Michael Ignatieff Quotes
The Only cure for nihilism is for liberal democratic societies - their electorates, their judiciary, and their political leadership- to insist that force is legitimate only to the degree that it serves defensible political goals. Thus implies a constant exercise of due diligence...
Michael Ignatieff, Canadian Member of Parliament (Liberal), Director, Carr Center of the Kennedy School of Government, The Lesser Evil, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The League was an undisguised Communist organization. Politicians were not too worried about applying their ministerial activities to unwholesome organizations. As one of the few Republicans in the Roosevelt Administration, he might have been more worried about whom he welcomed, but not so.
Buleihi is one of the few Arab intellectuals who are not totally negative about Western colonialism and interference in the affairs of other countries who he believes benefit from the Western influence and have developed such an insularity that they will not be changed or modernized otherwise.
Thompson’s son was serving with U. S. forces in the Iraq War at the time.
First woman elected to Congress. She was one of a handful of Congressman who opposed the WWI declaration. She was the only member of the House to oppose FDR’s request for a Declaration of War against Japan after Pearl Harbor.
Although it had conservative and progressive support, there was opposition in the middle and the vote failed in the House 188 to 209. See Hamilton Fish for the amendment text.
See Noah Webster and Timothy Pickering for similar positions. The War of 1812 was very unpopular with the New England states. They had the most developed trade with England and were economically injured by the curtailment of that trade. The citizens of Essex wanted to give the State Legislature the most possible moral and political power to negotiate an end to the war.
It was this perverted logic that led the Nationalists to adopt a policy of killing lower class and poor workers. Though there were communists in Spain at the time, most of the peasants and the abject poor had little or no political philosophy or education. More sophisticated Nationalist apologists observed that the ultra poor were easily enlisted into left-wing causes like communism, so their elimination before the fact was a preventive technique.
A Saskatchewan school, Wawota Parkland, had suspended a student, Kieran King, who argued that alcohol was much more dangerous than marijuana and then advocated a walkout in support of free speech. The school had barred the doors preventing the walkout and called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to “assess the threat” that King’s position posed to the school and community. King was suspended for 3 days but the school chose the days of his exams and would not allow him to retake them driving his grades from A’s to D’s. There was of course no threat, and actually what King was saying was scientifically correct. King was further motivated because a close relative had been killed by a drunken driver.
Marquis de Seignelay. This shows that the concept of ethnic cleansing has been around for some time. The only thing that prevented the French from implementing the plan was that they couldn’t defeat the Iroquois. There is a certain irony here in that the Iroquois were very much allied with the British even during the American Revolution. After that war, the Iroquois were run out of their traditional lands, not by the French but by the Americans. And where did they go and resettle? Up to then British Canada, the very area where the French so feared them.
Soong's brothers-in-law were Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. He split with Chiang when he realized that Chiang was interested only of strengthening his power and fighting Mao and the Chinese Communists rather than the Japanese who occupied key parts of China. However, the Chinese had been fighting the Japanese for over 5 years and had while Japan occupied parts of Chine, they Japanese were still pinned down fighting the Chinese Communists, the American Volunteer Flying Tigers and occasional Chiang initiatives against the Japanese. Soong used the word democracy very liberally. China was divided between to power centers. Mao’s Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. Both had “elections” but the Communists were a classic one party dictatorship of the left and Chiang was a classic dictator of the right. However, both were allies of the United States and enemies of Fascist Japan.
Michael Grant Ignatieff PC CM is a Canadian author, academic and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto. He is currently rector and President of Central European University.
