In my latest National Post column I say that closing ranks to defeat Marine Le Pen while ignoring the sources of the discontent she taps into would be to forget the lessons of Donald Trump if, indeed, people ever learned any.
"Suddenly it becomes evident that things which for thousands of years the human imagination had banished to a realm beyond human competence can be manufacture right here on earth, that Hell and Purgatory, and even a shadow of their perpetual duration, can be established by the most modern methods of destruction and therapy. To these people (and they are more numerous in any large city than we like to admit) the totalitarian hell proves only that the power of man is greater than they ever dared to think, and that man can realize hellish fantasies without making the sky fall or the earth open…. Nothing perhaps distinguishes modern masses as radically from those of previous centuries as the loss of faith in a Last Judgement: the worst have lost their fear and the best have lost their hope." Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, with specific reference to film footage from Nazi concentration camps
In my latest National Post column I argue for marijuana legalization because free adults should make their own choices... and it is not always wrong to get high including on alcohol, nicotine or pot.
"In truth, it is a mark of faith to joke about one’s convictions. A man dances on a rock. He does not dance on a tight rope." G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 3 #8, July/August 2000
"Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them." G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy
"Always put the spiritual things first." G.K. Chesterton in "Topsy-Turvy" in Tremendous Trifles, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #3 (December 2006)
"This is no easy mission. But its difficulty is not our concern; we did not create the mission, and we cannot change it. The word 'mission' derives from the Latin root missus – which means 'sent.' We have been sent – to seek God, study the world, and serve humanity." Fr. John Jenkins re what the university should be in his inaugural address as president of Notre Dame University, quoted by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things December 2005