In my latest Loonie Politics column I warn that Canadian public life is being swamped by a rising tide of mediocrity and we seem content to drown in it.
“Our motive may be taken to be the desire to serve our day and generation in the way that seems nearest to our hand. The battle is not always to the strong nor the race to the swift. Victory in war cannot be counted upon but what can be counted upon is that we should go forward determined to do what we can to bring this war to the end which we believe best for our friends and comrades in arms, without boastfulness or forgetting our duty, resolved to do the right so far as we can see the right.”
Part of Orde Wingate’s words to the Chindits as they set out into Burma in February 1943, quoted in Karen Farrington Victory in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor to the Fall of Okinawa [and note the contrast with the tone and content of totalitarian wartime or for that matter peacetime rhetoric].
“From everyone at C2C Journal, we hope you have had a very Merry Christmas or Happy Chanukah and are enjoying the holidays. This time of year probably best reflects the observation that ‘the supply of politics is greater than the demand.’ Even intellectually engaged, savvy C2C readers need a break from the rough and tumble of our era’s divisive, bitter – and never-ending – partisan politics.”
George Koch, Editor-in-Chief of C2C, in an email Dec. 28, 2025.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I point out that Mark Carney’s slick verbiage is stunningly unreliable, not because he lies on purpose but because his colossal Donald-Trump-like self-regard bends reality for him in real time in very Trumpian fashion.
In my latest National Post column I urge Canada’s federal Conservatives to tackle their electoral and image problems by leaning into them, being the reality party instead of trying to be Liberal lite and having it fail for the umpteenth time.
“Le cardinal de Richelieu a écrit dans ses mémoires qu’un ministre corrompu est moins dangereux pour l’État qu’un ministre incompétent.”
Jacques Dufresne La démocratie athénienne: Miroir de la Notre
“Organizations must be based on many issues. Organizations need action as an individual needs oxygen. The cessation of action brings death to the organization through factionalism and inaction, through dialogues and conferences that are actually a form of rigor mortis rather than life.”
Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals
“The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity. The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage. The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball during it, there is something very wrong with the tactic. The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings.”
Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals [I quote the first part in large measure because I find it dismally relativist].