“Our image of ourselves as a people was lifted up into heroism by our honourable and solitary defiance of Hitler in 1940, and we liked to see ourselves as the inheritors of Henry V and the imitators of the Greeks and Romans. Of course, these ideas had been quietly subverted for years by the Left, and were secretly despised by a small but influential part of the educated middle class. George Orwell had rightly pointed out in the early months of the war that Britain was unique in having an intelligentsia that despised patriotism. That current in national thought had been suppressed by many things: Russia's entry into the war had allowed even the extreme Left to appear patriotic; the discovery of the extermination camps had transformed a defensive ‘imperialist’ war into a Just War, if only with hindsight; and the powerful myth that the Tories had all been appeasers, whilst the Left had been keen to fight the Nazis (though largely false), had allowed the intellectuals to claim the war as their own. The Suez catastrophe and humiliation, imperial withdrawal from Asia and Africa, and the simple passage of time eventually permitted open mockery of the war years to emerge, round about the time of Churchill's death.”

Peter Hitchens The Abolition of Britain [from my “revolt of the elites” file].

In my latest Loonie Politics column I identify a variety of self-defeating mental habits on display over the current Middle Eastern war that prevent decadent civilizations from prevailing in long conflicts.

“Lewis spoke to these questions two years before he and Tolkien launched their barbed wire university [it was under the British Red Cross/Order of Saint John of Jerusalem “Joint War Organisation” “Educational Books Section” program]. In a sermon titled ‘Learning in War-Time,’ which he preached at Oxford’s Church of St. Mary the Virgin on October 22, 1939, he addressed whether humanistic learning was irresponsible when England faced hellish threats and Europe’s liberties hung in the balance. If in the past ‘men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure,’ Lewis observed, ‘the search would never have begun.’ We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life,’ he continued, adding ‘Life has never been normal.’ Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. And – he could have added a few years later – strive for an Oxford ‘First’ in English Literature, while imprisoned in a Nazi POW camp. Why does man make such efforts – search for truth and beauty in the midst of great adversity? Lewis’ response is simple: ‘This is not panache, it is our nature.’”

Mark Johnson in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)

“To paraphrase Japanese Emperor Hirohito after the detonation of two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, in the light of this week’s events, it is time for the ‘unthinkable.’ (The Japanese emperor acknowledged that the war had not gone ‘entirely as we had hoped.’)”

Conrad Black in National Post June 28, 2025 [re Gaza and Iran]

“Pilot, you’ll never get anywhere in this life if you only do what is wise.”

Lt.-Cmdr. Ninian Scott-Elliot, who had a distinguished wartime career with the Royal Navy (and uttered this phrase when warned that his plane was pursuing a U-boat too close to shore) before moving to the Solomons where he died age 86, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen April 19, 1998

“Nazism was an attempt to lie beautifully to the German nation and to the world. The beautiful lie is, however, also the essence of kitsch. Kitsch is a form of make-believe, a form of deception. It is an alternative to the daily reality that would otherwise be a spiritual vacuum. It represents ‘fun’ and ‘excitement,’ energy and spectacle and above all ‘beauty.’ Kitsch replaces ethics with aesthetics. Kitsch is the mask of Death. Nazism was the ultimate expression of kitsch, of its mind-numbing, death-dealing portent. Naziism, like kitsch, masqueraded as life; the reality of both was death. The Third Reich was the creation of ‘kitsch men,’ people who confused the relationship between life and art, reality and myth, and who regarded the goal of existence as mere affirmation, devoid of criticism, difficulty, insight. Their sensibility was rooted in superficiality, falsity, plagiarism, and forgery. Their art was rooted in ugliness. They took the ideals, though not the form, of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century avant-garde, and of the German nation in the Great War, and by means of technology – the mirror – they suited these ideals to their own purpose. Germany, the home of Dichter und Denker [Poets and thinkers], of many of the greatest cultural achievements of modern man, became in the Third Reich the home of Richter und Henker [Judges and hangmen]: the incarnation of kitsch and nihilism.”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the American withdrawal from liberal global policeman isn’t some weird departure from their geopolitical traditions, it’s a return to business as usual pre-1945. It was the intervening 80 years that was extraordinary and if people valued it they should have been more helpful to and less unpleasant about the Pax Americana.

In my contribution to the National Post “Woke Museums” series I describe how the “history” now on display at the Canadian Museum of History is, as C.S. Lewis wrote of what was taught in Narnia under the usurper Miraz, “duller than the truest history you ever read and less true than the most exciting adventure story.”