Sparks: PM believes Brexit vote was legitimate despite Russia claims, No 10 says
Storms may batter the hull and foreign winds fill the sails, yet the captain insists the course remains his own even as the ship drifts toward the rocks of his own vanity.
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, but the politician finds a noisier sort by pretending the house he built is not leaning because of the very winds he invited inside.
Democratic citizens often mistake the absence of visible chains for the presence of true liberty, even when the soft despotism of foreign influence has already bent the national will to its purpose.
Does the archer truly claim the shot as his own if another hand nudged his elbow, or does he merely fear that admitting the interference would reveal his own lack of skill?
We break the old chains only to find that the new independence is a phantom, haunted by the shadows of distant powers who feast upon the chaos of our unfinished republics.
A house divided against itself cannot stand, and a ballot box that admits the breath of a foreign tyrant, however slightly, cannot long be held as the sacred repository of a people's will.
Traveling through many lands, I observe that a judge who ignores the corrupted scales of the merchant in the market remains a judge in name only, while the people pay the price.
The center of your small world holds no special sanctity, for if the infinite stars exert their pull upon your tiny sphere, your claims of absolute sovereignty are but a desperate prayer.
The creator stands amidst the wreckage of his laboratory, insisting the creature is benign even as the stitches of foreign design begin to pull apart the very fabric of his creation.
Puerperal fever does not cease to kill simply because the physician refuses to wash his hands, nor does a tainted vote become healthy because the minister declares the contagion to be negligible.
Hegemony functions best when the subaltern believes the choices presented to him are natural, even when the very stage upon which he votes was constructed by interests he cannot see.
It is a most efficient form of governance to allow foreign powers to manage one's internal disputes, as it saves the domestic treasury the heavy expense of actually convincing the populace of anything.
If the operational sequence is fed a corrupted variable from an external source, the engine will unfailingly produce a result that mirrors the error, regardless of the operator's faith in the mechanism.
Things that are unconvincing: a minister who smiles while the garden fence is broken, a decree that insists the rain did not make the silk wet, and a result without honor.
Monopolists of power, like those of trade, will always assure us that their private advantage is identical to the public good, even when the invisible hand moving them belongs to a rival.
Modern reformers are always busy tearing down the fence of sovereignty, only to be shocked when the wolves they ignored come in to help them count the sheep.
Power concedes nothing without a demand, and a leadership that tolerates the interference of a foreign master in the people's business has already surrendered the very freedom it claims to defend.
They talk about the law and the vote with high voices, but my back knows that when the master invites a stranger to whip the children, the house is no longer a home.