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.
Here’s a video from the past. It’s a talk I gave at the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June 2019 so I’m tardy making it available. And it’s about the Middle Ages which were, far too many people think, necessarily awful because they were long ago and old is bad and new is good. In fact there are a great many modern horrors that would have appalled people in the Middle Ages and one of them is widespread ignorance about the period.
Sorry to take so long to get around to editing and posting it. Life got in the way.
In my latest National Post column I say it’s high time a parliamentary committee looked into China’s repression and aggression… and our government’s odd blindness to it.
“The aim of argument is differing in order to agree; the failure of argument is when you agree to differ.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 1, 1911, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #2 (Oct.-Nov. 2004)
In my latest National Post column I say “How dare you?” to those who pretend not to see what’s happening in Hong Kong.
In my latest National Post article, part of the “Right Now” series on “What does conservatism mean in Canada today?”, I argue that it must mean serious attention to the deep constitutional and historical roots of our rights, our security, our prosperity and our open society. And yes, by that I mean Magna Carta.
If you enjoy a lively, controversial, definitely counter-consensus take on all kinds of issues, check out Rex Murphy’s new “RexTV” on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygLRdUzljg