“Although an enormous diversity of opinion was behind bars in the Gulag... all the dissidents understood that a society that does not protect the right of dissent, even if the society perfectly conforms to their own unique values and ideas, will inevitably turn into a fear society that endangers everybody.... A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the town square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it’s a fear society.”

Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy

"Religion alone makes the righting of wrongs seem urgent without magnifying them to fill the whole universe, alone allows of humility without subservience, determination without arrogance, and contentment without inertia. It is, in fact, the only alternative to Totalitarianism, which explains why religion and the Totalitarian State are always at war with one another."

Malcolm Muggeridge in "Time and Tide" (1937) in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge

“One of the marks of despotism, as all history shows, is that it is unteachable. Its intrinsic nature, it would seem, is such that it must always, sooner or later, express itself in ways which are not only indefensible but also quite manifestly indefensible.”

Lord Hewart of Bury The New Despotism

In my latest Looniepolitics column I say the Elections Ontario handbook that completely misstates how our government works is a worrying sign of rot in our government.

"Whether, in the great transfer of estates, injustice had or had not been committed, was immaterial. That transfer, just or unjust, had taken place so long ago, that to reverse it would be to unfix the foundations of society. There must be a time of limitation to all rights. After thirty-five years of actual possession, and after twenty-five years of possession solemnly guaranteed by statute, after innumerable leases and releases, mortgages and devises, it was too late to search for flaws in titles."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England (regarding Ireland, and arguing that James II could have put the issue to rest by confirming current owners in their title while taxing them heavily enough to pay decent compensation to the dispossessed)