Posts in History
Words Worth Noting - January 15, 2025

C.S. “Lewis grew more outspoken in his criticism of the government in his letters to his American benefactors as the Argentine crisis grew and meat became even more scarce. He chaffed against government interference of the most paternalistic style. In the face of severe food for shortages, one government minister insisted that things were much better under government rationing. Whereas families once bought the kinds of foods they liked, under rationing they were forced to eat ‘a properly balanced diet’ by government standards. He commented to [Vera] Matthews that it might do the country good to see a few government ministers ‘dangling from a lamppost in Whitehall’. When the government realized that people were ordering groceries from Ireland, the Customs officials stopped the practice.”

Harry Lee Poe The Completion of C.S. Lewis [showing that there’s nothing like actual experience of living under patronizing big government to turn someone vaguely leftist by cultural disposition into a raging libertarian]

Words Worth Noting - January 10, 2025

“In 100 years, we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college.”

Joe Sobran quoted “In the last issue of Gilbert” by David Deavel, according to Pamela Patnode “The Art of Language” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2023); she added “The observation rings true today, and it has scriptural significance.”

What's scary about Peterson's Poilievre interview?

In my latest Epoch Times column I mocked progressive alarm at Jordan Peterson daring to interview Pierre Poilievre, and at either man daring to exist. But I then expressed my own alarm at the way Poilievre makes plausibly right-wing noises without articulating genuine policy alternatives on major issues.