Diane Abbott Quotes
The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.
Abbott, Diane. Quoted in "Quote, Unquote," The Independent, 1 Feb. 1998, p. 18.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Porfirio Diaz - the longtime dictator of Mexico stole the election of 1910 and had his opponent Francisco Madero arrested and imprisoned. Madero got out, crossed the border to San Antonio, and issued this declaration which started the Mexican Revolution. See {613620} for the statement that declared the Revolution.
What is fascinating about this quotation is that England itself was an aristocracy with a monarchy and very few elements of fairness and equality. The aristocracy and the monarch very much used the system and the common people for their benefit. However, the degree of abuse and tyranny and absence of any sense of equity, shocked even this English aristocrat. Behoof was a Middle English word derived from words that mean to profit from. By the time he used it, it meant benefit or advantage—a slightly wider meaning, but even in 1591 it was not a commonly used words but one used more by the intelligentsia of the day.
In the early 1900's there were major labor disputes between Colorado miners and the mine owners (the Colorado Mining Wars). Colorado Governor James H. Peabody ordered in a thousand troops under the command of Bell. Replying to the charge that his treatment of the miners was unconstitutional:
Madison went on to observe that in a democracy, the real power may reside in the majority of the population, and in such a case the tyranny of the majority is the danger.
He was referring to governments that imposed some form of morality in their citizens. Free governments do no dictate a morality and require their citizens to follow it. He was very much opposed to Prohibition which he saw as a poor government—Herbert Hoover’s Administration—which was imposing its narrow morality on all. He was very suspicious of government actions where the government claimed that the action was for moral objectives. This is a classic Libertarian view. In general, it is Fundamentalists and ideologues who want to impose their particular morality on all. See {620693} for a related idea.
Diane Julie Abbott MP is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987. A socialist member of the Labour Party, she served in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Home Secretary from 2016 to 2020. Abbott is the first black woman elected to Parliament, and the longest-serving black MP in the House of Commons.
