“The only way to end a quarrel is to get on both sides of it. We must have not merely a calm impartiality, but rather a sympathy with partiality as it exists in both partisans. We must be not so much impartial as partial to both sides.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 25, 1932, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)
“As I’ve written here before, Charles de Gaulle resolved the long struggle between the monarchists and the republicans by creating a monarchy and calling it a republic. The French president retains extensive powers, regardless of the composition of the country’s Senate and National Assembly.”
Conrad Black in National Post July 13, 2024
“There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.”
Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue in Rex Stout Death of a Doxy [setup for admitting he made one up to do with murders].
In my latest, and last, piece for Mercator I celebrate its mission while lamenting its passing, victim of an age far too prone to take frivolous things seriously and ignore the eternal verities. But I urge everyone to do the reverse.
In my latest Epoch Times column I discuss the odd way that people’s views on COVID, climate and Ukraine tend to align… and the validity and limits of the connection.
“Business is taboo at the dinner table, but crime and criminals aren’t, and the Rosenberg case hogged the conversation all through the anchovy fritters, partridge in casserole with no olives in the sauce, cucumber mousse, and Creole curds and cream. Of course it was academic, since the Rosenbergs had been dead for years, but the young princes had been dead for five centuries, and [Nero] Wolfe had once spent a week investigating that case, after which he removed More’s Utopia from his bookshelves because More had framed Richard III.”
Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue in Rex Stout Death of a Doxy; Wolfe had been reading Invitation to an Inquest and had ordered a transcript of the trial.
“Trouble is, we’re on a dead reckoning toward an election that will be about whether it’s Justin Trudeau or Pierre Poilievre who will destroy Canada and leave it a charred ruin full of irradiated zombie mutants. And that really, really isn’t the election we need.”
Chris Selley in National Post July 18, 2024
In my latest Loonie Politics column, and just in time for him to become the butt of endless memes over his absurdly inflated biographical claims, I ask how Mark Carney could be seen as the Liberal party’s saviour then turn out to be so preposterously awful a candidate.