Change of Mind, Flip Flops Quotes
See {627632} for an earlier advocy of change when circumstances warrant and {636175} for a modern view.
Although this quotation has been cited by many scholars, none has yet given a primary citation. As a result a few researchers question the attribution to Keynes and argue that the first primary source of this notion was the Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Samuelson -- Quote {645739}. However, even Samuelson attributed this quotation to Keynes although he did not do so at this particualr interview.
He was the judge who presided over the breakup of AT&T in 1984
The original latin: Errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum.
The quote is often misreported as “I am, you know, adamantly against illegal illegal immigration."
The earliest expression of this idea was by the British Economist John Maynard Keynes -- Quotation {610150}
President Johnson was trying to organize peace talks in Paris. Nixon didn’t want a public announcement to occur before election day when he was running against Hubert Humphrey. Knowing the South Vietnamese President was reluctant to go to Paris but was under pressure from America to do so, he sent a message through Chennault that he should not accept and “hang on” as Nixon would shortly win. The South Vietnam president refused to go to Paris, Nixon won the election, and then had to cope with the continuation of the war that might well have ended before he took office. Nixon believed that he could get Russia and China to pressure Ho Chi Min to make peace. Nixon's private overtures to the South Vietnam president, violated the Logan Act which prohiited private citizens negoatioating with foreign governments. President Johnson was aware of Nixon's commission of this felony want wanted to prosecute him, but the evicence had been obtained from secret intelligene agency bugging and wiretapping both the South Vietnam Embassay in Wishington and the Presidential Palace in Vietnam the public knowledge of which would have caused a scandal. Instead, he called Nixon and warned him to stop, but the damage had already been done, and the South Vitenamese government would not go to Pariis where they would have to agree to a coalition government with the Communists. THey waited for Nixon to deliver a peace treaty which would leave them in charge of South Vietnam. In the final analysis, the South Vietnamese ended up with nothing and no participation in anything when the U. S. Withdrew and the Communists took over.
In his early political career he talked and acted like a democrat forcing the military out of politics which they had been active in. He obtained the support of the democrats in Turkey and the Western Democratic governments. However as he amassed power he weakened or eliminated most of the4 democartic aspects of Turkish society. He eradicated the independence of the judiciary, gained control over the schools and the universities,, adopted many Islamic aspects of government eradicating the secular government which was the cornerstone of the Attaturk bloodless revolution, prohibited demonstrations against the government and jailed over 150 journalists and forcing many others to flee thereby controlling the press and other information sources. Ironically, despite his one-man autocratic rule, about half the population, many of whom had supported him when he pretended to be a democrat, opposed him causing him to become even more autocratic.
This is an example of a totally absurd intellectual position that the dynamics of a modern political campaign into which candidate can by pushed. In his primary campaign for the nomination, Romney had been castigated by other Republicans for changing his political positions to suite the conservative wing of the party. He was labeled a “flip-flopper with no consistent views principles. In this quotation, he had distanced himself from a campaign plan created by a rich Republican that would attack President Obama for the fact that before the Presidency, he had attended a church with a radical pastor. The plan was to tie Obama to the radical views of the pastor, despite the fact that Obama himself had castigated the views of the pastor. A reporter tried to remind Romney that months before, he had appeared on a TV show and himself said that Obama was not a good President because he had attended the church of the radical pastor. The reporter specifically asked Romney if he still stood by what he had said on the radio in the light of his current position which was the opposite, Romney had changed his mind. However, even though he could not remember what he had even said, and fearful that he would be again accused of being a flip-flopper, he felt it was necessary for him to tell the reporter and the public that whatever he had said, he stood by it. There are few fields or situations where any intelligent human being would take the position that whatever he/she had said in the past, was still their current view. However politics is often the exception and this quotation illustrates that.
Romney was known for changing political positions and postures depending on the particular office he was running for and the time.
The following year most of the Southern Democrats joined the Republican Party in Protest over the Civil Rights Act. Reagan began to have national political ambitions and therefore flip flopped and stated that he would never have voted for the Civil Rights Act. This made him acceptable later as a conservative.
He is a Greek Orthodox Christian, and he correctly observes that the Islamic world was considerably more tolerant than the Christian until the 18th century when Islam had become less tolerant in the Middle East while the Christians were modernizing and going through a cultural and intellectual enlightenment and societal modernization while the Muslims, became less tolerant than they were in earlier years leading to the modern situation.
