“Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognized as king of England. Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?”

Hendrick Van Loon The Story of Mankind.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the CAQ lead in Quebec polls shows, once again,  widespread public discontent with politics and government as usual.

"I allow that, if no Supreme Ruler exists, wise to form and potent to enforce the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer.”

Edmund Burke An Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs

"Whether, in the great transfer of estates, injustice had or had not been committed, was immaterial. That transfer, just or unjust, had taken place so long ago, that to reverse it would be to unfix the foundations of society. There must be a time of limitation to all rights. After thirty-five years of actual possession, and after twenty-five years of possession solemnly guaranteed by statute, after innumerable leases and releases, mortgages and devises, it was too late to search for flaws in titles."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England (regarding Ireland, and arguing that James II could have put the issue to rest by confirming current owners in their title while taxing them heavily enough to pay decent compensation to the dispossessed)

"The most primitive idols, even those which have long been abandoned to the jungle and the sand-drift, are land-marks in the journey of the human soul: they represent a search for coherence in the confusions and fears of living. So this venerable House of Lords was not simply a constitutional relic of the great landed fortunes; it was also a fetish, it meant the ideally paternal responsibility of the noble few. And though this meaning was quite irrelevant to the twentieth century, yet those who tried to preserve it were not merely idle men or arrogant men. They saw the passing of certain values which at their best were very high and at their worst were very human; they did not realize that life consists in change, that nothing can stand still, that today’s shrines are only fit for tomorrow’s cattle."

George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England

"It’s time to paint your butt white and run with the antelope. Stop arguing and do as you’re told."

James Langton’s guide to expressions British leaders might encounter from George W. Bush, in the Sunday Telegraph, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen Dec. 17 2000

In my latest National Post column I say the recent cruise missile attack on Syrian chemical weapons sites sent all too clear a message... of weakness.