“The moral state of mankind fills me with dismays and horrors.”
Edmund Burke, expressly re his own time, quoted in Russell Kirk The Conservative Mind
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
“I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.”
Edmund Burke, about Marie Antoinette, quoted by Christopher Hitchens reviewing Frank M. Turner’s edition of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France in The Atlantic Monthly April 2004 (how’s that for a convoluted source?)
“Nous n’avouons de petits défauts que pour persuader que nous n’en avons pas de grands.”
Réflexions morales #327 in La Rochefoucauld Maximes
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the idea of national strategies where governments reform citizens is bad, including if one targets “Islamophobia”.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the difficulty people have condemning calls for churches to burn is a worrying sign of our rapid descent into a vindictive and pitiless neopagan mindset.
In my latest National Post column I express enthusiasm for freedom in Cuba… and Canada.
In The Interim I reflect on classic books on the vital topic of citizenship only to realize I can’t think of any.