, crucial for the coming struggle, along with some that John might have wished to pass over, such as Loyalty to Parents and to Brothers. The more standard works in the collection of books delivered to John included Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Quatuor libri Sententiarum), perhaps the leading theological work of the age, with the fourth book devoted to the seven sacraments and to the subjects of death, judgment, hell and heaven. John also received Origen’s treatise on the Old Testament, in which the author uses allegory to explain the text. In the minds of modern theologians, Origen’s methodology amounts to no more than reading into the text what one wishes to read into it, not quite making it up as one goes along, but not far short; the fact that John chose to read Origen perhaps gives us a further, unflattering insight into the king’s mind at this point in his life. The final selection was from the work Augustine of Hippo, including his City of God, a treatise that, amongst other things, notices that “all men desire to be happy” and then goes on to question what happiness might be. None of this is light reading and all of it suggests that there was some serious discussion under way in the close circles around the king concerning the impact of the interdict. John was applying his mind as well as his might to the problem.”

Stephen Church, King John: And the Road to Magna Carta

In an appearance with Ezra Levant on Rebel News I say the real tragedy of Canada’s new federal cabinet isn’t who the PM picked, it’s how little it matters.

“That human beings have rights; that they are born equal; that they are owed sustenance, and shelter, and refuge from persecution: these were never self-evident truths. The Nazis, certainly, knew as much – which is why, in today’s demonology, they retain their starring role. Communist dictators may have been no less murderous than fascist ones; but they – because communism was the expression of a concern for the oppressed masses – rarely seem as diabolical to people today. The measure of how Christian we as a society remain is that mass murder precipitated by racism tends to be seen as vastly more abhorrent than mass murder precipitated by an ambition to usher in a classless paradise. Liberals may not believe in hell; but they still believe in evil.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that while all the other major parties are manifestly unfit to govern for one reason or another, or several, the Conservatives’ chronic lack of the courage of their convictions is not a tactically brilliant meeting of the moment but a potentially fatal ducking of it.