Liberty and Prosperity
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Liberty and Prosperity’
Wilfrid Israel used his Berlin department store as cover for smuggling thousands of Jewish children to safety in Britain.
Wilfrid Israel (1899-1943) was a wealthy German retailer, who used his business as a cover to bring thousands of Jewish children to Britain in the run-up to the Second World War, saving them from ‘deportation, extermination and annihilation’ - words thought too melodramatic at the time, but only too accurate.
If Britain is a chessboard, then politicians should remember that the ‘pieces’ are alive, and they generally play a better game.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith has been discussing how the character of individuals may affect the happiness of wider society. He sets up a contrast between ‘the man of humanity and benevolence’, who respects others and tries to improve society by persuasion, and ‘the man of system’, who reaches out to move people and peoples around as if they were just pawns on a chessboard.
No one is more dangerous than the man who thinks that it is his destiny to direct things for the common good.
The revolutionary Scottish philosopher Adam Smith did not like to hear politicians speaking of managing the national economy ‘for the common good’. Leaving ordinary people to manage their own affairs was, he said, far more beneficial to society at large, and much less of a temptation to susceptible politicians.
The Scottish missionary and medic believed that slavery could better be eradicated by trade than by force.
By the 1840s Britain had so repented of her involvement in slavery that she was the leading force in worldwide abolition. One of the most beloved anti-slavery campaigners was Scottish missionary, Dr David Livingstone.
Howard gave his life to saving the ‘great gifts and strange inconsistencies’ of Britain’s unique democracy.
Leslie Howard Steiner (1893-1943) was born in London, to an English mother and a Jewish father who had emigrated from Hungary. Howard became the quintessential British matinee-idol, languid, slightly detached, but with a sense of something more beneath: a curious case of art imitating life.
In a Christmas broadcast in 1940, actor Leslie Howard explained why British sovereignty was worth fighting for.
In a radio broadcast just before Christmas in 1940, British actor Leslie Howard spoke movingly of the remarkable and indeed unique character of his country, built on individual liberty and democratic government, and contrasted it with the ‘new European order’.