In my other speech to the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June, and again I apologize for the delay in getting it edited and posted, I talked about what classical Greece and Rome got right about political freedom and what they did not, how medieval England completed the picture with Magna Carta to limit government in theory and parliament to limit it in practice, and how and why things went wrong in the modern world.
Here’s a video from the past. It’s a talk I gave at the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June 2019 so I’m tardy making it available. And it’s about the Middle Ages which were, far too many people think, necessarily awful because they were long ago and old is bad and new is good. In fact there are a great many modern horrors that would have appalled people in the Middle Ages and one of them is widespread ignorance about the period.
Sorry to take so long to get around to editing and posting it. Life got in the way.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that there is no “international law” in matters like drone strikes on terrorists because there are no international police, no international courts with legitimate jurisdiction, no real international statutes and no international jails.
In my latest National Post column I say the silliest criticism of the U.S. taking out terrorist Qasim Soleimani, among quite a few dumb ones, is that now they’ve made the Iranian government angry so now we’re in trouble.
“The sincere controversialist is above all things a good listener.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted in an editorial in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008).
In my latest National Post column I ponder the gleeful way many people welcome the development of AI that’s better than us at everything, and ask whether at Christmastime in particular we can’t find something to cherish in our fallible, all-too-human fellows and selves.
"A pessimist is a person who has not had enough experience to be a cynic."
Mary Pettibone Poole, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail July 27, 2001