“In Britain, such openings [Throne Speeches] are preceded by a ceremonial inspection of Westminster Palace for explosives, a relic of the foiled 1605 Gunpowder Plot. A ceremonial hostage is taken by Buckingham Palace to ensure the safe return of the King. Perhaps most notably, before delivering the British speech from the throne, King Charles III is required to wait in a room that is specially decorated to warn him of the potentially fatal consequences of subverting Parliament. The official Robing Room in which the King dons his state crown before delivering the speech features a conspicuously framed copy of the death warrant of King Charles I. In the words of the BBC, ‘if ever there were a symbol to express the end of the divine right of kings and the limits of a constitutional monarchy, that document is it.’”

Tristin Hopper in National Post May 28, 2025 [and in my files under the heading “Say, Chuck, about your head…”

“Nazism was an attempt to lie beautifully to the German nation and to the world. The beautiful lie is, however, also the essence of kitsch. Kitsch is a form of make-believe, a form of deception. It is an alternative to the daily reality that would otherwise be a spiritual vacuum. It represents ‘fun’ and ‘excitement,’ energy and spectacle and above all ‘beauty.’ Kitsch replaces ethics with aesthetics. Kitsch is the mask of Death. Nazism was the ultimate expression of kitsch, of its mind-numbing, death-dealing portent. Naziism, like kitsch, masqueraded as life; the reality of both was death. The Third Reich was the creation of ‘kitsch men,’ people who confused the relationship between life and art, reality and myth, and who regarded the goal of existence as mere affirmation, devoid of criticism, difficulty, insight. Their sensibility was rooted in superficiality, falsity, plagiarism, and forgery. Their art was rooted in ugliness. They took the ideals, though not the form, of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century avant-garde, and of the German nation in the Great War, and by means of technology – the mirror – they suited these ideals to their own purpose. Germany, the home of Dichter und Denker [Poets and thinkers], of many of the greatest cultural achievements of modern man, became in the Third Reich the home of Richter und Henker [Judges and hangmen]: the incarnation of kitsch and nihilism.”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

On the News Forum with Hal Roberts I discuss equalization, Western alienation and the feeble inertia of Canadian public policy.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the American withdrawal from liberal global policeman isn’t some weird departure from their geopolitical traditions, it’s a return to business as usual pre-1945. It was the intervening 80 years that was extraordinary and if people valued it they should have been more helpful to and less unpleasant about the Pax Americana.

In my latest National Post column I say while it's necessary to denounce antisemitism, it's not sufficient. We must understand why and how this uniquely stubborn and wicked form of hatred spreads like a fungus, causing rot in all kinds of places including elite institutions.

“… to reassure us generally of the good intentions of the average German. Eulogies are pronounced on his good-humour and domesticity, and the warlike house-burners are praised as peaceful householders. It is, perhaps, admitted that there was something tactless in torturing the Belgians. But it is regarded as the exuberance of a young nation; and an indulgence is asked for such pastimes of Prussian officers on the principle that boys will be boys. That dark and watchful enemy, the sower of tares, is represented as having merely sown his wild oats.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Jan. 1, 1916, quoted in “The Golden Key Chain GKC on Scripture Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)

In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that decades of immigration and investment policy based on mistaken and incoherent multiculturalism is predictably turning Canada into a low-trust society.

“Don’t put it off until tomorrow. Tomorrow there may be a law against it.”

“Don’t know who said it” quoted in “Other Suspects – III Quotes not by GKC” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)