“We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God’s world. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.”
Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech, in Memphis, Tenn., April 3, 1968 [the day before he was assassinated] quoted by Jamil Jivani in National Post January 17, 2023
In my latest Epoch Times column I condemn the edict that military chaplains should not pray to God rather than the state on November 11.
“Kierkegaard talks about the idea of being a knight of faith, and he is classed with the Christian existentialists as a consequence of the practicalities of his view. He basically puts forward a proposition that I think is akin to the proposition that undergirds marriage, which is: You cannot find out whether creation is good or evil without being all in on your bet, just like you cannot be married without saying, ‘I am shackling myself to you and I am not going to run away no matter what, so we better get to know each other and get along because this is how it is going to be.’ Without that, you cannot be deeply committed enough to the marriage to make it work. So it seems to me on the forefront of faith, you have to act in the world with courageous trust – not naïve trust, but courageous trust – in the potential goodness of being in order to actually discover whether or not that faith is justified. And that is partly why it is faith; you have to put the cart before the horse. You cannot wait around.”
Jordan Peterson “Mondays of Meaning – March 20th 2023”
In my latest National Post column I describe the weird combination of tedium and fury induced by listening to members of the UN special committee for blaming Israel for all problems in the Mideast droning on.
“can the view that all religions are equivalent really be taken seriously? If such is the case, how should one explain that, on their occasion of the rebuilding of the main Aztec temple in 1487, more than 20,000 people were bled to death over four days on the altars of Tenochtitlan, in the upper Mexico valley, as human sacrifices to the sun god?”
Richard Bastien in Convivium Vol. 2 #7 (April-May 2013)
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say we need to face the fact, and the implications, of large-scale pro-Hamas demonstrations in Canada and other Western nations by recent immigrants from places where horrific anti-Semitism is routine.
“‘Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,/ Wearing out life’s evening grey:/ Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell,/ What is bliss? and which the way?/ Thus I spoke; and speaking sigh’d;/ – scarce repressed the starting tear; – When the smiling sage reply’d – Come, my lad, and drink some beer.’”
Samuel Johnson, cited in D.J. Enright’s introduction to Johnson The History of Rasselas
“I say you cannot really understand any myths till you have found that one of them is not a myth. Turnip ghosts mean nothing if there are not real ghosts. Forged bank-notes mean nothing if there are no real bank-notes. Heathen gods mean nothing, and must always mean nothing, to those of us that deny the Christian God.”
GKC, “The Priest of Spring,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton