“GKC: Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I say that to take away a poor man’s pot of beer is to take away a poor man’s personal liberty, it is very vital to note what is the usual or almost universal reply. People hardly ever do reply, for some reason or other, by saying that a man’s liberty consists of such and such things, but that beer is an exception that cannot be classed among them, for such and such reasons. What they almost invariably do say is something like this. ‘After all, what is liberty? Man must live as a member of a society, and must obey those laws which, etc., etc.’ In other words, they collapse into a complete confession that they are attacking all liberty and any liberty; that they do deny the very existence or the very possibility of liberty. In the very form of the answer they admit the full scope of the accusation against them. In trying to rebut the smaller accusation, they plead guilty to the larger one. This distinction is very important, as can be seen from any practical parallel. Suppose we wake up in the middle of the night and find that a neighbour has entered the house not by the front-door but by the skylight; we may suspect that he has come after the fine old family jewellery. We may be reassured if he can refer it to a really exceptional event; as that he fell on to the roof out of an aeroplane, or climbed on to the roof to escape from a mad dog. Short of the incredible, the stranger the story the better the excuse; for an extraordinary event requires an extraordinary excuse. But we shall hardly be reassured if he merely gazes at us in a dreamy and wistful fashion and says, ‘After all, what is property? Why should material objects be thus artificially attached, etc., etc.?’ We shall merely realize that his attitude allows of his taking the jewellery and everything else. Or if the neighbour approaches us carrying a large knife dripping with blood, we may be convinced by his story that he killed another neighbour in self-defence, that the quiet gentleman next door was really a homicidal maniac. We shall know that homicidal mania is exceptional and that we ourselves are so happy as not to suffer from it, and being free from the disease may be free from the danger. But it will not soothe us for the man with the gory knife to say softly and pensively, ‘After all, what is human life? Why should we cling to it? Brief at the best, sad at the brightest, it is itself but a disease from which, etc., etc.’ We shall perceive that the sceptic is in a mood not only to murder us but to massacre everybody in the street. Exactly the same effect which would be produced by the questions of ‘What is property?’ and ‘What is life?’ is produced by the question of ‘What is liberty?’ It leaves the questioner free to disregard any liberty, or in other words to take any liberties. The very thing he says is an anticipatory excuse for anything he may choose to do. If he gags a man to prevent him from indulging in profane swearing, or locks him in the coal cellar to guard against his going on the spree, he can still be satisfied with saying ‘After all, what is liberty? Man is a member of, etc., etc.’”

“News With Views” compiled by Mark Pilon in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022) p. 37 [with the comment afterward “Justin Trudeau is rumored to be taking notes”].

“There is, however, another good work that is done by detective stories. While it is the constant tendency of the Old Adam to rebel against so universal and automatic a thing as civilization, to preach departure and rebellion, the romance of police activity keeps in some sense before the mind the fact that civilization itself is the most sensational of departures and the most romantic of rebellions. By dealing with the unsleeping sentinels who guard the outposts of society, it tends to remind us that we live in an armed camp, making war with a chaotic world, and that the criminals, the children of chaos, are nothing but the traitors within our gates. When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat fatuously fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves’ kitchen, it does certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who is the original and poetic figure, while the burglars and footpads are merely placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes and wolves. The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man. It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies. It reminds us that the whole noiseless and unnoticeable police management by which we are ruled and protected is only a successful knighterrancy. This form of art, like every form of art down to a comic song, has the whole truth of the universe behind it.”

G.K. Chesterton in “In Defence of Detective Stories” in The Defendant, quoted by Fr. Robert Wild in a piece on Catherine Doherty in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022)

In my latest Loonie Politics column I note the ominous apparent paradox in which as the federal government spends and hires ever more recklessly, the national police force totally fails to attend to its core duty of protecting that government and its citizens from subversion, espionage and so on.

In my latest Epoch Times column I say Justin Trudeau accusing India of carrying out a “hit” in Canada needs to be backed by evidence the public is allowed to see rather than his usual hyperbolic petulance.

In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that trust is decaying fast in our society, because trustworthiness is succumbing to self-actualization, with dangerous consequences from politics to concerts.

In my latest Epoch Times column, I ask that people apply their vaunted “evidence-based decision-making” to the claim that there are hundreds of unmarked graves of aboriginal kids killed in residential schools in cruel or callous ways or stop making it.

In my latest Epoch Times column I cite Canada’s swelling bureaucracy and shriveling RCMP and armed forces to illustrate that bad policy drives out good.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I berate Canadian “conservative” politicians for being as clueless about how to avoid wedge issues as they are spineless about how to approach them.