“Happiness is a hard master – particularly other people’s happiness. A much harder master, if one isn’t conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth.”
Mustapha Mond in Aldous Huxley Brave New World
In my latest National Post article, part of the “Right Now” series on “What does conservatism mean in Canada today?”, I argue that it must mean serious attention to the deep constitutional and historical roots of our rights, our security, our prosperity and our open society. And yes, by that I mean Magna Carta.
“the best assumption with regard to the men and women of the fifteenth or any other medieval century is that in essentials they were like-minded with ourselves. We should not be deceived by different conventions, or by contrasts which may be only superficial. Both the pomp and artificiality of court life in the fifteenth century, and the extravagances of the baronial households, often commented on, had a logic of their own in the circumstances of the times; they were far from being the product of men and women whose motives were very different from our own. Life may have been more colourful, unrestrained, and uncertain, in the fifteenth century than at later times; but this did not really change the inner nature of the men and women of the age.’”
Bertie Wilkinson Constitutional History of England in the Fifteenth Century 1399-1485 (Wilkinson was my grandfather)
“only a quarrel can interrupt a good argument”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 3 #5 (March 2000)
“‘What fun it would be,’ he [Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western Europe] thought, ‘if one didn’t have to think about happiness.’”
Aldous Huxley Brave New World
“Once again, you and your editors show that Gilbert Keith Chesterton is the most important man not living in the world today.”
Letter from William Cassell of Poteau, Oklahoma in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 5 # 3 (Dec. 2001)
In my latest Loonie Politics column I condemn the Liberals for promising us the moon on health care and climate without explaining how they’ll lasso it and haul it down or why, if they know how to perform such lovely miracles, they didn’t do either at any point during their past four years in power.
“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”
Albert Einstein, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go