“The Spirit of the Age, ironically, is the worst enemy of the Age. It is what destroys it. The first lesson of the book Orthodoxy [by G.K. Chesterton] is that a bad philosophy, when taken to its logical conclusion, when reduced to its essence, is insane. It is single-minded nonsense, ‘the clear, well-lit prison of one idea.’ Lesson two is that it ends not just in madness, but in self destruction. Thus, a society that gives him to frivolous divorce will have frivolous marriage. A society that tolerates cohabitation, contraception, and abortion, will find itself without families – and eventually without a society. And a society that gives into the fiction of transgenderism will end up not being able to define anything. The war on words will lead to meaninglessness, to blathering nonsense, the sort of dialogue one would expect to hear in a padded cell. The attack on language – emptying commonly understood words of their meaning, even to the point of making words mean exactly what they do not say, and giving meaning to words that are simply nonsense, and then to substitute catchwords for actual thinking – is part of the attack on reason that marks the Spirit of the Age.”

Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #5 (May/June 2022)

In my latest Epoch Times column I outline what we should try to do to improve 2023 come what may.

“I took up my gun, my notebook, and my pencils, and went forth to the woods as gaily as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make better drawings than before; and, ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, my portfolio was again filled.”

John James Audubon, the ornithologist, quoted in Samuel Smiles Self-Help (on how he had left 200 original drawings, the work of years, in a wooden box with a relative in Kentucky for a business trip to Philadelphia only to find on his return several months later that Norway rats had nested in the box and eaten them all. He did have several dark days before rebounding.) Smiles mentions that when Sir Isaac Newton’s papers were burned when his dog upset a lit taper on his desk Newton did not recover so well, but also the incident where Thomas Carlyle lent the first volume of his history of the French Revolution “to a literary neighbour to peruse”, namely John Stuart Mill, and the latter’s maid somehow put it into the fire, whereupon Carlyle rewrote it and it did indeed make his reputation.

“It must be remembered that, though concord is in itself better than discord, discord may indicate a better state of things than is indicated by concord. Calamity and peril often force men to combine. Prosperity and security often encourage them to separate.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay The History of England

“‘man will live forevermore because of Christmas day,’ as Harry Belafonte put it in those more confident times a mere 40 years ago…”

Mark Steyn in National Post December 24, 1999 [so 60 years ago now and the cultural and intellectual situation has not improved]

In my latest Loonie Politics column I render “We Three Kings” if they were bearing Grit Red, Tory Blue and Dipper Orange… and prefer the original.

In my latest National Post column, I write to Santa listing things I could really do without this year… and they all come from the government.

In my latest Epoch Times column I parse modern efforts to hide what we celebrate on Dec. 25 behind “Season” and “Winter” greetings, lights and other obvious clues.