“In 390 BC, an army of Gauls led by Brennus attacked Rome, capturing all of the city except for the Capitoline Hill, which was successfully held against them. Brennus besieged the hill, and finally the Romans asked to ransom their city. Brennus demanded 1,000 pounds (327 kg) of gold and the Romans agreed to his terms. Livy, in Ab Urbe Condita (Book 5 Sections 34–49), recorded that the Gauls provided steelyard balances and weights which were used to measure the amount of gold. The Romans brought the gold and noticed that the provided weights were fixed. The Romans complained to Brennus about the issue. Brennus took his sword, threw it on to the weights, and exclaimed, ‘Vae victis!’ The Romans were forced to bring more gold to fulfill their obligation.”

Wikipedia entry on “Vae victis” as of Sept. 8, 2014

In my latest Epoch Times column I say the trendy ritual elite “land acknowledgements” that Canada is an illegitimate settler-colonial land-stealing oppressive patriarchal nightmare are socially destructive, hypocritical and false.

“Tension is poison.”

Charley Lau with Alfred Glossbrenner, The Winning Hitter: How to Play Championship Baseball

“In other words, baseball’s highest value – at least during those hours on the field – is the ability to achieve a blend of intensity and underlying serenity which, in daily life, we might call mental health.”

Thomas Boswell How Life Imitates The World Series

“Richmond has a well-deserved reputation for being a hotbed of social rest.”

A famous American pundit whose name I failed to record on PBS October 15, 1992

“WHEN I WAS IN WARSAW I had occasion to pass and re-pass the statue of Copernicus… He sits there with his astronomical globe, looking down the main thoroughfare of the newly-liberated capital of his country… He has always been one of the great glories of Poland; though I am aware that the German professors have attempted to prove that he was really a German. But as they have done the same for Virgil, Dante, and the Twelve Apostles, I am inclined to think tradition has more of the sobriety of truth.”

G.K. Chesterton “On Three Names” reprinted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)

In my latest National Post column I say historical amnesia seems to be Canada’s new national policy and slogan, driven by politicians who know they cannot withstand comparison with figures from the past.

“What is the real corrective to the condition in which shocking things do not shock the earnest and ethical people who do them? And how can we make it clear to those who are so inconsistent as not to be wicked men that they are very consistently doing wicked things?”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 28, 1917, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)