Canada Day, and Politics, and the disconnection between government and people...

[pyat]

A radio address by Stuart McLean (a Canadian broadcaster) is rather worth listening to, I think.

"In politics as in everything, the process is as important as the product. You cannot kill your way to peace or lie your way to justice. The way you walk it is the way it is."

Thanks to ladyperegrine for the link.

Comments

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

That's a magnificent quote -- in fact for my money it beats Barrows Dunham's line about tyranny always being something of a waste: "In order to be a tyrant, you have to *be* one; you have to be the sort of person who puts children into gas chambers. The gains hardly seem worth the degeneracy."

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Also a good quote!

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

All these quotes underlie the essential evil behind Machiavelli's monstrous hypothesis that the end justifies the means.

It's easy to be against putting children into gas chambers. It's an awful lot harder to answer the nasty scenario: "But you have a gun! And the rapist is assaulting your wife! And your children!"...

One of the great unresolvable tensions I suspect: the conflict between principle and pragmatism.