The author finds grievous fault with democracy and favours most of the seven deadly sins. He approves of arranged marriages but expresses absolute faith in the power of love. He laments the fading of family. He has come to believe that the soul exists independent of mind, personality and genes and, like St. Paul, he sees love and charity as the greatest power in our world.

Old Enough to Know Better is written in part as a message to descendants he will never meet, in part to people of the western world today who, he insists, are descending rapidly into a fascist tyranny. His observations and pronouncements are threaded on accounts of personal experiences as a newspaper editor and columnist, politician, diplomat, police commissioner, husband, father, wet-fly fisherman and wing shot. This is a book like no other St. Pierre has written. Nobody will agree with all of it. His tail would kink if some did.