"As G.K. Chesterton said, what makes religions different is not what their garb and customs are like, but what they hold to be true." James V. Schall S.J. in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 20 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2016)
In my latest column for the National Post I say the 2017 federal budget is boring and scary at the same time.
Earth Hour comes at 8:30 this evening wherever you are. And it's easy to make fun of this self-described "movement" as an emptily sanctimonious piece of "slacktivism" where we turn off a few lamps briefly and feel virtuous. But it is important to protect the environment from all sorts of things including the "light pollution" that means too many urban kids have never really seen the stars. We can have the comforts, conveniences and wonders of modern technology and production without cutting ourselves off from nature... if we use our hearts and our heads. So during Earth Hour take a few minutes to reflect on where we'd be if we had no artificial light, or heat, not even fire that we had learned to control. But also reflect on where we'd be if we had no green spaces, no habitats, no wild companions on the planet. And then resolve to protect both the environment and the economy with intelligent compassion.
Including making a pledge to The Environment: A True Story if you haven't already, and spreading the word if you have, so we can stop pouring money, time, effort and concern into bad policy driven by bad science, and devote them instead to the things that really need doing.
"Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘commonsense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace." C.S. Lewis A Grief Observed
I want to thank Luke Nicholson for supporting my work via Patreon.
I want to thank John Leonn for supporting my work via Patreon.
"he [André Malraux] was fond of quoting Napoleon’s proclamation, 'My life is quite a novel.'" Algis Valiunas reviewing Olivier Todd’s Malraux: A Life in National Review July 4, 2005 - and I suppose a "pithy" quotation fails if it requires an extensive gloss, but I have to add my reaction on reading this line, namely that if you ever notice such a thing about your own life you need to consider urgently the question "Yes but by which author?"