“The common belief of the age [the 18th century] that human nature was forever the same referred essentially to the raw biological nature upon which the environment operated.”
Gordon S. Wood The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787.
“We must realize that human nature is about the most constant thing in the universe and that the essentials of human relationship do not change.”
Calvin Coolidge, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1925
In my other speech to the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June, and again I apologize for the delay in getting it edited and posted, I talked about what classical Greece and Rome got right about political freedom and what they did not, how medieval England completed the picture with Magna Carta to limit government in theory and parliament to limit it in practice, and how and why things went wrong in the modern world.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that there is no “international law” in matters like drone strikes on terrorists because there are no international police, no international courts with legitimate jurisdiction, no real international statutes and no international jails.
In my latest National Post column I say the silliest criticism of the U.S. taking out terrorist Qasim Soleimani, among quite a few dumb ones, is that now they’ve made the Iranian government angry so now we’re in trouble.