Yet Another Thing Canadians And Europeans Have

The Trouble Is That Privacy Is At Once Essential To, And In Tension With, Both Freedom And Security. A Cabinet Minister Who Keeps His Mistress In Satin Sheets At The French Taxpayer's Expense Cannot Justly Object When The Press Exposes His Misuse Of Public Funds. Our Freedom To Scrutinise The Conduct Of Public Figures Trumps That Minister's Claim To Privacy. The Question Is: Where And How Do We Draw The Line Between A Genuine Public Interest And That Which Is Merely What Interests The Public?

Developments In Information Technology And Globalised Media Mean That The Most Powerful Military In The History Of The World Can Lose A War, Not On The Battlefield Of Dust And Blood, But On The Battlefield Of World Opinion.

Europe's Biggest Problem Is Its Success.

Facts Are Subversive. Subversive Of The Claims Made By Democratically Elected Leaders As Well As Dictators, By Biographers And Autobiographers, Spies And Heroes, Torturers And Post-modernists. Subversive Of Lies, Half-truths, Myths; Of All Those "easy Speeches That Comfort Cruel Men.

Except For Its Worst Inner-city Slums, America Is Not The Primitive Capitalist Jungle Of European Imagination, Where Human Beings Slink Away Like Wounded Animals To Die In Bloodstained Holes.