“Our image of ourselves as a people was lifted up into heroism by our honourable and solitary defiance of Hitler in 1940, and we liked to see ourselves as the inheritors of Henry V and the imitators of the Greeks and Romans. Of course, these ideas had been quietly subverted for years by the Left, and were secretly despised by a small but influential part of the educated middle class. George Orwell had rightly pointed out in the early months of the war that Britain was unique in having an intelligentsia that despised patriotism. That current in national thought had been suppressed by many things: Russia's entry into the war had allowed even the extreme Left to appear patriotic; the discovery of the extermination camps had transformed a defensive ‘imperialist’ war into a Just War, if only with hindsight; and the powerful myth that the Tories had all been appeasers, whilst the Left had been keen to fight the Nazis (though largely false), had allowed the intellectuals to claim the war as their own. The Suez catastrophe and humiliation, imperial withdrawal from Asia and Africa, and the simple passage of time eventually permitted open mockery of the war years to emerge, round about the time of Churchill's death.”

Peter Hitchens The Abolition of Britain [from my “revolt of the elites” file].

“It was the glory of Roman law that it protected the individual against the state.”

Will Durant Caesar and Christ [although he describes frankly the considerable degree of legal and constitutional chaos that existed, including Hadrian trying to draw it all into a Perpetual Edict only the Emperor could change]

“If someone asks him how he [extremely productive historian Niall Ferguson] manages his time, he says, ‘I get up in the morning and work. My puzzle is with people who spend 10 years not producing a book. What do they do?’”

National Post March 14, 2001

In my latest Loonie Politics column I identify a variety of self-defeating mental habits on display over the current Middle Eastern war that prevent decadent civilizations from prevailing in long conflicts.

“It may at first surprise those who follow the course of later Greek thought that the two great systems of Plato and Aristotle had comparatively little influence on the generations immediately following their inception, and that it was not till after several centuries that the development and partial fusion of the two took place. Nothing however, is more striking in the history of thought than the immediate transience, and the final permanence, of genial philosophical ideas.”

David Knowles The Evolution of Medieval Thought [and incidentally if a more pompous book has ever been written I missed it... mercifully]

“Many believed Lord Acton when he quipped that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This throwaway line has become one of our governing principles, so much so that Australia, and much of the West, organize virtually everything by committee and quail in the face of individual thumos outside of sport. We are suspicious of it. We see in every Great Man the shadow of the slave master. Nonetheless, power must be wielded... The wise man recognizes that life has fullest meaning in service to a good master, and that we all serve something — if not something or someone noble, then our appetites. Wartime is the most direct and prime example of service to masters; it is antiegalitarian in their sense, but egalitarian in ours, and together bound by duty and service in the most primordial sense. Against this the pseudo-liberated contemporary person feels a degree of contempt, which is why they enjoy stories of soldiers committing massacres so dearly. Nothing confirms their deepest-held beliefs more sordidly. Good masters are few and far between, because we no longer cultivate this ethic in our technocratic managerial elite. The truth is that in fleeing good masters we have not fled masters, but have merely ended up with bad ones. In attempting to achieve a self-reliant anarchy we have left open the door to those who are in fact most corruptible by power.”

Christopher Jolliffe “The Attack on ANZAC Day” in Dorchester Review #32 (Vol. 15 #2 Summer 2025)

“foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.”

Hubert Humphrey, quoted by Sheryl Saperia, “CEO of Secure Canada”, in National Post August 5, 2025 [NB I do not agree that it necessarily is let alone should be true, but it is certainly a possibility deserving serious thought]

“A medley of spiteful mutants united behind a Leninist project can only be a wholly destructive force, and those of us who cleave to notions of Being with more permanence feel alienated and betrayed by our recently-elevated bad masters. We should not be surprised that they have the deculturalizing effect of rampaging orcs. They are barbarians, and as Chesterton said, the barbarian creates only by accident. Everything else they do is destruction.”

Christopher Jolliffe “The Attack on ANZAC Day” in Dorchester Review #32 (Vol. 15 #2 Summer 2025)