In my latest National Post column I suggest that a habit of counting our blessings on Canada would help preserve them.

“Over the years, I have come to understand a critical difference between the world of fear and the world of freedom. In the former, the primary challenge is finding the inner strength to confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral clarity to see evil.”

Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy

“In his new memoirs, Decision Points, George W. Bush...  tells of one summer job on a cattle ranch in which the foreman derided those who were ‘Book smart, sidewalk stupid.’"

William Watson in Ottawa Citizen December 7, 2010

"There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man."

G.K. Chesterton quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)

"As a schoolboy, I would supplement my English lessons by buying and reading The Morning Star, a foreign English-language newspaper that was available in the USSR. The Soviets permitted us to read this Communist daily published in London because, in being very critical of the democratic and capitalist world, the paper parroted the ideological line of the party. For me, however, its effect would prove highly subversive. What left a lasting impression was not the content of the criticism but the very fact that people outside the Soviet Union were free to criticize their own government without going to prison. The stronger the criticism, the more impressed I was by the degree of freedom enjoyed elsewhere."

"Preface" in Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy