In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that optimism is a psychological condition and generally fatuous, while hope is a theological virtue, in public affairs as in life more generally.
“Being roughed up by a WI [UK Women’s Institute, which just did same to Tony Blair] audience is like being savaged by a hamster, mugged by an Anglican vicar, or gang-raped by the League of Women Voters.”
John O’Sullivan in National Post June 14, 2000
“When it [Queen’s University] opened its first classes in 1842, its first professor, the Reverend Peter Colin Campbell, taught classical literature. In its Memorial Room to the school’s war dead, there is an inscription around the wall, from Wordsworth, another provocative conditional: ‘We must be free or die, who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold which Milton held.’”
Joseph Brean in National Post January 26, 2024 [heckling the way Queen’s was handling its funding crisis].
“There followed a long and intricate rivalry for leadership between the various Anglo-Saxon kings which occupied the seventh and eighth centuries. It was highly important to those whose span of life was cast in that period, but it left small marks on the subsequent course of history.”
Winston Churchill A History of the English-Speaking Peoples A One-Volume Abridgement by Christopher Lee
“There [St. Peter’s Chapel in the Tower of London, where they bury at least some of the illustrious persons executed in the Tower] has mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better age, and died in a better cause.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay The History of England
“Kim Campbell… named by the National Geographic Society as one of history’s 50 ‘most important’ political leaders…. on a list … in a new reference book – the Almanac of World History, recently published by the society … ‘It’s ridiculous,’ says Michael Bliss… But … ‘Given that there have not been that many females who have led nations, we chose to include her,’ says Jane Sunderland, a project manager at the Washington D.C.-based society, who says she ‘stands by the choice’ of the book’s authors.… ‘I don’t think Kim Campbell should even make a list of great Canadian leaders,’ he [James Marsh, editor-in-chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia] says. ‘She was the first and only (female) prime minister of Canada – and that’s stretching her accomplishments to the limit.’… the Almanac says nothing about her legacy except that she is a woman…. The top 50 world leaders, according to the Almanac of World History, in alphabetical order: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) Atilla the Hun (ca 406-453) Benazir Bhutto (1953 -) Bilqis, The Queen of Sheba (10th Century BC) Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) Kim Campbell (1947 -) Catherine de Medicis (1519-1589) Catherine the Great (1729-1796) Charlemagne (742-814) Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Cleopatra (69-30 BC) Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Fu Hsi (2900 BC) Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) Genghis Khan (ca 1162-1227) Hannibal (247-183 BC) Emperor Hirohito (1926-1989) Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) Isabella of Castile (1451-1504) Empress Jingo (ca 169-269) Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) John Kennedy (1917-1963) William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) Sir John A. Macdonald (1815-1891) Nelson Mandela (1918 -) Moctezuma I (reigned 1440-1469) Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) Nero (A.D. 37-68) Pericles (ca 495-429 BC) Eva Peron (1919-1952) Chief Pontiac (ca 1720-1769) Ramses II (reigned 1304-1237 BC) Romulus (753 BC) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) Shanakdakhete (reigned 177-155 BC) Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) Raden Suharto (1921 -) Suleyman the Magnificent (1494-1566) Margaret Thatcher (1925 -) Getulio Vargas (1883-1954) Queen Victoria (1819-1901) George Washington (1732-1799) William the Conquerer (ca 1028-1087) Mao Zedong (1893-1976)”
Ottawa Citizen April 10, 2004
In my latest Epoch Times column I say that instead of redoubling our fury at our partisan foes in the wake of a very narrow brush with disastrous chaos, we might all take a minute to improve the tone of our own thoughts and words.
In my latest Epoch Times column I started by asking why the new British cabinet was so small and ended up explaining why it was so large.