“Maybe [Paul] Martin should also adopt the slogan on a pin offered to [Kim] Campbell at the 1993 leadership rally: ‘I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m good at it.’”
John Ivison in National Post June 19, 2004
In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that most politicians and voters across the spectrum seem dangerously complacent in practice even on topics where their rhetoric is shrill and panicky.
“In 1870, the Prussian army had captured the French emperor, Napoleon III, who followed Charles X, Metternich, and Louis-Philippe into exile in London.”
Conrad Black Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present [but he does not take what I consider to be the obvious point that all these continentals who sneer at the English-speaking world flee to it when in trouble, knowing it is the true and only home of liberty]
In my latest Epoch Times column I suggest in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination that we all ask ourselves whether our own interventions in public debate are designed to lead people back to the light or drive them further into the darkness.
“Nigel Farage stood up in the House of Commons yesterday to ask how many British troops will be promised to Ukraine. A reasonable question. He was dismissed as being a ‘Putin apologist’ by both Conservatives and Labour. The uniparty are still two cheeks of the same ugly old arse.”
A post on X from someone I am not familiar with on March 4, 2025 [https://x.com/darrengrimes_/status/1896864773389869349] and yes, it bends my rule about vulgarity in public discourse but it’s funny and apposite enough to deserve it.
“The initial Canadian Expeditionary force of twenty thousand [in World War I] was organized by Sam Hughes, who was, as Borden informed him, ‘beset by two unceasing enemies. Expecting a revelation, he was intensely disappointed when I told him that they were his tongue and his pen.’”
Conrad Black Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present
In my latest Loonie Politics column I follow up on my argument in the Epoch Times about the Liberals promising lavish austerity because they think all spending is investment by examining a flood of press releases boasting of things any rational exercise in fiscal restraint would at least have postponed if not cancelled.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the fatal flaw in the Carney cabinet’s lavish austerity program is their conviction that almost any government spending, however trivial and absurd or massive and wrongheaded, pays big dividends so we can’t afford not to.