"Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news."

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News January 27, 1923, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 # 4 (Jan./Feb. 2001)

In my latest National Post column I say we won't get helpful answers on the Toronto mass shooting unless we ask the right questions.

"people for whom 'history' is whatever happened two weeks ago, the same people who will be likely to assure us in their next breath that Britney Spears, or some other confection du jour, is the greatest pop singer 'of all time.' Imagine that. All time. That term might even span as much as a whole decade."

Wilfred M. McClay in First Things February 2002

In my latest National Post column I call the availability of a genuine Stalin statue on e-Bay a reminder of a strange double standard about evil on the left.

“I find it enormously interesting that this approach [that the law is what the sovereign commands] to finding a replacement for a transcendental source of values involves, in effect, a redirection of metaphorical energy: to find a human equivalent for God, there is a focus not on God’s goodness, but on his Power. It makes sense.”

Arthur Allen Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law,” Duke Law Journal Vol. 1979 #6

"It was said that the noble Don Quixote de la Mancha had been the last of the true knights. After his death, his trusted sword and his armour were sold to pay his debts. But somehow or other that sword seems to have fallen into the hands of a number of men. Washington carried it during the hopeless days of Valley Forge. It was the only defence of Gordon, when he had refused to desert the people who had been entrusted to his care, and stayed to meet his death in the besieged fortress of Khartoum. And I am not quite sure but that it proved of invaluable strength in winning the Great War."

Hendrick Van Loon The Story of Mankind