Several noteworthy quotations from politicians of all points on the political spectrum.
"Leftism, in its purest form, is just walking around annoying people."
- David Gelernter
"A communist is someone who has nothing and wishes to share it with the world."
Anonymous
An excerpt from David Frum's "The Left's Guilty Conscience":
"Political morality is a morality of consequences, not intentions. You may intend to achieve a peaceful, non-racist South Africa - but if the predictable consequences of your actions is civil war and dictatorship, then you are behaving immorally. You may intend to create world peace - but if the predictable consequence of your action is military adventurism by the Soviet Union, then you are behaving immorally. You may intend to lift the downtrodden up from their poverty - but if the predictable consequence of your action is economic dislocation and decline, then you are behaving immorally. Political morality is about responsibility, not showing off. To be responsible, though, you have to think, and the contemporary left is distinguished by its principled refusal to think. Only slogans are acceptable to it: "Free Canada, Trade Mulroney"; "Refuse the Cruise"; "Boycott Grapes." Whatever its other intellectual errors, the left understands human psychology. Chanting and yelling can indeed stifle questions and doubts, at least for a while. Still, the evidence is on virtually every one of the Left's most treasured beliefs. They are all wrong. The planned economy doesn't work, appeasing the Soviets doesn't work, Third World revolutions don't work. It takes considerable gullibility and ignorance to be unaware of how spectacularly, disastrously wrong these delusions are - and gullibility and ignorance are not moral virtues.
- David Frum
Toronto Sun
September 23, 1988
"Government is not a solution to our problem, government IS the problem."
- Ronald Reagan
"If you are not a liberal at age 20, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at age 40, you have no brain."
- Winston Churchill
"A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money."
- Carter Glass
In 1974, John Diefenbaker was very critical of Members who polled their constituents about their opinions regarding capital punishment. This appeared to the former Prime Minister as a way of avoiding responsibility out of fear of making an unpopular decision. Diefenbaker then said:
"These Members do not understand the very basic workings of the Parliament in which they sit. The House is not a mouthpiece just to repeat the views of the constituencies. The House must investigate, debate, and possibly postpone action. In doing these things it must create a more enlightened opinion throughout the nation."
- Former PM John Diefenbaker
An excerpt from David Frum's "The Nietzsche of Economics":
"[John Maynard] Keynes was one of the most influential thinkers of our century, and his influence has been almost entirely bad. Since time immemorial, governments have debased their currency, misappropriated their people's wealth, and diverted the proceeds from productive investment to garish monuments to themselves. It was Keynes who supplied governments with arguments - and since Keynes was Keynes, brilliant arguments - to justify this outrageous conduct. If John Maynard Keynes had never lived, the Western world might still be the overtaxed, inflationary statist mess that it is, but at least the people responsible for the mess would have to pretend to be embarrassed about it. Instead, Keynes' fertile and subtle mind manufactured a huge armoury of clever defences of bad public policy. Since the publication of his 1936 masterwork The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, opponents of profligacy in government and state manipulation of the economy have had to contend not merely with the usual selfishness and cowardice of politicians but also with the subversive power of Keynes' mordant and glittering mind."
- David Frum
The New Criterion
April 1994
With this statement, George Bernard Shaw summarized one of the basic arguments against the use of capital punishment:
"Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind."
- G.B. Shaw
With the November 10th municipal election in Toronto, a new mayor will be chosen as leader of the newly created megacity of Toronto. It consists of six amalgamated former municipalites, and represents approximately 25% of the gross domestic product of Canada. There are two possible new mayors: Mel Lastman and Barbara Hall. In an article written a week before the election day, Diane Francis urged the electorate to vote for Lastman. These are excerpts from that article, "The Rock and the trees - two reasons to vote for Lastman":
"When Hall was head of the NDP caucus at city council, she spearheaded a proposal to give tax dollars to plant $300,000 worth of trees in Nicaragua. Hello? Earth to Barbara: What in the world was the justification for spending our tax dollars on that? Should the CEO of a $6.5-billion enterprise be concerned with providing foreign aid?"
"What Toronto needs is an experienced executive like Lastman. It doesn't need, nor do any governments need, people who pay $283,000 for a Rock, support those who would disrupt the city and province for ideological purposes and cannot imagine how one government can be cheaper than seven. Vote Lastman."
- Diane Francis
The Financial Post
November 4, 1997
During the conflict over the Education Quality Improvement Act, 1997 between the Progressive Conservative Government of Ontario and the Ontario Teachers' Union, David Frum condemned the position of the unions in an article entitled "Harris just doing what he promised" in the Financial Post. These are excerpts from that article:
"Is democracy in danger in Ontario? That's what the Mike Harris government's critics say. In the early 1990s, when Bob Rae wanted to force every private-sector employer to choose his workforce by racial quota, democracy was apparently in fine shape. But since 1995, democracy has supposedly been battered and bludgeoned. What sins against democracy is the Harris government alleged to have committed? Just read the angry letters and op-eds in the newspapers for a list. It amalgamated the six municipalities of Metro Toronto, even though the mayors of those municipalities objected. It shut down boards of education even though the school trustees objected. It reformed Rae's labor law even though the union bosses objected. Time and time again, the critics charge, the Harris government has tried to reform bloated, incompetent and wasteful functions of government, ruthlessly ignoring the wishes of those who profit from the bloat, incompetence and waste."
"Defenders of the Harris government think of democracy as a political system in which the majority gets to decide, at election time, the great political questions of the day. By that definition, the Harris government is superbly democratic: Ontario is getting what it voted for. But the critics believe in quite a different theory of democracy. To them, it's a system in which between elections, the beneficiaries of government spending quietly use their control of the bureaucracy to make sure nothing happens that displeases them."
"The one sort of person who is never heard in "consultations" - who by definition can never be heard, is the ordinary citizen unrepresented by any lobbying group. That is why we have elections - so citizens, not in groups but as individuals, can choose which political philosophy to give a mandate to. Harris, similarly, has been accused of disregarding the advice of his civil servants, relying instead on the small group of advisors who crafted the original Common Sense Revolution manifesto. There, he is indeed guilty as charged. But that's because the Ontario civil service is the bitterest opponent of Harris' reforms. Harris was elected to cut taxes and reduce government. The bureaucracy wants to enlarge government and raise taxes. How is it "democratic" to substitute the demands of the bureaucracy for the commands of the people?"
"The people who condemn the Harris government's methods are really angry about its policies. The critics believe in more government spending, higher taxes and more privileges for trade unions. That's what the fight is about. And on all those issues, it's important to remember the people spoke in 1995 and spoke in favor of the policies Harris argued for. The many sensible people who continue to favor those policies should not be fooled by bogus accusations from self-interested bureaucrats that a government is somehow betraying democracy when it keeps its promises."
- David Frum
The Financial Post
November 4, 1997
Having often been subjected to intense criticism in the media, John Crosbie talked to journalists about "their grubby little craft":
"Let's start with the question of bias. The practice of journalism has altered significantly since I began my political journey in the 1960s. Prior to then, journalists were expected to be neutral in their treatment of public figures and public issues. Editors insisted that reporters keep their personal and political opinions out of their stories. There was no quicker way for a political reporter to find himself back on the police beat than to start mixing commentary with reportage. The right or power to express opinions was reserved for columnists and editorial writers, and their columns and editorials were clearly labelled as such. It was sort of like the health labels on today's cigarette packages - you could read that stuff at your peril. Times have changed, for the worse. A casual examination of any newspaper today will reveal stories that claim to report on events, but that are actually replete with the biases and opinions of the reporter. Stories distributed by The Canadian Press, the national news-gathering collective, are filled these days with descriptive words and phrases that clearly indicate what the writer thinks about the events, views or people he or she is describing - and what he or she thinks any right-minded person should think about them. If someone in the news examines issues from a conservative point of view, that individual is almost invariably identified in journalists' stories as "right-wing." The Fraser Institute of Vancouver is invariably described in new reports as "the right-wing Fraser Institute" whenever they issue a report or analysis. Yet organizations or individuals expressing views contrary to the Fraser Institute's are never described as being "left-wing." In the years since I entered public life, journalists have come to see themselves as advocates or as adversaries in relation to established institutions, particularly the institutions of government. With some of the younger journalists, objectivity is no longer an ideal to pursue, but rather a term of opprobrium. It is instructive to compare the national media's treatment of the Mulroney Conservative administration with their treatment of the Chrétien Liberal administration. The ferocity of the attacks by journalists on possible mistakes made by the Mulroney government is burned into the memory of everyone who was active in federal politics in the 1980s and 1990s. The media were in pitbull mode throughout the Mulroney years; when Chrétien came to office, they turned into poodles."
- John Crosbie
To make a suggestion for an addition to this list of noteworthy quotations, send it to me via e-mail at [email protected]. To be accepted onto the list, I must find the quotation both relevant and noteworthy.