“For there is only one happiness possible or conceivable under the sun, and that is enthusiasm – that strange and splendid word that has passed through so many vicissitudes, which meant, in the eighteenth century, the condition of a lunatic, and in ancient Greece, the presence of a god.”
GKC in an essay on Tolstoy quoted by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #6 [it was an essay Schall found in the library of the U of Virginia that he had never seen before].
On Wednesday I was on with John Gormley on CKOM 650 in Saskatoon to discuss my National Post column on setting rational priorities in fighting terrorism.
“Researchers have identified ‘structural’ historical concepts that provide the basis of historical thinking. The Benchmarks project is using this approach, with six distinct but closely interrelated historical thinking concepts. Students should be able to:
* establish historical significance…
* use primary source evidence…
* identify continuity and change…
* analyze cause and consequence…
* take historical perspectives…
* understand the moral dimension of historical interpretations…
Taken together, these tie ‘historical thinking’ to competencies in ‘historical literacy.’”
Excerpted from “Benchmarks of Historical Thinking: Framework for Assessment in Canada, by Peter Seixas, Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness” in The Beaver April-May 2009
In my latest National Post column I say there’s nothing racist about calling Islamist terrorism a far bigger threat than the white nationalist kind… especially when most victims of Islamist violence aren’t white.
“Some apparent advantages followed for a season from a rule which had its origin in a violent and perfidious usurpation, and which was upheld by all the arts of moral corruption, political enervation, and military repression. The advantages lasted long enough to create in this country a steady and powerful opinion that Napoleon the Third's early crime was redeemed by the seeming prosperity which followed. Not often in history has the great truth that ‘morality is the nature of things’ received corroboration so prompt and timely.”
John Morley On Compromise
“Suggested charge: Existing while stupid”
Headline on MSNBC Weird news December 30, 2010 [the story was about two idiots shooting out streetlights with rifles at a shopping centre around 5:00 a.m. because they didn’t think anyone would be around]