“Reform’s UA initiative currently possesses all the momentum of a fat guy sitting shirtless in a lawn chair.”
Scott Feschuk in National Post May 27, 1999 [so it turned out not to be true, but it’s still a great metaphor].
“there is scarcely anything that could offend me in modern England which is not far more offensive in modern Germany. It is there that these things have had their real success; it is there that they will have their real failure. You may say that Germany leads the modern world. You may, if you like, say that Germany is the modern world. But, if that be so, what is called the modern world is, amid general rejoicings, coming to an end. With all its mirthless cynicism, with all its unmanly militarism, with its sham science and shifty diplomacy, with its excuses for the powerful and its routine for the poor, with its long words of explanation and its very short cuts in conduct, with all its care of the self, and all its carelessness of the soul, what some call the Modern Spirit is cast out of heaven like Lucifer, Son of the Morning. It is cut down to the earth, that did weaken the nations.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News, September 9, 2016, quoted in “GKC on Scripture * Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)
In my latest Epoch Times column I mock the notion that NATO can use “pressure” to stop Trudeau from being irresponsible, smug and daffy.
“The Tories are a hollow shell, but at least they have a shell.”
Editorial in National Post June 7, 2001 that arguably overestimated their condition
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Justin Trudeau has reverted to type on squeezing cash out of Google and Meta for Canadian media, and it ain’t pretty.
“Our army is composed of the scum of the earth – the mere scum of the earth.”
“The British soldiers are fellows who have all enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact – they have all enlisted for drink.”
“The scum of the earth... but what fine soldiers we have made them.”
All from The Duke of Wellington according to AZ Quotes [https://www.azquotes.com/author/15482-Duke_of_Wellington] [and I think it only fair to put them all together for a complete picture].
“It is needless to say that the journalists do not always tell the truth about the politicians. What surprises me is that so very often, it would seem, they do not even know the truth about them.”
G. K. Chesterton in New Witness Jan. 28, 1920 quoted in “Chesterton For Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (November-December 2021)
In my latest Epoch Times column I ponder uneasily what George Washington, or indeed Sir John A. Macdonald or the Duke of Wellington, would make of modern politics.