Sidney Hook Quotes
If one shoots at a king, one must not miss.
The king would often walk alone or with only a few companions. His brother expressed concern about exposing the royal person to risk.
See {585638} for the kind of statement that led people to fear him as a dictator.
See Robert F. Kennedy for a later expression of this sentiment. 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Quoted in somewhat different form by Richard Nixon
See Banjamin Disraeli for an earlier expression of this idea.
Charles I had caused the death of his subjects with impunity and was called to account. However, the English Parliament did not know what specific crime the King had committed. Kings had executed people, guilty of crimes and otherwise, for centuries. For what could a king be accountable. Cooke developed the crime of Tyranny and drew up and presented the indictment for that. The King was found guilty and executed. This was the first time in legal history that a ruler was called to account for crimes committed against his own people. It became the foundation for many trials thereafter including that of Saddam Hussein in 2006.
When Henry came to “George II” he was interrupted by the Speaker, John Robinson, who shouted “Treason!” Henry had been railing against the Stamp Act.
Yitzhak Rabin was the extremely popular President of Israel. At the time of his assassination his party controlled the Knesset (Parliament) and he was moving to make a two state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli problem. An ultra Orthodox Jewish fanatic shot Rabin so what there would be no settlement that would give up Israeli control of Judea and Samaria—the Biblical lands that literal believers in the Bible know that God consecrated that land for the Jewish People. To make a settlement compromise was needed on both sides and Rabin was strong enough to persuade most of the Israelis to take that risk. His successors never had the trust and confidence of the Israeli people that Rabin had as he had led the Israeli armed forces to victory and had also proved that he was a brilliant politician on domestic affairs. The unity that Rabin was able to create among Israelis has never been duplicated by any Israeli politician since.
The motivations and willingness to die of the suicide bomber is not unique to Islamic terrorists. On occasion our CIA has used the technique. Official CIA instructions on “lost assassination” were distributed within the agency and sometimes to our “allies” who we were training.
Sidney Hook was an American philosopher of the pragmatist school known for his contributions to the philosophy of history, the philosophy of education, political theory, and ethics. After embracing communism in his youth, Hook was later known for his criticisms of totalitarianism, both fascism and Marxism–Leninism. A pragmatic social democrat, Hook sometimes cooperated with conservatives, particularly in opposing Marxism–Leninism. After World War II, he argued that members of such groups as the Communist Party USA and Leninists like democratic centralists could ethically be barred from holding the offices of public trust because they called for the violent overthrow of democratic governments.
