In my latest National Post column I ask whether the purpose of "uniting the right" in Alberta was to implement conservative policies or to bury them.
"it is characteristic of political philosophers that they take a sombre view of the human situation: they deal in darkness. Human life in their writings appears, generally not as a feast or even as a journey, but as a predicament..."
Michael Oakeshott “Introduction to Leviathan” in Rationalism in politics and other essays
"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."
Confucius, anticipating Donald Rumsfeld, quoted in Henry David Thoreau Walden (Project Gutenberg edition)
In my latest National Post column I wonder how federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau can say such dumb stuff and how we're meant to communicate intelligently with him if he does.
"Questionless, there is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue, and of this Economics is commonly esteemed not the least part…"
Plutarch’s Lives Vol. I p. 481.
"It is one of the deep jokes of existence that very wise people and very ignorant people frequently say the same thing; perhaps it is the basis of democracy."
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News Feb. 23, 1907, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #1 (September 2006)
"It is an unfortunate habit of publicly repenting for other people’s sins."
G.K. Chesterton, “The Midnight of Europe,” in The Crimes of England, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #2 (October-November 2003)