In a talk to the Augustine College Summer Seminar I argued that the American Revolution brought liberty and prosperity because it looked back to the solid foundations of Magna Carta, Christianity and the Western tradition, while the French Revolution brought misery and death because it looked forward to a utopian future unconstrained by the past.
“The greatest blessings we receive in life are undeserved. For example, I didn’t do anything to deserve good parents. On the other hand, it is not unjust for a person to have such a blessing, and it is not an act of justice to try to erase it. What justice requires is gratitude for blessings received. What charity requires is trying to act in a way that blessings of the same kind may be more widely enjoyed.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
In my latest National Post column I say historical amnesia seems to be Canada’s new national policy and slogan, driven by politicians who know they cannot withstand comparison with figures from the past.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the death of Rex Murphy is a terrible loss especially because we have also lost the kind of place he held in our national life.
“It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog.”
Joseph Conrad, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail Oct. 19, 1999
“If the eighteenth century claimed to be the Age of Reason, nobody can deny the claim of the twentieth century to be the Age of Unreason.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly, Nov. 1, 1930, as header quotation on Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
In my latest Epoch Times column I complain that Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford subsidizing EV manufacturing in Canada are repeating very old economic mistakes in an unaffordable fog of smug ignorance.
In my latest Epoch Times column, I challenge Pierre Poilievre’s maddeningly vague belligerence on Bill C-63 and just about every other issue.