In my latest Mercatornet article I say that what matters in the upcoming U.S. election is not what the people involved would have you focus on.
“‘The Woman King’ may not be 100% factual. But that doesn’t stop it from being a must-see./ Some have criticized it for not telling the full extent to which the Dahomey kingdom participated in the slave trade, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a powerful film.”
Headline and deck on NBC “Think” “Culture & Lifestyle” piece September 16, 2022 [www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/the-woman-king-may-not-be-100-percent-factual-but-its-a-must-see-rcna48103] and which I quote, obviously, not because I sympathize but because I think it’s a characteristically unashamed modern assertion that if it advances a favoured cause the fact that it’s not true is of no importance.
“Lord Salisbury’s observation that ‘no lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust in experts’”
Michael Mandelbaum in New York Times June 16, 1985 [and widely quoted online but not, in any examples I found, with further attribution as to when or where Salisbury said it].
“‘Those who can, do,’ but the converse, ‘those who do, can,’ is no less true, for we learn by doing.”
Anthony De Jasay The State (expressly regarding the possibility that we couldn’t spontaneously cooperate any more because we’ve lived under governments for so long).
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Justin Trudeau having the guy who was head of the Trudeau Foundation when it got a suspicious Chinese donation write a report exonerating Justin Trudeau over suspicious Chinese donations is a flagrant as well as a silly gesture of contempt for Canadians.
“Here we get closer still to the heart of the great human mystery. Nothing has been learned. The same people who made this catastrophic mistake recommend the same policies toward each new threat, as it arises; and the principle of appeasement is alive and well throughout the modern successor to the League of Nations.”
End of David Warren’s “Sunday Spectator” column in Ottawa Citizen Oct. 20, 2002 [specifically re dealing with North Korea]
In my latest Epoch Times column I say it’s fine to argue over whether China is meddling in our elections, but if a large number of us don’t think it matters, we have no country.
“they [lawyers] are plants that will grow in any soil that is cultivated by the hands of others; and when once they have taken root, they will extinguish every other vegetable that grows around them.”
J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur Letters from an American Farmer [and yes, I grant that it’s easy to mock lawyers until you need one]