In my latest Epoch Times column I deplore and ridicule calls for Israel not to “escalate” a conflict with Hezbollah that has seen the latter rain deadly munitions on Israelis for nine months in what is clearly already an act of war.

“I did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs/ By the known rules of antient libertie,/ When strait a barbarous noise environs me/ Of Owles and Cuckoos, Asses, Apes and Doggs.”

John Milton On the Detraction Which Follow’d Upon My Writing Certain Treatises

“Kim Campbell… named by the National Geographic Society as one of history’s 50 ‘most important’ political leaders…. on a list … in a new reference book – the Almanac of World History, recently published by the society … ‘It’s ridiculous,’ says Michael Bliss… But … ‘Given that there have not been that many females who have led nations, we chose to include her,’ says Jane Sunderland, a project manager at the Washington D.C.-based society, who says she ‘stands by the choice’ of the book’s authors.… ‘I don’t think Kim Campbell should even make a list of great Canadian leaders,’ he [James Marsh, editor-in-chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia] says. ‘She was the first and only (female) prime minister of Canada – and that’s stretching her accomplishments to the limit.’… the Almanac says nothing about her legacy except that she is a woman…. The top 50 world leaders, according to the Almanac of World History, in alphabetical order: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) Atilla the Hun (ca 406-453) Benazir Bhutto (1953 -) Bilqis, The Queen of Sheba (10th Century BC) Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) Kim Campbell (1947 -) Catherine de Medicis (1519-1589) Catherine the Great (1729-1796) Charlemagne (742-814) Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Cleopatra (69-30 BC) Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Fu Hsi (2900 BC) Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) Genghis Khan (ca 1162-1227) Hannibal (247-183 BC) Emperor Hirohito (1926-1989) Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) Isabella of Castile (1451-1504) Empress Jingo (ca 169-269) Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) John Kennedy (1917-1963) William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) Sir John A. Macdonald (1815-1891) Nelson Mandela (1918 -) Moctezuma I (reigned 1440-1469) Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) Nero (A.D. 37-68) Pericles (ca 495-429 BC) Eva Peron (1919-1952) Chief Pontiac (ca 1720-1769) Ramses II (reigned 1304-1237 BC) Romulus (753 BC) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) Shanakdakhete (reigned 177-155 BC) Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) Raden Suharto (1921 -) Suleyman the Magnificent (1494-1566) Margaret Thatcher (1925 -) Getulio Vargas (1883-1954) Queen Victoria (1819-1901) George Washington (1732-1799) William the Conquerer (ca 1028-1087) Mao Zedong (1893-1976)”

Ottawa Citizen April 10, 2004

“There is a vulnerability about waking in a dark room and rediscovering despair.”

Spiro T. Agnew Go Quietly... or Else

“Theological distinctions are fine but not thin. In all the mess of modern thoughtlessness that still calls itself modern thought, there is perhaps nothing so stupendously stupid as the common saying, ‘Religion can never depend on minute disputes about doctrine.’ It is like saying that life can never depend on minute disputes about medicine. The man who is content to say, ‘We do not want theologians splitting hairs’ will doubtless be content to go on and say, ‘We do not want surgeons splitting filaments more delicate than hairs.’ It is the fact that many a man would be dead today, if his doctors had not debated fine shades about doctoring. It is also the fact that European civilization would be dead today, if its doctors of divinity had not debated fine shades about doctrine.”

G.K. Chesterton in “The Story of the Statues” in The Resurrection of Rome, quoted in “Chesterton’s Mail Bag” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #3 (Nov.-Dec. 2007)

“Most of you know that I’ve been around long enough to remember a good many political leaders and that I’ve studied all of their merits and in most cases it didn’t take long.”

“The Geezer’s Corner” by Dale Dawson in The Landowner August/September 2015

“As I have said elsewhere, there is a kinship between men who have lived in the dynamic periods of history, and Achilles or Ajax would have been perfectly at home at the Alamo or the battle of Adobe Walls, and Davey Crockett or Jim Bowie could have walked a quarter-deck beside Ulysses or Sir Francis Drake. All were men of action and of driving ambition and would have understood one another with no problem.”

Louis L’Amour Education of a Wandering Man

In my latest National Post column I heap scorn on the federal Liberals’ ability to stuff us all into standardized human-stacking units and on their desire to.