In my latest Loonie Politics column I take aim at the 20th-anniversary Harper revisionist rationalizations that he never intended to implement conservative policies, just build a winning party… which he didn’t even do anyway.
“Now this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only an intellectual fault; it is a moral fault also. It is not merely our mental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is also our spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted in stand-alone box without further attribution in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“We have the regular symptom of the young thinker saying ‘There is no evil’; which invariably ends in his screaming aloud that the whole world is evil because it will not believe that there is no evil.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted, apparently from the BBC radio program “The Listener” in 1933, by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“the sort of story in which Jane is just like Tarzan, but with cleavage.”
J. Budziszewski in the Underground Thomist May 5, 2025 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/in-defense-of-a-stereotype].
“Never in human history were there writers who so sacrificed their humour and human dignity and hope of heaven, in order to be shocking. And never, in human history, were there readers who were so little shocked. There is no time or space for any shock to take effect.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly August 22, 1935, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)
“We have seen the end of the age of Reason; and that we live in the age of Suggestion. Perhaps for the first time, the degradation of Man has been openly declared; in a theory that he can be persuaded without being convinced.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly Nov. 1, 1934, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)
“Our particular corner of Christendom can now be taught the history of every civilisation except its own.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly December 13, 1934, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)
In my latest National Post column I say while it's necessary to denounce antisemitism, it's not sufficient. We must understand why and how this uniquely stubborn and wicked form of hatred spreads like a fungus, causing rot in all kinds of places including elite institutions.