In my latest National Post column I dismiss various criticisms and call Prince Harry's engagement to Meghan Markle a good thing including the amazing progress in race relations it reflects.
"What beats me is how any body of men can delude themselves into thinking that they can abolish war as an instrument for settling international disputes. No sane person wants wars; that is a recognized fact, but we have them just the same. No one wants jails, hospitals, insane asylums, murders, robberies, etc.; but we have them just the same. Why? Well, in my opinion it can be given in just two words – human nature, a condition which is the same today as it was when Noah built the Ark, as it was when Julius Caesar enlarged the Roman Empire, and as it was when the Princess Pats marched down Bank street, many years ago, on their way overseas."
Letter from a G.H. Giles of Ottawa in Ottawa Citizen Sept. 4, 1931, reprinted in Ottawa Citizen Oct. 19, 1999
"There’s no such thing as a bad day when there’s a doorknob on the inside of the door".
Paul Galanti, former Navy Commander and Vietnam War POW, quoted in National Post March 24, 2003
In my latest National Post column I say the Canadian Prime Minister's inability to see the People's Republic of China clearly is not harmless naiveté.
In my latest National Post column I argue that our Prime Minister's inability to recognize evil and malice in the world is baked into his cheerfully daffy worldview.
"Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight/ But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right"
Hilaire Belloc, "The Pacifist"
"What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?"
Thomas Sowell in Is Reality Optional?
"I sleep like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up screaming."
Then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, re reports that President George W. Bush had slept like a baby in the runup to the Iraq war, quoted in Globe and Mail Nov. 16, 2004 (I swear I thought of this joke years earlier but Powell beat me into print and may himself have come up with the gag long before)