In my latest Loonie Politics column I say someone like Jeffrey Epstein could only be a well-connected insider rather than a depraved and marginal freak in the strange modern Big Brother at the Playboy Mansion ethos of endless laws and regulations restricting our liberty combined with libertine social and especially sexual permissiveness.
“Incidents of political violence in America have been steadily ticking upwards for years.... among the general public, a poisonous and dangerous stew is bubbling, composed of ideologues, fanatics, antisemites, obsessives, mentally ill people and others being whipped up by the incitement relentlessly spewed out on social media. This is fuelling a culture that’s now descended into anarchy, nihilism, loss of reason and a total disappearance of moral compass.”
Melanie Phillips September 12, 2025 [https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/a-shocking-watershed-for-america] [and NB while I agree with her on everything else the insertion of “ideologues” into her list as usual just muddies the waters]
“A medley of spiteful mutants united behind a Leninist project can only be a wholly destructive force, and those of us who cleave to notions of Being with more permanence feel alienated and betrayed by our recently-elevated bad masters. We should not be surprised that they have the deculturalizing effect of rampaging orcs. They are barbarians, and as Chesterton said, the barbarian creates only by accident. Everything else they do is destruction.”
Christopher Jolliffe “The Attack on ANZAC Day” in Dorchester Review #32 (Vol. 15 #2 Summer 2025)
“You can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but it isn’t necessary. A majority will do.”
“SOMEBODY” quoted in “Other Suspects – V” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“Only a fool fights in a burning house.”
A Klingon Proverb cited by Kang in Star Trek: The Original Series "Day of the Dove"
“One who excels in traveling leaves no wheel tracks;/ One who excels in speech makes no slips;/ One who excels in reckoning uses no counting rods;/ One who excels in shutting uses no bolts yet what he has shut cannot be opened;/ One who excels in tying uses no cords yet what he has tied cannot be undone.”
Lao Tzu I.XXVII.60
“The Hero does not regard the forest in which the dragon lurks as evil. Nor do I. I find that the world is on the whole a very jolly place, with inns and good fellowship. But try to justify the distinction: the good forest, the evil dragon; and you must have a philosophy.”
G.K. Chesterton in an interview with W.R. Titterton, in Titterton’s GKC: A Portrait (1936), the first Chesterton biography, reprinted in part at least in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“This is hilarious. Anti-Israel whack jobs shut down Ottawa’s Pride Parade… that’s not the hilarious part (tho it’s fun to watch intersectional rock paper scissors)…the hilarious part is @globeandmail headline: ‘Pride parade cancelled after *coinciding* with pro-Palestine rally’”
Jonathan Kay on X 24/8/25 [https://x.com/jonkay/status/1959774800488153489] (my favourite bit being “intersectional rock paper scissors”)