Dear Editor
We are all familiar with the query, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The question could also be asked, "Which comes first, narcissism or messianism?"
It is one thing to inflict your philosophy on your family or your community, but entirely another when you are a duly elected president, prime minister or otherwise anointed supreme divine oppressor. For example the other days we were treated to the spectacle of our prime minister and Public Safety minister blathering away about prohibiting some 1,500 types or variants of firearms from public ownership.
I have two uncles who took a taxpayer-funded vacation to Europe back in the 1940s where mountains of firearms were handed out and everyone was encouraged to shoot them. My uncles came home, but many brothers, fathers, sons and uncles paid the price for the idiocy in authority. My Uncle Gordon saw two pals die who had attended the same one-room country school as he. (Perhaps the next time Justin comes down Rideau Cottage steps he can tell us how his father spent those years.)
Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt served three terms as president, he had the humility and the wisdom the pass legislation that limited his successors to two. Such students of the human political animal as George Orwell and Eric Hoffer point out the need for checks and balances and limits on those who govern. As the historical record shows, the consequences for the governed are far greater if they always accept that the emperor has clothes.
Tom Lamont
Maidstone
