“’People say to me, that it is but a dream to suppose that Christianity should regain the organic power in human society which once it possessed. I cannot help that; I never said it could. I am not a politician; I am proposing no measures, but exposing a fallacy, and resisting a pretence. Let Benthamism reign, if men have no aspirations; but do not tell them to be romantic, and then solace them with glory; do not attempt by philosophy what was once done by religion. The ascendancy of Faith may be impracticable, but the reign of Knowledge is incomprehensible.’”

John Henry Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room” (1841) quoted in Russell Kirk The Conservative Mind

“You’re so thin you’d have to stand twice in the same place to make a shadow!”

“Shorty” in Louis L’Amour The Trail to Seven Pines

On Alex Epstein’s “Power Hour” podcast we had an extended discussion of China’s geopolitical ambitions and how the Western obsession with “Net Zero” plays into the hands of a Politburo all too happy to keep using fossil fuels while we cripple ourselves by discarding them.

In my latest National Post column I pick up on the Post’s fall series “A Serious Canada” to lament just how unserious a look at a typical newspaper front page reveals us to be on everything from Chinese Communist aggression to budgeting to open government.

“In one experiment, for example, a group of subjects is told that a man parked his car on an incline, after which it rolled down into a fire hydrant. Another group is told that the car rolled into a pedestrian. The members of the first group generally view the event as an accident; the second group holds the driver responsible.”

John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

“The Grate One”

Terry O’Neill in British Columbia Report July 30, 2001 [not referring to Wayne Gretzky, just adapting his nickname to insult any annoying person]

“the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.”

Fyodor Dostyevsky, quoted by Owen Lippert in Fraser Forum July 2000

On March 27 in a Christian Heritage Party webinar talk “Magna Lockdown: Canadian Liberty in a Medical Crisis” I argued that liberty isn’t a frivolous luxury or vague abstract ideal but a vital practical tool for creating and maintaining good government in crises as well as quiet times.