“I have a friend who said one day, ‘I could resent the ocean if I tried...’”
Anne Lamott Some Instructions on Writing and Life
In my latest Epoch Times column I say before the Tories crown Pierre Poilievre as their next leader, it would be nice to know what ideas he would use his admittedly formidable political skills to advance: conservative, libertarian, or conventional wisdom with a stern blue mask.
“Dear Mr. Dule: That would not be a ‘solution,’ it would be an approach. Let us know how it turns out. Cordially, WFB”
William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review June 26, 1995 (responding to a letter from a man claiming more conservatives than liberals were bald and asking if should become liberal to avoid hair loss)
“You cannot evade the issue of God, whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him. Now if Christianity be… a fragment of metaphysical nonsense invented by a few people, then, of course, defending it will simply mean talking that metaphysical nonsense over and over again. But if Christianity should happen to be true – that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe – then defending it may mean talking about anything or everything. Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true.”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News December 12, 1903 , quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani Chesterton University Student Handbook
Sir John A. “Macdonald slew [John Joseph Caldwell] Abbott with a single phrase: ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a sweet smile. All from the teeth outward.’”
Pierre Berton The National Dream
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say all the people suddenly demanding that noisy protests with an ugly fringe be denounced and driven from the public square, to say nothing of blockades and actual vandalism, will be asked to take a similar approach to the next one even if they sympathize with its cause.
In my latest NP Platformed newsletter I say Whoopi Goldberg’s racially insensitive and obtuse comments on the Holocaust might actually help us move back toward sanity on race, and on cancel culture as well.
“‘A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.’”
G.K. Chesterton quoted in A.L. Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox