In my latest National Post column I summon the shade of former U.S. President and master of Realpolitik Richard M. Nixon to discuss the ominous parallel implications of the collapse of the Afghan and Vietnamese missions for Western credibility in the world.
“Is there a possibility that the government of nations may fall into the hands of men who teach the most disconsolate of all creeds, that men are but fireflies, and that this all is without a father?”
John Quincy Adams, in the Letters of Publicola, quoted in Russell Kirk The Conservative Mind [Kirk added that the specific target was Thomas Paine and that Adams went on that rather than such an outcome “Give us again the gods of the Greeks.”]
“He looks like the dog’s been keepin’ him under the porch.”
James Langton’s Sunday Telegraph guide to expressions British leaders might encounter from George W. Bush, quoted in Ottawa Citizen December 17, 2000 [with the helpful note that it means “Not the most handsome of men.”]
Regarding the new French Minister “whom you have commended as a ‘sensible and honest man;’ these are qualities too rare and too precious not to merit one’s particular esteem.”
George Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette Feb. 7 1788, in W.B. Allen, ed. George Washington: A Collection
“The underlying cause of the dependent underclass… is a subset of that fact [Solzhenitsyn’s explanation of the Soviet nightmare “Man has forgotten God”]: ‘American policymakers have forgotten God.’”
Tom Bethell, quoting Marvin Olasky, in Turning Back the Welfare State: A Report on a Major Conference of the Claremont Institute (1994)
“He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.”
Edmund Burke in his “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol”, cited in Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics & Belief
An election-night pundit “appeared to have had her hair fried for the occasion.”
John Doyle, “Television,” in Globe & Mail November 3, 2004
In my latest National Post column I express enthusiasm for freedom in Cuba… and Canada.