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[thejohnrobson]

Listen up, Pope dude

In my latest National Post column I ponder the odd spectacle of our Roman Catholic Prime Minister lecturing the Pope on morality.

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from Listen up, Pope dude

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 30, 2017

“Leadership is the practical application of character”

Colonel R. Meinertzhagen, quoted by Cliff Chadderton Excuse Us! Herr Schicklgruber

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from Wish I’d said that – May 30, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Ask the Professor, May 29, 2017

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from Ask the Professor, May 29, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 29, 2017

“Hey, I’m not a Pollyanna about the way the world works. Not all the turtles are going to make it to the ocean. That’s not negativism. That’s pragmatism.”

Dennis Miller The Rants

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from Wish I’d said that – May 29, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 28, 2017

“Begin by looking at everything from the moral point of view, and you will end by believing in God.”

Thomas Arnold, famous headmaster of Rugby school and father of Matthew Arnold, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb The De-moralization of Society

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from Wish I’d said that – May 28, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 27, 2017

Lincoln County in the New Mexico Territory, in its Wild West days, was the kind of place “where a man would kill you just to see if a gun worked.”

TV documentary on the “Lincoln County War” famously involving Billy the Kid that aired in Ottawa on December 18, 1998 (as a pedantic rule I try to source my quotations as accurately as possible but sometimes all you get is all I scribbled down at the time)

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from Wish I’d said that – May 27, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Why terrorists attack pop concerts

In my latest National Post column I say the bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester should remind everyone, including progressives, that Islamist fanatics do not hate our open society for being repressive or for defending itself. They hate it because it is tolerant. They hate our permissiveness. They hate us for who we are not what we do. And there is nothing we can do to appease them that would not be a fundamental betrayal of ourselves and our ideals.

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from Why terrorists attack pop concerts

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 26, 2017

“it must be remembered, that life consists not in a series of illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities, in the performance of our daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences, in the procurement of petty pleasures…”

Samuel Johnson, quoted in D.J. Enright’s introduction to Johnson’s The History of Rasselas

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from Wish I’d said that – May 26, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

A place for men

In my latest National Post column I urge people to take men’s needs seriously and support the new Canadian Association for Equality’s Ottawa Centre for Men and Families.

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from A place for men

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 25, 2017

“Victims can be victims and not be innocent.”

David Rieff, A Bed for the Night (header quotation on Chapter 2 of Carol Off The Ghosts of Medak Pocket)

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from Wish I’d said that – May 25, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Ask the Professor, May 24, 2017

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from Ask the Professor, May 24, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 24, 2017

“First, incentives matter to all human behaviour…. Like it or not, individuals will undertake more of an activity if the costs of that activity are reduced; this holds as much for bureaucrats as it does for profit-maximizing owners of firms.”

Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Free Market Environmentalism

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from Wish I’d said that – May 24, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 23, 2017

“It is easier to make good men wise than to make bad men good.”

Henry Fielding, explaining the moral of his novel Tom Jones, quoted by Joseph Schwartz in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 3 No. 4 (Jan/Feb. 2000)

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from Wish I’d said that – May 23, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 22, 2017

“Being a professional is doing all the things you love to do on the days when you don’t feel like doing them.”

Julius “Dr. J” Erving, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe and Mail November 15, 2001

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from Wish I’d said that – May 22, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 21, 2017

“If [his recently deceased wife Joy] ‘is not,’ then she never was. I mistook a cloud of atoms for a person. There aren’t, and never were, any people. Death only reveals the vacuity that was always there. What we call the living are simply those who have not yet been unmasked. All equally bankrupt, but some not yet declared. But this must be nonsense; vacuity revealed to whom? Bankruptcy declared to whom? To other boxes of fireworks or clouds of atoms. I will never believe – more strictly, I can’t believe – that one set of physical events could be, or make, a mistake about other sets. No, my real fear is not of materialism. If it were true, we – or what we mistake for ‘we’ – could get out, get from under the harrow. An overdose of sleeping pills would do it. I am more afraid that we are really rats in a trap. Or, worse still, rats in a laboratory. Someone said, I believe, ‘God always geometrizes.’ Supposing the truth were ‘God always vivisects’?”

C.S. Lewis A Grief Observed

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from Wish I’d said that – May 21, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 20, 2017

“At the sight of Aslan the cheeks of the Telmarine soldiers became the colour of cold gravy…”

C.S. Lewis Prince Caspian

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from Wish I’d said that – May 20, 2017

[thejohnrobson]

Wish I’d said that – May 19, 2017

“As knowledge increases, wonder deepens.”

Charles Morgan, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe and Mail April 24, 2013

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from Wish I’d said that – May 19, 2017