Harold J. Laski Quotes
A healthy loyalty is not passive and complacent, but active and critical.
Harold J. Laski, 1893-1950, English Political Scientist, The Dangers of Obedience, 1930
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This view almost got him killed. It was customary to swear loyalty to the government and those that would not were perceived to be traitors. The logic was that Christians feared for their souls more so than their lives so would not swear falsely. If there was no swearing, how was loyalty to be determined?
When the President met Nikita Khrushchev for talks, the Premier was wearing medals on his chest. Kennedy inquired what they were for, and the Premier explained that they were Lenin Peace Medals: See {610011} , {624747} , {45720} for more quotations regarding the summit meeting.
In the internecine warfare in the Iraq War many of the Iraqis who worked with and for the United States during the war, were threatened and many killed. Unlike the Ford Administration in the Vietnam War, which had resettled almost 200,000 Asians who had worked with America and were in danger of retaliation, the George W. Bush Administration would not allow the people who were loyal to United States forces in the war to immigrate to the U. S.
There was a legal requirement that all cadidates for the parliament had to sign before the election an oath swearing to take their seat if elected to close off the possibility that some would cripple the parliament by winning but not taking their seats. De Valera wanted to run, and fully intended to take his seat, but had promised to sign no oaths about the parliament elections. On the last day possible, he went to the election clerk who gave him a piece of paper with the oath printed on the top and below it, the lines for candidate signatures. De Valera took a blank piece of paper and covered the oath but leaving the signature line exposed. He then signed the line and made sure that the clerk would remember that he has not signed an oath, but had signed a blank piece of paper where the oath could not be seen. To him this was a very important distinction but if failed to convince most other Irishmen.
Harold Joseph Laski was an English political theorist and economist. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950. He first promoted pluralism by emphasising the importance of local voluntary communities such as trade unions. After 1930, he began to emphasize the need for a workers' revolution, which he hinted might be violent. Laski's position angered Labour leaders who promised a nonviolent democratic transformation. Laski's position on democracy threatening violence came under further attack from Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 1945 general election, and the Labour Party had to disavow Laski, its own chairman.
