“they [lawyers] are plants that will grow in any soil that is cultivated by the hands of others; and when once they have taken root, they will extinguish every other vegetable that grows around them.”
J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur Letters from an American Farmer [and yes, I grant that it’s easy to mock lawyers until you need one]
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the New York Times may be thrilled by elite cultural phenomena like vegan mattresses and sound baths coming out of California. But normal people are more worried about disorder, depravity and crime spread by “Do what thou wilt” elite attitudes run amok.
“10 floors of basement.”
Then Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #5 (May/June 2022 describing the HUD building in Washington DC designed by Bauhaus school architect Marcel Breuer.
“Now if you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired morning, noon and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired … You’ve always got to make the mind take over and keep going.”
“George S. Patton, general” quoted by Donna Jacobs “Monday Morning” in Ottawa Citizen October 2, 2006
In my latest National Post column I say it is humans, not frogs, who fail to react as circumstances slowly change in terrible ways like governments piling up debt.
“‘Are you going to go back to farming after the war, captain?’ ‘I can think of better ways to make a living than looking up a mule’s arse.’”
Harry S Truman in the movie Truman (from his time in World War I), slightly Bowdlerized.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I ask, with respect to Jordan Peterson and others, how cancellation of anyone who questions authority became the default option in our society.
“But we have a saying out here [in the suburbs of Richmond] about people like Al [Gore]; they’ll steal your chaw of tobacco if you so much as yawn.”
David Shiflett in National Review March 22, 1999