“And if any other document is henceforth produced which was made heretofore and which in any kind of way seems to gainsay what is here established, that document shall be cast to mice to gnaw or into the fire to be burned, and he who produces it, whatever his rank, shall be regarded as the sweepings of ashes and confounded with the most ignominious shame and with one accord shunned by all the men who are nearby.”
King Canute, to the monks of Canterbury as part of “The Endowment of a Monastery, 1023” in William L. Sachse English History in the Making
In my latest National Post column I say calls to make handguns illegal in a city in response to criminals using illegal handguns for illegal murders make no sense.
In my latest Loonie Politics piece, I say legitimate concern about Donald Trump’s bad manners should not make us lose perspective on the far more ominous torrent of menacing abuse coming from the Chinese government.
"Men do learn from their mistakes; they learn how to make new ones.”
Gordon Martel The Month That Changed the World: July 1914 (quoted in a review by Gary Sheffield quoted in a blog post by Mark Collins; Martel’s specific reference is that Neville Chamberlain went to Munich to seek peace with Hitler in 1938 because he was so terrified of sleepwalking into war as in the summer of 1914)
In my latest National Post column I remind politicians that John Stuart Mill’s classic defence of free speech applies every bit as much to social media as to the spoken, written or broadcast word.
(You can watch the beginning and hear the rest of my testimony on the subject to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on June 4, as well as that of Mark Steyn and Lindsay Shepherd, on ParlVu (my prepared remarks begin at 9:09).