In my other speech to the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June, and again I apologize for the delay in getting it edited and posted, I talked about what classical Greece and Rome got right about political freedom and what they did not, how medieval England completed the picture with Magna Carta to limit government in theory and parliament to limit it in practice, and how and why things went wrong in the modern world.

"Montesquieu seems, in fact, to have looked on the nature of man as entirely plastic, as passively reproducing the impressions, and submitting implicitly to the impulses, which it receives from without. And here no doubt lies the error which vitiates his system as a system. He greatly underrates the stability of human nature.... those qualities which each generation receives from its predecessors, and transmits but slightly altered to the generation which follows it."

Henry Sumner Maine Ancient Law (re L’Esprit des Lois)

In my latest National Post column I say Britain needs a Tory victory because (a) Corbyn is a loathsome anti-Semite (b) democracy requires you to respect referendum results and (c) self-government requires a functioning parliament, which the UK hasn’t had since 2016.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the bloated Trudeau cabinet full of ministers of diversity and communities and other such nonsense is no less ominous for being foolish.

“All serious political and moral philosophy, and thus any serious social inquiry, must begin with an understanding of human nature. Though society and its institutions shape man, man’s nature sets limits on the kinds of societies we can have. Cicero said that the nature of law must be founded on the nature of man (a natura hominis discenda est natura juris).”

James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature

In my latest National Post column I say Western alienation is a real problem with legitimate origins and needs serious action not mindless anger or mindless scorn.