In my latest National Post column I say Brexit turned into an incomprehensible, messy train wreck because the people meant to be taking Britain out of the European Union didn’t have faith in Britain as a sovereign nation.
“On limited lines I was making progress, but the wings of imagination still drooped nervelessly at my sides.”
Erskine Childers The Riddle of the Sands
“Her choice [that of the mother/title character in the novel Sophie's Choice] is plainly evil; for the sake of a better result, she has united herself with the sin of the murderer. And in the end the other child dies too. But how could she choose otherwise, if she had no faith in God?”
J. Budziszewski What We Can’t Not Know
“Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.”
Max Beerbohm quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #5 (March 2006)
“the Roman empire is afflicted rather than changed – a thing which has befallen it in other times also, before the name of Christ was heard, and it has been restored after such affliction – a thing which even in these times is not to be despaired of.”
Augustine City of God
In my latest National Post column I say Remembrance Day is not a pacifist occasion, even on the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War. (On which, and on the meaning and impact of World War I generally, see again The Great War Remembered on YouTube or in my online store.)
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
John Milton, quoted in the introduction to the fence-whitewashing excerpt from Mark Twain Tom Sawyer in William Bennett The Book of Virtues
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae In Flanders Fields