On CJAD800 with Brian Lilley I discussed the history of jiggery-pokery and worse in U.S. presidential elections.
In my latest Epoch Times column I said the scariest thing about the current debate over social programs is that there isn’t one. We tried 30 years ago, realized it was hard, gave up and spent our way to economic and social ruin.
“Assassination, said Disraeli, never changed the history of the world.”
An article in The Economist May 25, 1991 [it added that while it might be true, that of Rajiv Gandhi might prove an exception, which was a remarkable example of present-fixated narrow-mindedness since that of Lincoln and of Julius Caesar arguably did whereas his certainly did not].
“Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best.”
Ragnar Lothbrok, quoted in an email from a friend, and it turns out to be from a TV series called Vikings, in 2015 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3623674/characters/nm1379938).
In my latest Loonie Politics column I take up my dusty cudgel on the crucial point that our whole system of government crumples if the legislators we elect cannot control the executive we do not elect. It was true in the days of Bad King John and George III, and it’s true in those of Justin Trudeau.
“To speak of Dickens is to think of Bumble the beadle, and that carries our mind at once to a whole crowd of thick-headed magistrates, interfering philanthropists, tyrannical administrators of the Poor Law, and the like. Have you ever noticed the fact that in Dickens, in Shakespeare, in Fielding, in the whole range of English literature, a person in petty authority, a minor official hardly ever appears, except to be made ridiculous? There seems to be a deep conviction in our minds that the man who carries some wand of office is more likely than other men to be half knave and wholly fool.”
Transcript from the improbably surviving one of two records used to transport C.S. Lewis’s May 1941 talk to Icelanders, which we don’t even know if it was ever broadcast, quoted in Harry Lee Poe The Making of C.S. Lewis
In my latest Epoch Times column I say fashion’s obsession with novelty and related denial of truth was bad enough when it involved clothes, food or music. When it’s body types, it’s managed to get even worse.
“I should write a book ‘The Seven Pillars of Stupidity.’”
Me Oct. 9, 2004, obviously prompted by The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence, aka “Lawrence of Arabia”, and the rather unkind thought that he wasn’t exactly a demonstrated expert on wisdom whereas I’ve been too busy living my title to write the actual book.