“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

Martin Luther King Jr., quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM” in Epoch Times email Jan. 18 2022; other online sources attribute it to “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” (31 March 1968) (for instance https://quotepark.com/quotes/723559/history/)

In my latest National Post column I say that whether American President Joe Biden broke the taboo on saying explicitly that the U.S. would defend Taiwan as a calculated geopolitical measure, or because he’s losing it, it makes the world a safer place that he blurted it out.

In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that the painfully visible vulnerability of our electric grid is due to politicians and bureaucrats who increasingly think we should be grateful that they let us pay high prices for lousy infrastructure and other public services.

“paring knives that were duller than a throne speech…”

Bruce Ward in Ottawa Citizen December 27, 2002

In my latest National Post column I say the enduring, stomach-churning, decades-long futility of the Toronto Maple Leafs furnishes valuable lessons on how not to succeed in all sorts of areas of life including public policy… if only we could figure out what their secret is.

In my latest Epoch Times column I explain why I didn’t berate a guy over Ukraine just because he had a Russian accent.

“‘All ‘progressive’ thought has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain…. Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades.’”

Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Atlantic Monthly February 2002

“We deliberate not about ends but about means.”

Aristotle Ethics