“Quick, who said this? ‘(C)itizens, you are all first of all equal among yourselves, and your rights take priority over those of the state. The collectivity is not the bearer of rights: it receives the rights it exercises from the citizens.’ ‘A: Ronald Reagan. B: Donald Trump, or C: Pierre Trudeau?’ ‘Answer, C: Pierre Trudeau.’”

Mark Milke on Twitter August 11, 2022 [https://twitter.com/MilkeMark/status/1557747155456049152?t=bhSDdLbXvVXsEuzj-1hE-w&s=09] encouraging us to “See my column on Canada’s tradition of freedom. https://bit.ly/3BZAfJR”

In my latest Epoch Times column I say special rapporteur David Johnston’s report on the Liberal response to communist Chinese election meddling is what Justin Trudeau hoped for, but not what he or any of us needed.

“The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.”

Emailed to me and attributed to George Carlin, as it is in a number of places online (though one site attributed it to someone else), but none of them provide any detail as to when or where he supposedly said it. If anyone can do so, or knows it’s not really Carlin, please let me know.

In my latest Epoch Times column I say Bill Blair’s smug stonewalling over the latest allegations of long delays in approving a warrant show that the federal Liberals are still flailing as this breaking scandal moves faster than they can Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.

“My personal favourite [among her late father’s many fine turns of phrase]… his technical term for fixing any appliance by means of a quick smack on the top or side: ‘Repair Scheme Number One.’”

Jean Mills in Globe & Mail June 18, 2004

“Even given his concern for sparrows, the likelihood of God being concerned with hijabs seems small…. What must God think of all this [the Asmahan Mansour controversy]? Of one thing I am certain: whatever he turns out to be will bear no resemblance to the god imagined by any of the religions I know, ancient or modern, mono- or polytheistic. My belief in God is persistent and I pray. I know not to what I pray – Paul Johnson’s wonderful book The Quest for God tells me that my prayers are to a God that hears everything, but while I want to believe that, I have great difficulty doing so…. There are few things as ridiculous as a bunch of apes trying to be spiritual. If eventually we get to meet or understand the nature of God before or after our death, I think the likelihood of his concerns overlapping those of any religion to be very small.”

Barbara Amiel in Maclean’s March 19, 2007, very certain that everyone else’s certainty about God is laughably wrong and hers is totally right.

“O, I smell false Latin.”

Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost

“In our day the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has written powerfully about the ‘second naïveté’ that is the mark of true faith. A century earlier, Kierkegaard wrote about ‘the second immediacy,’ the possibility of being a child or youth for the second time.”

Richard John Neuhaus, “Kierkegaard for Grownups,” in First Things #146 (October 2004)