Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Showing posts with label robocalls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robocalls. Show all posts

Monday, April 16, 2012

Stephen Harper meets Benjamin Disraeli


Here is Stephen Harper as Leader of the Opposition writing in the Montreal Gazette about a year before coming to power:

Information is the lifeblood of a democracy.  Without adequate access to key information about government policies and programs, citizens and parliamentarians cannot make informed decisions and incompetent or corrupt governments can be hidden under a cloak of secrecy.[1]

Here is Benjamin Disraeli, upcoming Conservative British Prime Minister, speaking in the House of Commons to the existing Conservative Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, March 3, 1845:

Dissolve, if you please, the Parliament whom you have betrayed, and appeal to the people whom I believe mistrust you.  For me there remains this at least, the opportunity of expressing my belief, that a Conservative government is an organized hypocrisy![2]


[1] Lawrence Martin, Harperland: The Politics of Control (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2010), pp. 254,255.
[2] E. Royston Pike, Britain’s Prime Ministers from Walpole to Wilson (Feltham, Middelsex: Odhams Books, 1968), p. 274.