“In this life we get nothing save by effort.”
Theodore Roosevelt, “In Praise of the Strenuous Life,” in William Bennett The Book of Virtues
“But the spiritual life is not a democracy.”
Bishop Robert Barron in “Is Jesus the King of Your Life?” (right after praising political democracy and condemning this-world monarchy) https://youtu.be/tICxaSQFJGo?t=761
In my latest National Post column (filed before the invasion of Ukraine) I mock the government for encouraging us to switch providers to get lower prices and better service through the magic of competition, while subjecting vast swaths of the economy and our lives to its monopoly control
“There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in “Quote of the Week in “The Week That Was: 2011-11-20” on Watt’s Up With That (https://wattsupwiththat.com)
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the chattering classes have no business mocking a truckers’ convoy for not understanding how government works when they’ve forgotten too.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the disastrous failure of Ottawa protest convoy policing wasn’t the result of suddenly resigned chief Peter Sloly not doing what his political masters wanted but of his doing it all too well.
“just as historians tell us that Richard I was not fit to fill the shoes of bold Henry II – and that Richard Cromwell was not fit to wear the mantle of his uncle – they might add in future years that Richard Nixon did not measure to the footsteps of Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
John F. Kennedy’s nomination acceptance speech July 16, 1960 (the irony being that the metaphor only works if we have some idea who these people were, yet JFK didn’t realize Richard “Tumble-Down Dick” Cromwell was not Oliver’s nephew but his son, or that Oliver Cromwell’s “mantle” is not something you would want to have fit you).
In my latest National Post column, while acknowledging the world-historic greatness of Justin Trudeau now that he has emergency powers, I ask whether our governments’ manifest incapacity to do even simple things including fixing health care derives from having long ago substituted make-believe for serious thought.