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After All, In Both Languages We Were Dealing In Large Measure Not With English And French, But With Scots And Irish, Bretons And Normans ... There Could Be No More Eloquent Illustration Of The Colonial Mind-set Than A Bunch Of Celts And Vikings In A Distant Northern Territory Insulting Each Other As Les Anglais And The French As If They Were The Descendants Of The People Who Had Subjected And Ruined Them.

-John Ralston Saul

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After All, In Both

John Ralston Saul

...

After All, In Both Languages We Were Dealing In Large Measure Not With English And French, But With Scots And Irish, Bretons And Normans ... There Could Be No More Eloquent Illustration Of The Colonial Mind-set Than A Bunch Of Celts And Vikings In A Distant Northern Territory Insulting Each Other As Les Anglais And The French As If They Were The Descendants Of The People Who Had Subjected And Ruined Them.

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Freedom - An Occupied Space Which Must Be Reoccupied Every Day.

Humanism: An Exaltation Of Freedom, But One Limited By Our Need To Exercise It As An Integral Part Of Nature And Society.

Money Is Not Real. It Is A Conscious Agreement On Measuring Value.

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Self Confidence

An Individual Who Stands Out, Or Disagrees Or Takes Risks Is A Danger To Such Systems And Is Effortlessly And, Unconsciously Sidelined.

Now Listen To The First Three Aims Of The Corporatist Movement In Germany, Italy And France During The 1920s. These Were Developed By The People Who Went On To Become Part Of The Fascist Experience: (1) Shift Power Directly To Economic And Social Interest Groups; (2) Push Entrepreneurial Initiative In Areas Normally Reserved For Public Bodies; (3) Obliterate The Boundaries Between Public And Private Interest -- That Is, Challenge The Idea Of The Public Interest. This Sounds Like The Official Program Of Most Contemporary Western Governments.

The Faithful Witness, Like...socrates, Voltaire, And Swift And Christ Himself, Is At His Best When He Is Questioning And Clarifying And Avoiding The Specialists Obsession With Solution. He Betrays Society When He Is Silent...he Is True To Himself And To People When His Clarity Causes Disquiet.

Our Civilization Is Locked In The Grip Of An Ideology - Corporatism. An Ideology That Denies And Undermines The Legitimacy Of Individuals As The Citizen In A Democracy. The Particular Imbalance Of This Ideology Leads To A Worship Of Self-interest And A Denial Of The Public Good. The Practical Effects On The Individual Are Passivity And Conformism In The Areas That Matter, And Non-conformism In The Areas That Don't

Venereal: From Venus, The Goddess Of Love, This Word Refers To The Reality Of Desire. With The Rise Of Protestantism And Science, The Word Disease Was Tacked On In A Revealing Combination Of Categorization And Moralizing. Which Disease? The Disease Of Love.

The Best Defence [for A Democracy, For The Public Good] Is Aggressiveness, The Aggressiveness Of The Involved Citizen. We Need To Reassert That Slow, Time-consuming, Inefficient, Boring Process That Requires Our Involvement; It Is Called 'being A Citizen.' The Public Good Is Not Something That You Can See. It Is Not Static. It Is A Process. It Is The Process By Which Democratic Civilizations Build Themselves.

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The Citizen's Job Is To Be Rude - To Pierce The Comfort Of Professional Intercourse By Boorish Expressions Of Doubt.

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If Economists Were Doctors, They Would Today Be Mired In Malpractice Suits.

Whenever Governments Adopt A Moral Tone - As Opposed To An Ethical One - You Know Something Is Wrong.

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Dictionary: Opinion Presented As Truth In Alphabetical Order.

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We All Need A Bit Of Self-delusion. It Gets Us Over The Difficult Spots.

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