In my latest National Post column I offer good news and bad: we know what's needed to fix our broken governments. 

"I can listen patiently to a Communist repeating for hours at a time that Property is unnecessary, because men must surrender selfish interests to social ideals. I only begin to break the furniture when somebody starts to prove that Property is necessary, because men are all selfish and every man must look after himself. The case for Property is not that a man must look after himself; but, on the contrary, that a normal man has to look after other people, if it be simply a wife and family. It is that this unit should have an economic basis for its social independence. If he were considering only himself, he might be more independent as a vagabond; he might be more secure as a serf. But the point at the moment is that I like Property because it is a noble thing. I can respect the revolutionist who dislikes it because it is an ignoble thing. But I have no truck with the cynic who likes it because it is ignoble."

G.K. Chesterton in "The New Dark Ages" in G.K.’s Weekly May 21 1927, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 # 8, Issue 73 (July-August 2006) p. 9.

"That old saying – 'You're as happy as your saddest child' - anybody who has been a parent understands that."

Then-U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins quoted by Donna Jacobs in Ottawa Citizen Oct. 3 2005

"He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything."

Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784”
 

A great turnout for the grand opening of the Canadian Centre for Men and Families - Ottawa on Saturday. And a very nice piece in the Ottawa Citizen.

So thanks to everyone who came to the event, and to everyone who helped make it possible from donors to volunteers to staff. And if you know anyone in the Ottawa area who needs the services the CCMF-O is putting in place, from crisis counselling to support groups to legal issues to advice on fathering after divorce (or just in general) please refer them to the centre.

"If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at Harvard in 1978

"If at first you don’t succeed, somebody will point it out to you."

"Real Life Adventures" cartoon in Ottawa Sun Oct. 4, 1999