“I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in.”
C.S. Lewis “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State: Is Progress Possible?” first published in The Observer July 20, 1958
In my latest Epoch Times column I contrast Australia’s admittedly parsimonious awakening on defence to Canada’s ongoing opium dreams.
In my latest National Post column I ask whether Jagmeet Singh and other prominent Canadian politicians can possibly be the buffoons they appear to be, and answer sadly yes.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the federal Liberals, including Katie Telford in her Friday non-testimony, are violating Robson’s First Rule of Crisis Management over Chinese election meddling: When criticism erupts, take time to ponder honestly whether you did something wrong.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Justin Trudeau’s totally out-of-touch aristocratic remarks about borrowing via credit cards may finally bring him down politically.
“The best prophet of the future is the past.”
Lord Byron (whose advice I only take cautiously and in small amounts, to be sure), apparently in a letter written January 28, 1828 though my efforts to track it down did not lead to a confirmed specific attribution.
“As if to underline the national decline [in Britain in the 1970s ], every flailing industry flew the moth-eaten flag: British Steel, British Coal, British Leyland. They were all owned by the state – even the last, which was the national automobile manufacturer. The government had taken all the famous British car marques – Austin, Morris, Rover, Jaguar, Triumph – and merged them into one. That’s right: the government made your car. Or, rather, a man called Red Robbo did, when he was in the mood, which wasn’t terribly often.”
Obit of James Callaghan by Mark Steyn in The Atlantic Monthly June 2005.
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
English novelist L.P. Hartley, quoted in Sylvan Barnet’s “Overview” in the 1986 Signet Classic edition of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar [in Policy Options November 2002 historian Desmond Morton called him “an otherwise obscure English novelist”].