“the aim of studying history is not to forget its lessons when occasion arises for its practical application, or to decide that the present situation is different after all, and that therefore its old eternal truths are no longer applicable; no, the purpose of studying history is precisely its lesson for the present. The man who cannot do this must not conceive of himself as a political leader; in reality he is a shallow, though usually very conceited, fool, and no amount of good will can excuse his practical incapacity.”

You may hate me for this one, and I did hesitate before posting it, because the source is Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. But it remains true even if the person who said it was evil.

In my latest Epoch Times column I contrast the Canadian federal government’s sluggish incapacity even to agree to hand out cash to get other people to build houses with the endless vaulting promises of our politicians to deliver social justice, world peace and better weather.

“Sex… is really a very solemn act; For it is the foundation of all we call the family and all we know as human society. Some groping in these dark beginnings have said that mankind was once under a matriarchy; I suppose that under a matriarchy it would not be called mankind but womankind. But others have conjectured that what is called matriarchy was simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remained fixed because all the fathers were fugitive and irresponsible. Then came the moment when the man decided to guard and guide what he had created. So he became the head of the family, not as a bully with a big club to beat women with, but rather as a respectable person trying to be a responsible person. Now all that might be perfectly true, and might even have been the first family act, and it would still be true that man then for the first time acted like a man, and therefore the for the first time became fully a man.”

G.K. Chesterton in “Professors and Prehistoric Men” in The Everlasting Man, quoted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #5 (May/June 2022)

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the new government-funded recommendation to have at most two drinks a week is a weird triumph of the hypochondriac and the control freak at a time when the cost of panicky COVID lockdowns increasingly demonstrates that they should not be in charge of anything important.

“there it stretched away into the grey haze of London, really beautiful, this vast hive of men and women who had learned at least the primary lesson of the gospel, that there was no God but man, no priest, but the politician, no prophet, but the schoolmaster.”

The internal monologue of politician Oliver Brand in Robert Hugh Benson Lord of the World

Robson’s Rules of History: Anything with “People’s” in the name is a bad thing.

One of mine, obviously, from October 29, 1997 (I did not record what specific entity or incident prompted the thought)

“Woke /wōk/informal • US (adj.) A state of awareness only achieved by those dumb enough to find injustice in everything except their own behavior.”

Comment by Stewart Read on the Climate Discussion Nexus “Pinker To The Rescue” Readout video

In my latest Loonie Politics column I ask, with respect to Jordan Peterson and others, how cancellation of anyone who questions authority became the default option in our society.