Author: pete
Date: 13:38:52 07/03/00
Go up one level in this thread
>>really none of my business but an obvious reply to your original post making >>Voltaire's famous quote look like the cornerstone of the British constitution >>:-) >> >>Ever heard of English sense of humour ? > >Indeed, it gets us into all kinds of trouble. But we use it to keep any >authority from getting too sure of itself. A sort of freedom-maintainer by >ridicule. That's the common theme running from Sheridan to Monty Python and >onwards. We even laughed at Adolf. And correctly so. For he was a fool. As was >proved. Did you ever watch his filmed speeches? What else was there to do but >laugh? Shame the Germans didn't treat him the same way. Yes , it is really hard to believe ; something like Charlie Chaplin's film "The Great Dictator " and the inherent irony looks so obvious _now_ ; you can't believe anyone ever followed him as he was so dumb . But this is just an arrogant attitude probably . Easy to say that now ; to say you would have been able to find out too if you had to realize it when it happened is the _real interesting_ question ( and think of people like Chamberlain before rubbing it in ;-) > >I take the time to quote you from "Voltaire's Coconuts" by Ian Buruma. > >"Why can't the world be more like England? That is the question raised by >Voltaire in the Philosophical Dictionary of 1756. It is a curious question to >ask, especially for a Frenchman. But Voltaire first came to England in 1726, 38 >years after the Glorious Revolution .... having suffered a stint in the Bastille >for publishing a satirical poem and unable to publish another poem on religious >persecution in France, Voltaire saw England as a model of freedom and tolerance >.... Voltaire is the first, or at least the most famous, most eloquent, most >outrageous and often the most perceptive modern Anglophile. > >So why can't the world be more like England? In fact Voltaire's query was a bit >more specific: why can't the laws that guarantee British liberties be adopted >elsewhere? Of course, being a rationalist and a universalist, Voltaire had to >assume that they could be. But he anticipated the objections of less enlightened >minds" > >I could go on, but won't. > >Off-topic? Probably. But a plus side is that Fernando will now buy the book. >Speak to you about it later, Fernando. > >Weidenfield and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-64312-6 > > >Chris Whittington > all very cute , all very clever , and really fun to read , still you thought the original quote was made by an English man , didn't you ;-) ? regards. pete
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