“I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.”

Edmund Burke, about Marie Antoinette, quoted by Christopher Hitchens reviewing Frank M. Turner’s edition of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France in The Atlantic Monthly April 2004 (how’s that for a convoluted source?)

“To horse, to horse! urge doubts to them that fear.”

Lord Ross, among those making up their minds to abandon Richard II for Bolingbroke, in William Shakespeare The Life and Death of King Richard II Act II Scene ii.

In my latest National Post column I call for environmental action at the yard level, allowing a micro “rewilding” return of nature to our cities in the form of flowers, bugs, birds and healthy soil.

In my latest National Post column I express enthusiasm for freedom in Cuba… and Canada.

In The Interim I reflect on classic books on the vital topic of citizenship only to realize I can’t think of any.

“A very honest atheist with whom I once debated made use of the expression, ‘Men have only been kept in slavery by the fear of hell.’ As I pointed out to him, if he had said that men had only been freed from slavery by the fear of hell, he would at least have been referring to an unquestionable historical fact.”

G.K. Chesterton in St. Francis of Assisi, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 # 6 (April/May 2001)

“The [French] Revolution appealed to the idea of an abstract and eternal justice, beyond all local custom or convenience. If there are commands of God, then there must be rights of man. Here Burke made his brilliant diversion… the modern argument of scientific relativity; in short, the argument of evolution. He suggested that humanity was everywhere molded by or fitted to its environment and institutions; in fact, that each people practically got, not only the tyrant it deserved, but the tyrant it ought to have. ‘I know nothing of the rights of men,’ he said, ‘but I know something of the rights of Englishmen.’ There you have the essential atheist.”

G.K. Chesterton What’s Wrong with the World

In my latest National Post column I say the strangest thing about the resignation of British health secretary Matt Hancock, for Canadians, is the concept of a minister being held accountable for a poor job performance.