In the Western Standard, on behalf of the Aristotle Foundation, I took the Toronto Star to task (last week - I’m late posting it) for a news story riddled with errors of fact and misleading interpretations on the subject of a Queen’s Park statue of Sir John A. Macdonald put in a rat-infested memory hole.
“Imagine being so intellectually deficient that you convince yourself anyone with a different opinion is corrupt.”
Tony Heller on X Jan. 3 2024 [https://twitter.com/TonyClimate/status/1742668645933949269] somewhat ironically as for all his excellent work on the subject Heller himself insists multiple times a day that climate alarmism is a hoax, very often with the hashtag #ClimateScam
“... the whole way of life to which men are attached and the large ideas to which they own allegiance.”
Walt Rostow (in one of his books but my bibliographic note to self is incomprehensible)
“Martin Amis, who was harshly criticized in America Alone but gave it a positive review, said of the style: ‘Mark Steyn is an oddity: his thoughts and themes are sane and serious – but he writes like a maniac.’”
Wikipedia entry on Mark Steyn [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Steyn] at least as of Feb. 9, 2024
In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that optimism is a psychological condition and generally fatuous, while hope is a theological virtue, in public affairs as in life more generally.
She’s deploring the reflex (when someone fails to say “Thank You” when you hold a door) of feeling “exasperated – but, crucially, not surprised…. ‘Typical!’ you say. As Kate Fox points out, ‘Typical!’ is one of our default modes… The ‘Typical!’ response is actually quite self-flattering, of course. It suggests that fate can never wrong-foot us because we are always prepared for the worst or most unlikely event. ‘So then my sister-in-law had a sex change and went off to live in Krakatoa. Typical!’ we exclaim. ‘So then they started bombing Baghdad. Typical!’ ‘The cat turned out to be a reincarnation of a seventh-century Chinese prophet. Typical!’”
Lynne Truss Talk to the Hand
The notoriously absentminded G.K. Chesterton “frequently forgot to keep appointments and often needed to write an apology to the person he stood up. One time, however, he arrived punctually to see his publisher (to the publisher’s astonishment). But he then handed the man a note containing an explanation of why he couldn’t be there.”
Eric J. Scheske in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 #8 (July/August 2002)
“any religion that does not say that God is hidden is not true, and any religion which does not explain why does not instruct. Ours does both.”
Pascal Pensées