In my latest National Post column I contrast various Ontario school boards’ grudging admission that some misguided students might celebrate the Queen with their mandatory embrace of every progressive occasion or pseudo-occasion.
‘‘My very dear sons, it is better never to undertake any high enterprise than to abandon it when once begun….’”
Pope Gregory, in reply to an appeal from St. Augustine of Canterbury and others to be excused from attempting to evangelize the English nation because “they were appalled at the idea of going to a barbarous, fierce, and pagan nation, of whose very language they were ignorant”, quoted in Bede A History of the English Church and People
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Pierre Poilievre’s overwhelming victory in the Conservative leadership contest, and Jean Charest’s hollow showing, demonstrates yet again that snobbery is no antidote to populism.
“there is little reason to believe that this socialism [that he saw coming in Britain and the U.S.] will mean the advent of the civilization of which orthodox socialists dream. It is much more likely to present fascist features. That would be a strange answer to Marx’s prayer. But history sometimes indulges in jokes of questionable taste.”
Joseph Schumpeter Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
In my latest Epoch Times column I say we should be very wary of proposals from people who express angry ignorance about our Constitutional monarchy, including “republicans” who have no idea what a republic actually is.
“I personally view punditry as Nero’s art – playing the fiddle while Rome is burning – but, as the fine Australian commentator, Walter Murdoch, pointed out years ago: ‘If everyone had refrained from fiddling when Rome was burning, what would have become of the noble art of music? For when has Rome not been burning?’”
George Jonas in Ottawa Citizen June 24, 2006
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the goal of Parliamentary redistricting should be improving government not indulging a penchant for regional bickering. Happily, adding a lot more MPs will help achieve the former and avoid the latter.
“As the historian Forrest McDonald pointed out, Filmer never persuaded anyone by eloquence or logic, since he possessed neither.”
Richard Brookheiser in National Review February 22, 1999 [Filmer being the 17th-century English Tory essayist Robert Filmer, the target of John Locke’s now mostly unread First Treatise of Government, which is now mostly unread in significant measure because it demolished Filmer so completely that nobody now remembers him]