Our society is not perfect and this will come as no surprise to many of you. But liberty, you see, that precious child of our liberal democracy only two hundred years old, has one notable side effect. When virtue is at liberty, so to some extent is vice. In a free world there is, alas, more common crime than in a dictatorial system.

Barbara Amiel

Categorized in : Vices Liberty Virtue

By now it is evident that the Soviet Union must gain control of Europe to maintain its empire.

Barbara Amiel

empires unions europe

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.

Barbara Amiel

progress confusion ideas

Totalitarianism is feudalism in the twelfth century sense of the word.

Barbara Amiel

totalitarianism feudalism century

The same liberty that protects me also protects members of the Mafia.

Barbara Amiel

mafia members liberty

Here in Canada, in the Western world, we are inside the walls. Outside the walls are the barbarians.

Barbara Amiel

canada wall world

In a free world there is, alas, more common crime than in a dictatorial system.

Barbara Amiel

crime common world

I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity of travelling across this country and enduring all the classic situations that go with talking to people.

Barbara Amiel

journey opportunity country

When faced with the inevitable fatigue that comes with the recycling of speeches and the recycling of thoughts in a rather small stream of vortex, I am urged to not be ashamed of recycling.

Barbara Amiel

recycling vortex speech

It is not empty rhetoric to talk of the Free World.

Barbara Amiel

rhetoric empty world

Only a free West can help the prisoners of today's left- and right-wing dictatorships.

Barbara Amiel

west wings today

Since Europe is dependent on imports of energy and most of its raw materials, it can be subdued, if not quite conquered, without all those nuclear weapons the Soviets have aimed at it simply through the shipping routes and raw materials they control.

Barbara Amiel

raw-materials energy europe

The interests of the Soviet Union are in controlling highly developed countries and having the benefit of their economies so that they can run their own inefficient empire.

Barbara Amiel

benefits running country

The world today is divided into the free and the enslaved.

Barbara Amiel

world-today today world

Power is sexy, not simply in its own right, but because it inspires self-confidence in its owner and a shiver of subservience on the part of those who approach it.

Barbara Amiel

self-confidence sexy inspire

If America was trying to keep the bubonic plague out of its hemisphere, Canadians would import it just to show their independence of American foreign policy.

Barbara Amiel

independence trying america

Of course the barbarians' aim of world domination has not escaped the attention of the Europeans, perhaps because unlike us they are closer to the walls.

Barbara Amiel

barbarians wall world

Indeed, we Jews were at the leading edge of communist totalitarianism, one of the most murderous movements of the 20th century.

Barbara Amiel

communist century movement

All share complicity in the destruction of that much under-rated phenomenon called liberty.

Barbara Amiel

destruction liberty share

I have got up at truly deplorable hours in the morning to confront Vancouver's Jack Webster on television because I have been told that is the place to get exposure for ideas.

Barbara Amiel

style morning ideas

The People's Republic of China has not yet reached the military might of the Soviet Empire. It requires a little more time and a little more infusion of Western aid, loans, technology and the hard currency of our tourists.

Barbara Amiel

technology military people