“The proponents of the so called ‘new natural law theory,’ or ‘basic goods theory,’ say that we shouldn’t speak of the natural purposes of things. For example, we shouldn’t say that the natural purpose that anchors the sexual powers is procreation, because this ‘instrumentalizes’ and ‘depersonalizes’ us – it makes us tools for making babies. This is absurd. One might as well say that it depersonalizes us to say that the natural purpose of the intellectual powers is deliberating and knowing the truth.”

J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]

“Thanatos can assume any form it wishes; it can kill eros, the life drive, and then simulate it. Once thanatos does this to you, you are in big trouble; you suppose you are driven by eros but it is thanatos wearing a mask.”

Philip K. Dick VALIS

“On social upheaval — say transgenderism and the invasion of women’s privacy and basic dignity (here I think of Macbeth’s quizzical outburst before the witches: ‘you should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so’)…”

Rex Murphy in National Post April 22, 2023

“Whether written out somewhere or merely a collection in the back of your mind, you likely have a to-do list of things you want to get done. After all, life is busy and there often isn’t time to do everything you would like. But do you have a to-don’t list? Things that you’re planning not to do? A recent article in the Financial Times points to the often-neglected importance of the art of not doing. In the desire to be productive and accomplish goals, it’s easy to always focus your attention on what to do, rather than on what you know you want to avoid. As the author points out, however, ‘sometimes the absence of bad is more important than the presence of good.’ After all, history is littered with countless examples in which the feeling that something must be done has won out over the patient wariness of avoiding doing something wrong to disastrous effect.”

E-mail from Charalambos Dritsas of IG Wealth Management March 3, 2023

In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that the key to Kissinger’s diplomacy was the worldview behind it. And we’re not exactly racking up successes in such profusion that we can afford to ignore his insights.

“Tradition is only experience surviving death.”

G.K. Chesterton “The Leisure State” reprinted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022)

In my latest National Post column I say the tendency of Western feminists to side with Hamas, to the point of denying systematic rape during the Oct. 7 attack, reveals starkly that something is extremely wrong with an ideology that claims to be motivated by love and compassion.

“We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God’s world. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.”

Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech, in Memphis, Tenn., April 3, 1968 [the day before he was assassinated] quoted by Jamil Jivani in National Post January 17, 2023