“Will you permit the sacred fire of liberty, brought by your fathers from the venerable temples of Britain, to be quenched and trodden out on the simple altars they have raised?”
Joseph Howe [in appealing to a jury Halifax in 1835 to acquit him on libel charges because what he’d published was true even though at that time truth was not a defence in British law, which they did, thus engaging in “jury nullification” to uphold that liberty] in Dennis Gruending, ed., Great Canadian Speeches
In my latest Epoch Times column I say there is much to celebrate on Canada Day/Dominion Day, as well as much to fix, and say let’s do it.
In a wide-ranging discussion with David Leis of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy we talked about the Middle East, the rot in Canadian academia, the collapse of governance, the revolt of the elites against Western civilization and more besides… including how to fix things.
“Our journalised world does not regard words as part of any connected argument, but as disconnected emotional epithets thrown at some object; the only question being whether it is an object of hatred or idolatry, and whether the things thrown are bombs or bouquets. Nobody thinks that anybody might possibly have another object, the object called truth, and try to reach it by thinking instead of throwing things.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted in Dale Ahlquist “Why is America not Normal? G.K.’s Weekly, Volume 13 March 14, 1031 – September 5, 1931” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
“Irresolute men are sometimes very persistent in their undertakings, because if they gave up their design they would have to make a second resolution.”
“Leopardi” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail May 18, 2007
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say sending an underarmed Arctic patrol vessel to Cuba to greet a Russian flotilla, then babbling a shifting set of unconvincing and inconsistent explanations, is one more example of the plague of incompetence engulfing us.
In my latest National Post column I say Calgary’s current water problems are emblematic of how progressive politicians don’t just engage in zany symbolic antics, they wreck cities and countries in zany ways.
In my latest Mercatornet column I ask how the United States, of all places, could have become vulnerable to tyranny.