"Only through scrutiny of the past can society descry the limitations of human nature.”
Russel Kirk The Conservative Mind
"The ruling class of the eighteenth century were coarse and corrupt, but they were capable and courageous. They made great blunders, they were blind and indifferent to great evils, but they weathered terrible storms."
Sir C.P. Ilbert Parliament
In my latest National Post column I express amazement at the ruckus over the Roman Catholic Church insisting that... communion wafers must contain wheat.
In my latest National Post column I find some comfort in Hungary repatriating Roman-era silver.
"It is an unfortunate habit of publicly repenting for other people’s sins."
G.K. Chesterton, “The Midnight of Europe,” in The Crimes of England, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #2 (October-November 2003)
"'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked. 'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'"
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (frequently misquoted or misattributed including to Mark Twain or F. Scott Fitzgerald according to www.sovereignman.com/offshore/slowly-at-first-then-all-at-once-12909, which warned that it applies to nations too)
My latest piece in MercatorNet, based on a speech to the Augustine College Summer Conference (and an earlier National Post column and upcoming Dorchester Review article) asks how a society as devoted to "choice" as our own can at the same time so relentlessly restrict choice.