“The whole conscious and subconscious trend of modernism is the distrust, and even the detestation, of the ordinary man.”
G.K. Chesterton in New Witness March 9, 1916, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)
In a talk to the 2024 Economic Education Association of Alberta "Freedom Talk" in Red Deer, AB on July 7 I argue that a radical commitment to truth-telling, including refusing to remain silent in the face of lies, is crucial to personal and to political freedom.
“No sooner has a man’s conscience told him to doubt a certain institution than the man’s modern intelligence immediately tells him to doubt his conscience. Thus most modern revolution is in secret revolt against itself.”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News Nov. 17 1906, quoted in “Intelligence” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
“There [St. Peter’s Chapel in the Tower of London, where they bury at least some of the illustrious persons executed in the Tower] has mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better age, and died in a better cause.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay The History of England
“Internationalism is the death of democracy.”
G.K. Chesterton in The (NY) Sun Oct. 20 1918, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)
In my latest Epoch Times column I deplore and ridicule calls for Israel not to “escalate” a conflict with Hezbollah that has seen the latter rain deadly munitions on Israelis for nine months in what is clearly already an act of war.
“I did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs/ By the known rules of antient libertie,/ When strait a barbarous noise environs me/ Of Owles and Cuckoos, Asses, Apes and Doggs.”
John Milton On the Detraction Which Follow’d Upon My Writing Certain Treatises
In my latest Epoch Times column I say if we want cleaner politics the starting point is to cultivate our own garden by refusing to tell a lie even indirectly by sitting silently when we hear one.