“It is impossible for someone like me who is not totally immersed in these questions to judge to what extent Aboriginal people sincerely wish to perpetuate in large measure, though with modern benefits, the lives of their ancestors. I doubt if the alternatives were clearly laid out, a majority of Indigenous people would choose to live nomadic lives tribally and eating fish and game. But whether it is a tactical masquerade to maximize compensation and reparations or a sincere commitment, native Canadians at the very least have a right not to be treated as if they were immigrants from a foreign and much different country. It hardly needs emphasis that they and their ancestral civilization antedated the arrival of the now overwhelming majority of Canadians of overseas ancestry, and as a now well recognized natural right, they’re entitled to preserve as much as they wish of their traditional civilization, as long as it does not violate fundamental principles of Canadian life.”

Conrad Black in National Post April 6, 2024

In my latest Epoch Times column I explain what is, and what is not, a “confidence” motion in a functioning Parliamentary system.

In my latest Epoch Times column I say that an ideology, aka paradigm or worldview, is essential to coherent thought. So instead of the “I know you are but what am I?” spectacle of people trading cries of “ideologue” we should try to debate the reasons why we disagree about which evidence matters and what it says. And your goal should not be to avoid ideologies but to choose a sensible one.

“If you think wrong, you go wrong.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News September 12, 1914, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)

“the waters are always smoothest and even most polished when they pour over the precipice.”

G.K. Chesterton quoted by Dale Ahlquist in “Chesterton University” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022) [with particular reference to those topics on which polite society and the Establishment stifle debate]

“Al Gore prefers to say, ‘Well, in my faith tradition...’ As a rule, folks with a faith tradition tend not to call it such. At Friday prayers in Mecca, the A-list imams don’t say, ‘Well, in my faith tradition we believe in killing all the infidels.’”

Mark Steyn's “Happy Warrior” column in National Review Dec. 13, 2004

“When the art of controversy comes back, it will not come from the world of sceptics and iconoclasts. It will come rather from the world of believers and of dogmatists. It will not be the work of men who merely ask questions, but of men who believe that they have found answers. It will come out of the clash of real convictions, which are positive and not negative; not from those who say: ‘What is truth,’ but from those who can still say: ‘This is truth’; not from Pilate but from Paul.”

G.K. Chesterton in New Witness Sept. 8, 1922, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)

In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that to fix Canada’s nearly terminal military woes, we need to start from scratch conceptually by listing what we need and what it will cost, not try to get there incrementally from the mess we’re in while letting current budget practices and other practical difficulties stop us before we start.