“the acknowledged Elizabethan habit of viewing history as a series of object lessons for present conduct.”
Sylvan Barnet’s “Overview” in the 1986 Signet Classic edition of William Shakespeare Julius Caesar
In my latest for BOE Report I say it’s characteristically absurd to claim that global warming, if it is happening, makes it harder for people to live in the Arctic.
“When experience is not retained… infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana, quoted in Leonard Read Let Freedom Reign [I know you all know the 2nd part, but the 1st is also important]
“Mr Wirt: What do you think is going to happen in the next few years of history, Mr Lewis?”
“Lewis: I have no way of knowing. My primary field is the past. I travel with my back to the engine, and that makes it difficult when you try to steer.”
C.S. Lewis “Cross-Examination” in The Grand Miracle
“Innocent Louis [XVI] bears the sins of many generations: he too experiences that man’s tribunal is not in this Earth; that if he had no Higher one, it were not well with him.”
Thomas Carlyle The French Revolution
In a piece in C2C Journal that I forgot to post at the time, I argue that social licence sounds good, or did until we discovered you couldn’t get one. But in fact it’s just another way of saying “tyranny of the majority” which is bad in principle and worse in practice because it means mob rule by a fanatical minority
On Wednesday I was on with John Gormley on CKOM 650 in Saskatoon to discuss my National Post column on setting rational priorities in fighting terrorism.