It is a fantasy to believe that you punish politicians by throwing them out of office. It is when they leave office that they start making the real m… - Peter Hitchens

Since the French Revolutionaries set up the guillotine, the same thing has been true. Revolutions are all based on the false idea that humans and their nature can be changed. And once changed, they will fit neatly into the Utopia that is planned for them. Utopia, as we find every so often in Russia, China and Cambodia, can only be approached across a sea of blood, and you never actually arrive.

Smoking and buggery can both kill you, by exposing you to diseases you would not otherwise get. If homosexual acts were as common as smoking we would have to bury the victims in mass graves because AIDS slays so much faster than cancer, heart disease or emphysema. (p. 129, 2016 edition)

his power over the fate of Prince of Wales was absolute and direct. He sent the ship ... into mortal peril. its combination military folly, and of boyish Churchillian posturing, is striking. pg.162