“Jokes are generally honest; complete solemnity is almost always dishonest.”

G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 4 # 6 (April/May 2001)

“The saints and the sinners live together in one house; the respectable people live together in another.”

David Warren, paraphrasing Richard John Neuhaus

Here's the kind of story that inspires a mixture of rage and bewilderment. NBC reports that while Hillary Clinton has been lambasting "for-profit schools" including Trump University, "Over five years, former president Bill Clinton earned $17.6 million from the world's largest for-profit education company, Laureate Education, Inc. In his role as "honorary chancellor," Clinton has traveled the world on Laureate's behalf, extolling the virtues of the school." And doing very well indeed. We should be so, uh, lucky. Now look. I know a lot of people like Bill Clinton, focusing more on the charming than the rogue in his makeup. I am not among them. But a lot of people do.

I also realize that Bill Clinton is a champion schmoozer and makes good connections. He pulls in huge sums for the Clinton Foundation and by no means all of them were people hoping for favours from one H. Clinton when she was Secretary of State. But $17.6 million over five years is over $3.5 million a year. That's over $9,600 a day, even in a leap year. And it wasn't the only thing he was doing nor, indeed, the only thing he was doing that brought in vast sums. (For instance The Washington Post says he made $104.9 million giving 542 speeches between 2001 and 2013, an average of $193,542.44 per. And that he was paid $3.13 million in "consulting fees" in 2009 and 2010 by an investment firm whose boss's charity has given the Clinton Foundation millions more and who did at least try to contact Hillary Clinton for a favor when she was Secretary of State.)

What can anyone do for you on a part-time basis that's worth nearly $10,000 a day? Per customer? And what has he got to say that's worth 200 grand a pop, 45 times a year, for over a decade? I mean, we're out there asking people to support our documentaries and commentaries and other work like the "Ask the Professor" feature with, say, $5 a month, which is about 17 cents a day. That's less than one fifty-six-thousandth of Clinton's haul from Laureate Education alone. I'd need 3,226 people to answer that call to make as much in a year as Clinton does for an average speech of the sort he was giving nearly once a week.

I'm not saying I'm in the wrong business. But I am saying if this news bugs you as much as it bugs me, and if you think it's important to keep the voices that matter to you audible, please do try to find that 17 cents a day for us, and for other groups like Ezra Levant's The Rebel, Dave Reesor's Let's Do It Ourselves, Danny Hozack's Economic Education Association of Alberta (and yes, I'm professionally involved with two of them) and other similar outfits like the Fraser Institute, the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (who helped us enormously with our Fix the Constitution documentary project).

Unlike the Clintons, we're never going to get rich doing what we do. But that's kind of the point.

“The writing of history, as Goethe once noted, is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past... the writing of history liberates us from history.” Benedetto Croce, quoted in Hugh Thomas An Unfinished History of the World

“In a lot of cases, there’s really not a lot you can do in the short-term that can help” Douglass North, economic historian and Nobel Prize winner (quoted in the Toronto Star Oct. 25 1998

“[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous.” George Washington in a letter to his nephew George Steptoe Washington, 5 December 1790, quoted by The Patriot Post “Founder’s Quote Daily” Dec. 21, 2005

“Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed: he may well win the race that runs by himself.” Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, quoted in The Patriot Post “Founder’s Quote Daily” February 6 2009

“In the mystery of the end, of course, man hurts not nor destroys in all the holy mountain, and lion lies down with lamb. But before the end, it cannot be, unless the lion becomes a docile bag of air that is no lion at all – a king of beasts with nothing fit for general resurrection but an empty skin: a mangy, risen rug unfit to grace the Supper of the Lamb. There is no way around the killing here that is not less than human in the end; man is what he is: hunter, butcher, carnivore; save him without that and you save nothing – manskins stuffed with sacred sawdust reach no New Jerusalem; the trip is not worth the baggage left behind. Raise him indeed, but raise him in the time of resurrection – and raise him Man – with flesh, bones and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature…. bring him home himself: with hands till pierced by grim exchanges, glorious scars; and with a heart still ready for astonishment at Lion and Lamb In their unimaginable concourse.” Robert Farrar Capon The Supper of the Lamb