“History sometimes rests on narrow shoulders.”
Paul Wells in National Post December 11, 1999
“Previous civilizations have degenerated. Previous ages have marched into the dark not knowing that they were marching into the dark. But in any previous time, were artists, scholars, and thinkers so eager to explain that degeneration was really progress?”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
In my latest Epoch Times column, I describe how our universities are unraveling financially and academically as part of a cascading set of policy disasters in which the one thing we never do is go back and reverse previous mistakes instead of piling on fresh ones.
“Malign Neglect: Pierre Trudeau and the Politics of Indifference”
The title of Chapter 4, in Jack Granatstein Who Killed the Canadian Military?
“Jean Chretien’s government wants the shade from the tree, but aren’t willing to do anything to keep that tree strong.”
Canadian Alliance MP Monte Solberg quoted in the National Post March 31, 2003 [the specific context was Solberg supporting the second Gulf War but it obviously applies far more broadly as well as chronically to politicians and the Canadian Armed Forces]
“Every man carries with him the standard by which we judge him, even if he always falls short of it. That is one of the things in which all men are equal; and it is a sort of implicit image of man, which the mystics called the image of God.”
G.K. Chesterton in Columbia May 1925, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)
It’s a fine line in life: I just noticed (by making the typo) that “Words Worth Nothing” is one letter away from my running hed on these supposed bon mots.
Me July 10, 2023
“The observation that it is difficult to portray a really good person in fiction is nothing new. But why do our contemporary novelists find it so difficult even to portray a person we wouldn’t mind meeting? Even when they try? There are exceptions. Not many. The appalling thought occurs to me that maybe they like their characters.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto ]