“In the end Augustus, skeptic and realist, became convinced that moral reform awaited a religious renaissance. The agnostic generation of Lucretius, Catullus, and Caesar had run its course, and its children had discovered that the fear of the gods is the youth of wisdom. Even the cynical Ovid would soon write, Voltaireanly: expedit esse deos, et ut expedit esse putemus: ‘it is convenient that there should be gods, and that we should think they exist.’”
Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“The whole motif of liberation, which has become so central to our century – be it the emancipation of women, homosexuals, proletariat, youth, appetites, peoples – comes into view at the turn of the century. The term avant-garde has usually been applied simply to artists and writers who promoted experimental techniques in their work and urged rebellion against established academies. The notion of modernism has been used to subsume both this avant-garde and the intellectual impulses behind the quest for liberation and the act of rebellion. Very few critics have ventured to extend these notions of the avant-garde and modernism to the social and political as well as artistic agents of revolt and to the act of rebellion in general in order to identify a broad wave of sentiment and endeavour. This book attempts to do so. Culture is regarded as a social phenomenon and modernism as the principle urge of our time. The book argues in the process that Germany has been the modernist nation par excellence of our century. Like the avant-garde in the arts, Germany was swept by a reformist zeal at the fin-de-siècle and by 1914 she had come to represent both to herself and to the international community the idea of spirit at war. After the trauma of military defeat in 1918, the radicalism of Germany, rather than being subdued, was accentuated. The Weimar period, 1918 to 1933, and the Third Reich, 1933 to 1945, were stages in a process. Avant-garde has for us a positive ring, storm troops a frightening connotation. This book suggests that there may be a sibling relationship between these two terms that extends beyond their military origins. Introspection, primitivism, abstraction, and mythmaking in the arts, and introspection, primitivism, abstraction, and mythmaking in politics, may be related manifestations. Nazi kitsch may bear a blood relationship to the highbrow religion of art proclaimed by many moderns. Our century is one in which life and art have blended, in which existence has become aestheticized. History, as one theme of this study will try to show, has surrendered much of its former authority to fiction. In our postmodern age a compromised may, however, be possible and necessary. In search of this compromise our historical account proceeds in the form of a drama, with acts and scenes, in the full and diverse sense of those words. In the beginning was the event. Only later came consequences.”
End of Author’s “Preface” in Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era.
In my latest National Post column I urge Canada’s federal Conservatives to tackle their electoral and image problems by leaning into them, being the reality party instead of trying to be Liberal lite and having it fail for the umpteenth time.
“Le cardinal de Richelieu a écrit dans ses mémoires qu’un ministre corrompu est moins dangereux pour l’État qu’un ministre incompétent.”
Jacques Dufresne La démocratie athénienne: Miroir de la Notre
“It was impressed on me by one of the best of mothers that ever lived that I must aim at being a thorough master of the work by which I had to get my living; and to be that, I must concentrate my whole energies on my work, whatever that might be, to the exclusion of every other thing. I soon discovered that if I ever accomplished anything in life it would be by pursuing my object with a persistent determination to attain it. I had neither the training nor the talents to accomplish anything without hard work, and fortunately I knew it.”
Canadian tycoon George Stephen, late in life, attributed his success to his Spartan training and singlemindedness, quoted in Pierre Berton The National Dream
In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that NATO meeting in Turkey instead of expelling it indicats a collapse of faith in the Western civilization NATO was created to protect.
“In 1925, one of the most popular cars in America was the 20-horsepower Ford Model T. According to the manual, the Model T tops out at 45 miles per hour. Not bad, but there’s a catch. The aerodynamics of the car are so poor that Road & Track likens it to a barn door. That’s a problem in 100 mile per hour headwinds.”
Cody Cassidy How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes p. 191 [the context being could you escape the March 18, 1925 Tri-State Tornado in one and the answer being that in such conditions a Model T could barely keep up with a running man].
During the South Sea Bubble “‘Every fool aspired to be a knave.’”
Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [he provides no source or citation for that marvellous line, however].