"the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.”

T.S. Eliot quoted in Daniel Boorstin The Genius of American Politics

In my latest Epoch Times column I try to explain how Canadian elections got so surly and so empty at the same time.

“Some surviving literary works from this period [Egypt’s First Intermediate Period 2200-2050 BC] betray blank despair; others proclaim a crass hedonism; and still others seek a basis for restoration of social order by insisting upon the necessity of personal righteousness.”

William McNeill The Rise of the West

"To predict the broad developments of the future is no more of a tour de force than to divine those of the past.... If past events have left their traces, it is reasonable to imagine that those still to come have their roots."

Honoré de Balzac, quoted in Leonard Silk The Economists

In my latest Loonie Politics column I condemn the Liberals for promising us the moon on health care and climate without explaining how they’ll lasso it and haul it down or why, if they know how to perform such lovely miracles, they didn’t do either at any point during their past four years in power.

“The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.”

William Faulkner, quoted by Florence King in National Review April 19, 1999