“History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.”
“Étienne Gilson (1884-1978), French philosopher” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail February 6, 2012
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the new “ambitious plan” from the Canadian Armed Forces to expand its ranks represents not a step forward but a flight into fantasy, and the extent to which anyone takes it seriously measures how far official Ottawa and the chattering classes have abandoned difficult reality for comforting make-believe en masse.
“Go back to the idea of government by ideas.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Revolt Against Ideas,” in The Thing, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #6 (4-5/07)
“a favorite theme of Chesterton, namely the vacuity of the mind of the man of no dogmas.”
Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 3 #7 (June 2000)
“History cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing.”
E. H. Carr, What Is History?
“As John Warwick Montgomery so eloquently summarized through his courses in Apologetics at one time offered through Trinity Theological Seminary, in the nineteenth century God was killed and in the twentieth century man was killed.”
Part of post by Frederick Meekins on Homelesscons.com June 1, 2009 [and filed by me under “Ideas Have Consequences”
In my latest Loonie Politics column I note the extraordinary contrast between England’s Bad King John, at a crisis in his reign, ordering books of theology in Latin for guidance and modern politicians I doubt even read trendy airport paperbacks on policy in English.
At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan I spoke with Alex Newman of the New American about the dangerous idealism of the delegates.