In my latest National Post column I say democracies for all their failings still beat tyranny hollow because we can ask people who want power what they’d do with it and why.

“when people do not have a satisfactory narrative to generate a sense of purpose and continuity, a kind of psychic disorientation takes hood, followed by a frantic search for something to believe in or, probably worse, a resigned conclusion that there is nothing to find…. There is even one group… who, looking ahead, see a field of wonders encapsulated in the phrase ‘the information superhighway.’ They are information junkies, have no interest in narratives of the past, give little thought to the question of purpose…. Such people have no hesitation in speaking of building a bridge to the new century. But to the question ‘What will we carry across the bridge?’ they answer, ‘What else but high-definition TV, virtual reality, e-mail, the Internet, cellular phones, and all the rest that digital technology has produced?’ These, then, are the hollow men Eliot spoke of.”

Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

“theories [should] be examined for their implications for observable behaviour, and these specific implications compared with observable behaviour.”

George Stigler in 1950, quoted in Steven N.S. Cheung, The Myth of Social Cost: A critique of welfare economics and the implications for public policy (Hobart Paper 82 from the Institute for Economic Affairs, 1979)

In my latest National Post column I warn Canada’s Conservative party that, given Western alienation, any cunning plan to put their 2019 defeat behind them by picking an eastern Red Tory leader would be partisan folly dangerous to national unity.

In my latest Epoch Times column I say if the feds really listen to Western complaints about big bad government, it won’t just help national unity, it will help the East.

“The fact that… we still live well cannot ease the pain of feeling that we no longer live nobly.”

John Updike, quoted by ordained minister Kevin Little in an Op Ed in the Ottawa Citizen June 13, 2002

In my latest National Post column I say the amber alert mishap over Pickering nuclear station is one more warning we shouldn’t need of why government is smugly inept.

“It seemed his career was just taking off.”

For that letter of recommendation for the person who never seems to be around the office when you need them, emailed by a friend attributed to Ralph C. Maddocks