In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that optimism is a psychological condition and generally fatuous, while hope is a theological virtue, in public affairs as in life more generally.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say what’s really scary about the multiple failed security screenings of the Eldidis is the evasive smugness with which politicians and bureaucrats defend their obviously dismal performance.
“I do not find myself often agreeing with the late Lord Keynes, but he has never said a truer thing than when he wrote, on a subject on which his own experience has singularly qualified him to speak, that ‘the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new ideas after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply are not likely to be the newest. But soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good and evil.’”
Friedrich Hayek “‘Free’ Enterprise and Competitive Order” in Individualism and Economic Order
“One of the most famous English-language commentators in the 20th century, Malcolm Muggeridge, famously referred to ‘the great liberal death wish.’ In Canada, we could correctly call it the great Liberal death wish.”
Conrad Black in National Post Feb. 10, 2024 [roasting Justin Trudeau].
In my latest Epoch Times column I ask where the campus protests and encampments are over dreadful treatment of women and gays under in Afghanistan… even if you don’t get to blame Jews.
“While men perform their social duties faithfully, they do all that society or the state can with propriety demand or expect; and remain responsible only to their Maker for their religion, or modes of faith, which they may prefer or profess.”
George Washington in W.B. Allen Compiler and Editor George Washington: A Collection.
“A consultant, we are advised, is a man who knows a hundred ways to make love and doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
Val Sears in Ottawa Sun December 16, 1998
In my latest Mercatornet column I say people are having trouble grasping the dynamics of the American election because they’re reluctant to face the truth that both Trump and Biden were terrible candidates, and Harris might be almost as bad.