“there is an immense amount of pleasure to be derived from the sense of private ownership. It is surely no accident that every man has affection for himself: nature meant this to be so. Selfishness is condemned, and justly, but selfishness is not simply to be fond of oneself, but to be excessively fond.”
Aristotle The Politics.
In my latest Epoch Times column I remember, with some difficulty, that even a really annoying and disappointing election is a victory every time we vote freely and without fear.
“What if lawyers and economists wrote the sitcoms? Very likely, they would turn out so that they more closely approximated the agony and pain of real life, which is really so frightening that it simply has to be funny.”
An author whose name I did not record in The American Spectator August 1988
“Is there a possibility that the government of nations may fall into the hands of men who teach the most disconsolate of all creeds, that men are but fireflies, and that this all is without a father?”
John Quincy Adams, in the Letters of Publicola, quoted in Russell Kirk The Conservative Mind [Kirk added that the specific target was Thomas Paine and that Adams went on that rather than such an outcome “Give us again the gods of the Greeks.”]
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the idea of national strategies where governments reform citizens is bad, including if one targets “Islamophobia”.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the difficulty people have condemning calls for churches to burn is a worrying sign of our rapid descent into a vindictive and pitiless neopagan mindset.
In my latest National Post column I express enthusiasm for freedom in Cuba… and Canada.
In The Interim I reflect on classic books on the vital topic of citizenship only to realize I can’t think of any.