In my latest C2C essay I explain why people hate photo radar: it’s a brazen violation of the rule of law and the social contract to fine citizens for normal behaviour.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the chronic resistance to systemic principled thought in Canadian public policy means we have protectionist politicians who think they’re for free trade, as they’re censors who think they favour free speech.
“Though we observe the higher law/ and though we have our quarrel just,/ Were I permitted to withdraw/ You wouldn’t see my arse for dust./ A soldier’s verse”
First of three header quotations in Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era on Section or Chapter VII
In my latest Loonie Politics column I deplore the Canadian habit of windy high-minded speeches and empty measures in a dangerous world.
In my latest National Post column I point to a troubling pattern of Prime Minister Mark Carney lying constantly, brazenly and recklessly about things big and small, including his personal conflicts of interest, without thus far facing any consequences.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say that when our finance minister claims a call for efficiencies he doesn’t even realize he has no idea how to find represents “a long-term transformation of government” it confirms that those in power think words are deeds and wishes are horses. Which is why they never actually study how government works.
“A real spiritual abyss only opens when men appear to us to be boasting of bad actions; and this is true of nearly all that modern politicians and philanthropists boast of as their good actions. Social idealism is often actually Satanic; in the quite cold and rational sense that it claims to be the creator. To start the opposite ideal, of creatures being creative, or rather procreative, by a direct authority from the Creator, is not only a difficulty but a risk. It involves the probability of some abuse of freedom in practice. When the abuse is abominable, the true function of Government reappears; which is to exclude extreme abominations.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly Nov. 1, 1934, quoted in “The Bad” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #1 (September-October 2024)
In countries they invaded in World War I “the Germans generally insisted on the right to requisition and to demand docility from a population under occupation. They were not alone in this, but they were virtually alone in positing an extreme version of the argument – the idea of Kriegsverrat. According to this view, the disruption of the war effort by civilians in occupied territory is as treasonous as disruption by one’s own nationals. The German occupation of Belgium was consistent with this proposition, and while as a whole certainly not as monstrous as Allied propaganda made it out to be, the occupation policy was nevertheless draconic. If babies were not systematically snatched from mothers’ arms and smashed against brick walls, if nuns were not deliberately sought out for sodomy, rape, and slaughter, if old people were not made to crawl on all fours before being riddled with bullets, considerable numbers of hostages were shot, including women and children and octogenarians. Louvaine was razed, together with its library, founded in 1426, with its 280,000 volumes at its priceless collection of in incunabula and medieval manuscripts. Schrechlichkeit, or frightfulness, was pronounced official policy in the occupied areas, initially in Belgium and then in France in Russia. The term furor teutonicus was used by Germans with pride.”
Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era