"the present occupies almost the whole field of vision. Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called 'the old days’ – a small, comic jungle in which highwaymen, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armor, etc. wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond the old days comes a picture of ‘primitive man.’ He is ‘science,’ not ‘history,’ and is therefore felt to be much more real than the old days. In other words, the prehistoric is much more believed in than the historic.”

C.S. Lewis, The Grand Miracle, describing the attitude of "the uneducated Englishman" of his day.

In my latest National Post column I say French President Emmanuel Macron's expressed wish to govern like Jupiter would have doomed him in the English-speaking world... and should have in France or anywhere else too.

"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