Arrogant ignorance

Nor can it touch but of arrogant ignorance, to hold this or that nation barbarous, these or those times gross, considering how this manifold creature man, wheresoever he stand in the world, hath always some disposition of worth, entertains and affects that order of society which is best for his use, and is eminent for some one thing or other that fits his humour and the times. Samuel Daniel


Samuel Daniel's Elizabethan poems about the rivers of England have always made me wonder if people whose forbears come from abroad have the same feeling for English rivers as the indigenous people. I then reflect that I have a lot of Irish blood and I feel the same intense love for English rivers and countryside as any other Englishman.


“To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticiseideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression.”
Rowan Atkinson

"We can starve the Arabs of Haifa and Jaffa" - First Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, December 1947


"We'll deprive Gaza of water, and the Arabs will leave" - Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, 1967


People nowadays seem to think the British colonies in Africa a Bad Thing, as Sellars & Yeatman would put it, but we did enormous good. 

Even South Africa, which was run by Dutch South Africans, who in 1948 invented the horrible apartheid system, was a lot more benign to her indigenous people than the Israelis (excepting the Arabs who had the good fortune or fortitude not to be expelled in 1948).