“There has been, as every informed Canadians knows, an avalanche of ludicrous judicial decisions, and the Supreme Court of Canada, because of inappropriate appointments to it from successive prime ministers, has become an almost constant source of absurd judgments. In one case a few years ago, the high court determined that the Charter’s right of assembly guaranteed the right of employees of the government of Saskatchewan performing essential work to strike. The upper courts have allowed judges to make an incoherent smorgasbord of our laws, with a shrinking number of reliable precedents and highly idiosyncratic lower court interpretations that pay no attention to the normal meaning of the language or intention of the legislators. This means that when the courts have finished, the legislators haven’t been legislating at all-just putting forth thoughts for the delectation of the bench. But even more sinister, the courts as a whole have followed the legislators into complete abdication in allowing the administrative state to function as it wishes without any apparent reference whatever to the text of law. In the case of Jordan Peterson, his freedom of expression counts for nothing in the face of churlish and self-righteous students or even a few frequenters of the Internet.”

Conrad Black in National Post August 17, 2024

“There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night —/ Ten to make and the match to win —/ A bumping pitch and a blinding light,/ An hour to play and the last man in./ And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,/ Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,/ But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote/ ‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’/ The sand of the desert is sodden red, —/ Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —/ The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead,/ And the regiment blind with dust and smoke./ The river of death has brimmed his banks,/ And England’s far, and Honour a name,/ But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks,/ ‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’”

Sir Henry Newbolt “Vitaï Lampada”, 1898, quoted and described as “Probably the most famous poem of the late Victorian and Edwardian era” by Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

“Don’t criticize, critique.”

Slogan suggested to me by some one whose name I didn’t record, around April 1999.

“Pluralism grows out of the same general mentality as historicism. It compounds the problem by advocating simultaneous as well as successive relativism.”

Avery Robert Cardinal Dulles The New World of Faith

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the recent flurry of federal government press releases boasting of handouts, virtually none of which had to do with strengthening national security or reducing taxes and red tape, expose the hollowness of their supposed change of heart in the face of a trade war.

“he has occasional flashes of silence that make it quite delightful.”

Sydney Smith, quoted in Jacques Barzun From Dawn to Decadence [on the historian Macaulay’s tendency to monopolize conversations]

In my latest Epoch Times column I urge candidates in the upcoming federal election, between bouts of mud-slinging, to take a firm stand on things government cannot do, should not do or both.

“The only way to end a quarrel is to get on both sides of it. We must have not merely a calm impartiality, but rather a sympathy with partiality as it exists in both partisans. We must be not so much impartial as partial to both sides.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 25, 1932, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)