Punishing people for their words does not make the words vanish from memory. The unsayable is not unthinkable. Indeed, the punishment of the word may actually magnify the impact of the thought. Never mind abstract free-speech principles: Purely on pragmatic grounds, when a member of a community says something that bitterly divides the community, the way to a resolution is not to suppress the thought, but to argue it out.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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America’s old republic was born of rebellion against Britain’s more ancient monarchy. Yet, by strange fate, the passage of time has only joined America and Britain more closely together in war and peace.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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America’s old republic was born of rebellion against Britain’s more ancient monarchy. Yet, by strange fate, the passage of time has only joined America and Britain more closely together in war and peace.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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The American system of government is based in large part on that of 18th-century Britain. The powers of the American presidency look a lot like those of the British monarchy before the American Revolution—the power to propose and veto legislation, to pardon crimes and commute sentences—powers that no British monarch has wielded for ages.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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The British monarch is both the head of state and that state’s most closely watched prisoner, forbidden to say or do anything remotely human, let alone political.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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The British stumbled upon an unexpectedly powerful idea: Sever the symbolism of the state from the political power of the state, and bestow those two different governing roles on two different people. Power has little majesty in the British system. Prime ministers reside in an apartment over their office. People are rude to them all the time.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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In a world that otherwise values competition, effort, and merit, the British have allowed their state to be governed by the purest chance. It seems like a formula for disaster. Instead, it has produced 350 years of constitutional stability.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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In their anti-learning culture, conservatives have come to view everything that happens, however unwelcome, as proof simply that the most extreme people were the most correct.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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Rarely do good surprises occur between adversarial nations. Communicating more, rather than less, is far safer.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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For all its marvelous creativity, the human imagination often fails when turned to the future. It is blunted, perhaps, by a craving for the familiar. We all appreciate that the past includes many moments of severe instability, crisis, even radical revolutionary upheaval. We know that such things happened years or decades or centuries ago. We cannot believe they might happen tomorrow.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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