“In opposition to his enervated gang of outcast wrecks you are able to marshal the flower and strength of all Italy.”
Cicero Selected Political Speeches [referring on the one hand to Catalina and on the other to the people of Rome]
“As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forest and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries…. Indeed, it seems not improbable that it was the engagement in this conversation (where talk is without a conclusion) that gave us our present appearance, man being descended from a race of apes who sat in talk so long and so late that they wore out their tails.”
Michael Oakeshott “The voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind” in Rationalism in politics and other essays
In my latest National Post column I say people who want a government strategy for every problem lack faith in the creativity and decency of human beings especially including Canadians.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say those who sweep aside the rule of law through vandalism, personal violence and other forms of “direct action”, regardless of their cause and its legitimacy, have succumbed to the deadly sin of pride.
In my latest Epoch Times column I warn that the Liberals are taking appalling risks in charging forward with hugely ambitious new projects from a crumbling economic and fiscal position.
“Their art for art’s sake was a drunken variant of the stern age’s commerce for commerce’s sake, science for science’ sake.”
Garry Wills Chesterton (regarding the decadents of the 1880s and 1890s)
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg’s Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinse Communist Party is Reshaping the World is a badly needed wakeup call, especially in Canada.