In my latest National Post column I say John Le Carré’s novels were morally rotten and dangerous in practice.
In my latest National Post column I say the outrageous way the Chinese government speaks about the outrageous things it does is a red flag about the outrageous way it thinks.
“human beings, that is... psychotic apes who want to kill so much that they could not even understand an unconditional prohibition against killing, much less obey it.”
Northrop Frye The Great Code
“Benevolence is the heart of man, and rightness his road. Sad it is indeed when a man gives up the right road… and allows his heart to stray without enough sense to go after it.”
Mencius in Mencius
“If all decorum, discipline, and subordination are to be destroyed, and universal Pyrrhonism, anarchy, and insecurity of property are to be introduced, nations will soon wish their books in ashes, seek for darkness and ignorance, superstition and fanaticism, as blessings, and follow the standard of the first mad despot, who, with the enthusiasm of another Mahomet, will endeavor to obtain them.”
John Adams, quoted in Russell Kirk The Conservative Mind
“I have only one fault, namely, that I am evil.”
Another “Needhamism” from the then-just-deceased columnist Richard J. Needham, quoted by Malcolm MacLeod of St. John’s in letter to the Globe & Mail July 30, 1996
“What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 No. 2 (Oct.-Nov. 2000)
“Whosoever is out of patience is out of possession of his mind, body and soul.”
Sir Francis Bacon, quoted in the “Federalist Patriot” No. 04-34 25 August 2004 from federalist.com