In my latest National Post column I say the inability to vaccinate in a pandemic isn’t isolated, it’s part of an overall crisis of governmental competence made worse by self-satisfaction and complacency.
“They [the framers of the American Constitution] knew that rules of government, however brilliantly calculated to cope with the imperfect nature of man, however carefully designed to avoid the pitfalls of power, would be no match for men who were determined to disregard them.”
Barry Goldwater The Conscience of a Conservative
“One good thing about silence is that it can’t be repeated.”
Variously attributed online including anonymously.
“when we scrape away the varnish of wealth, education, class, ethnic origin, parochial loyalties, we discover that however much we’ve changed the shape of man’s physical environment, man himself is still sinful, vain, greedy, ambitious, lustful, self-centered, unrepentant, and requiring of restraint.”
Barry Goldwater With No Apologies (though elsewhere in the book even he said new technologies and ideas might make the world way better in the 21st century)
In my latest National Post column I quote two ponderously preposterous assurances on the pandemic a year ago to ask why no experience of their own failure ever convinces Canadian authorities to speak more humbly or think more carefully.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the mind-numbing vulgarity of Doug Ford’s comments about vaccine availability was just the beginning of their mind-numbing qualities.
In my latest Mercatornet column I say Biden’s hackneyed Inaugural speech may do no harm. But it did not rise to the occasion like, say, Lincoln’s magnificent Second Inaugural and did not even really seem to try.
In my latest National Post column I say Erin O’Toole’s boast about being pragmatic and moderate amounts to saying he has no convictions and cannot be counted on by anyone for anything, and trying to make it sound like an achievement. But it’s not.