In my latest National Post column I say the first step toward an effective foreign policy is to abandon illusions about the effectiveness of “soft power” without something hard behind it.

“No real Englishman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist: he is much more likely to be sorry for his life.”

Roger Kimball’s Introduction to Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics

"The truth is that I care more for my dog, donkey, and garden in the little English village where we live than for all the publicity in the world."

Frances Chesterton (GKC's wife), "to an American reporter during one of G.K.’s lecture tours”, quoted by Therese Warmus in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2005)

"At its core, after all, what is the free market? It’s a mechanism designed to solve a coordination problem, arguably the most important coordination problem: getting resources to the right places at the right cost."

James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds