In my latest National Post column I say the Friday-afternoon dump of the supposed and long-awaited Sustainable Jobs Plan could not hide that its authors have no idea what a plan even is, or what practicality is, which is why they have no interest in why central planning has always failed and always will.
“My [Houyhnhnm] master … said, a fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo to retire into a corner, to lie down, and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water, nor did the servant imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only remedy they found was, to set him to hard work, after which he would infallibly come to himself. To this I was silent out of partiality to my own kind; yet here I could plainly discover the true seeds of spleen, which only seizes on the lazy, the luxurious, and the rich; who, if they were forced to undergo the same regimen, I would undertake for the cure.”
Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
In my latest Loonie Politics column I praise John Tory for finding the honour to resign as mayor of Toronto, and mean it the second time, instead of denying that character had any relevance to politics like most of those commenting on the affair or whispering or yelling in his ear
“A general learns lessons. I’m not sure that a politician does. Or that a people does.”
Maj.-Gen Chris Vokes, My Story
“Fear cures anxiety… Real Schmerz trumps Weltschmerz. If you have had enough to drink.”
P.J. O’Rourke All The Trouble In The World [about a trip to Somalia].
“my own resolve is at rock bottom, believing the best that can happen to me is to be wounded, since becoming wounded or killed is a certainty. I find comfort in an honest belief that may be God-given, that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. This I firmly belief, and often repeat it to others. It seems to give me some strength. And I have developed faith in the beatitude ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’ While this doesn’t seem to apply in civilian life, many a meek man displays the fortitude and resolve to carry on here, while many a swashbuckler finds the first way out.”
Bob Suckling, a platoon commander with the RCR at Verrières Ridge, who had just found his batman dead from concussion without a mark on his body and had a lance-corporal shoot himself in the foot right under his nose, quoted in George Blackburn The Guns of Normandy
More of Robson’s Rules of History: “It’s worse than you think. It’s worse than I think. They are not kidding.”
Me again, obviously, at some point in autumn 1997.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say it’s actually good news that about two-thirds of Canadians in a poll said they think “everything is broken in this country right now” because we still expect better and have not spiraled into rage, paranoia or, worst of all, resignation.