In a wide-ranging discussion with David Leis of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy we talked about the Middle East, the rot in Canadian academia, the collapse of governance, the revolt of the elites against Western civilization and more besides… including how to fix things.
“Our journalised world does not regard words as part of any connected argument, but as disconnected emotional epithets thrown at some object; the only question being whether it is an object of hatred or idolatry, and whether the things thrown are bombs or bouquets. Nobody thinks that anybody might possibly have another object, the object called truth, and try to reach it by thinking instead of throwing things.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted in Dale Ahlquist “Why is America not Normal? G.K.’s Weekly, Volume 13 March 14, 1031 – September 5, 1931” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
“It’s all fun and games until somebody loses a soul.”
One of mine from Nov. 3, 2023 [inspired by a news story about the trendiness of Satanism in popular culture].
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say sending an underarmed Arctic patrol vessel to Cuba to greet a Russian flotilla, then babbling a shifting set of unconvincing and inconsistent explanations, is one more example of the plague of incompetence engulfing us.
In my latest National Post column I say Calgary’s current water problems are emblematic of how progressive politicians don’t just engage in zany symbolic antics, they wreck cities and countries in zany ways.
In my latest Mercatornet column I ask how the United States, of all places, could have become vulnerable to tyranny.
“Antisemitism is both a sort of mental impairment and a barrier to learning. If you think that ‘the Jews’ control the banks, you don’t understand finance, and will never understand it because you have this happy conspiracy theory and you think you already know everything. If you think ‘the Jews’ control the weather with their space lasers, you’re not going to bother to study meteorological science. A society in which this kind of antisemitism is prevalent is not going to be a sign of a society on the cutting edge of science or business or economics or anything else. In our society, these beliefs are toxic. They’re terrible for Jews, but they are actually poison to what makes America, America.”
Walter Russell Mead in conversation with Bari Weiss on The Free Press October 31, 2023 [https://www.thefp.com/p/are-we-tipping-into-world-war-three].
“You don’t hit off tackle in baseball, and you can’t play the game with your teeth gritted.”
Ray Miller, Baltimore Orioles pitching coach, quoted in Thomas Boswell How Life Imitates the World Series