“Charlemagne receives a buffet that goes near to bring him down: the voice of St Gabriel, rallying him, has that tart stringency which distinguishes the Divine word from pious vapourings: ‘And what’, said he, ‘art thou about, great King?’”
Dorothy L. Sayers’ introduction to The Song of Roland
“There followed a long and intricate rivalry for leadership between the various Anglo-Saxon kings which occupied the seventh and eighth centuries. It was highly important to those whose span of life was cast in that period, but it left small marks on the subsequent course of history.”
Winston Churchill A History of the English-Speaking Peoples A One-Volume Abridgement by Christopher Lee
In a talk to the 2024 Economic Education Association of Alberta "Freedom Talk" in Red Deer, AB on July 7 I argue that a radical commitment to truth-telling, including refusing to remain silent in the face of lies, is crucial to personal and to political freedom.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the International Olympic Committee’s pseudo-apology for deliberately blaspheming the Last Supper was even more debauched than the initial performance.
“There [St. Peter’s Chapel in the Tower of London, where they bury at least some of the illustrious persons executed in the Tower] has mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better age, and died in a better cause.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay The History of England
“Internationalism is the death of democracy.”
G.K. Chesterton in The (NY) Sun Oct. 20 1918, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)
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