“For to feel oneself a martyr, as everybody knows, is a pleasurable thing, and the true tragedy of my position was that I had passed that stage. I had enjoyed what sweets it had to offer in ever dwindling degree since the middle of August…”
Erskine Childers The Riddle of the Sands
In my latest Loonie Politics column I advocate thinking about things you don’t want to think about, from Putin’s motives to Xi Jinping’s ideology to James Burnham’s warning about the “Suicide of the West”.
In my latest National Post “Platformed” newsletter I say it’s absurd, especially now, for Canadian pundits to be fussing over the possible tactical positioning of Jean Charest for a possible Tory leadership run instead of asking him what he actually thinks about the issues and his underlying philosophy, for instance about national defence.
“What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the d***ed fools said would happen has come to pass.”
Lord Melbourne, quoted in British Columbia Report November 18, 1996.
“It may be that a free society as we have known it carries in itself the forces of its own destruction, that once freedom has been achieved it is taken for granted and ceases to be valued, and that the free growth of ideas which is the essence of a free society will bring about the destruction of the foundations on which it depends.”
Friedrich Hayek “The Intellectuals and Socialism”
“D is a very weak-minded fellow I am afraid and, like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who has sat on him.”
“Lord Haig” re “Lord Derby” in 1918, quoted by Mark Steyn in the Daily Telegraph August 1, 2004
“If it came as a surprise to Khrushchev, why wouldn’t it come as a surprise to me?”
Soviet scholar Adam Ulam when asked why he didn’t predict Khrushchev's downfall in 1964, quoted in Globe & Mail April 1, 2000
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the chattering classes have no business mocking a truckers’ convoy for not understanding how government works when they’ve forgotten too.