The British prime minister didn’t go far enough—though he went further than most politicians.
Listening to and reading Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent speech about Islamic extremism in Britain, I realized why I could never be a practicing politician. Its mixture of good sense, half-truths, evasions, political correctness, and electioneering was anathema to me. It was the stock-in-trade of a man obliged by his position to balance a hundred considerations at once, an obligation that precludes intellectual honesty, even if the latter is desired.
.... Every politician, it seems, must tread on the eggshells of political correctness. Cameron felt constrained to say, “It is here in Britain where success is achieved not in spite of diversity but because of diversity . . . . Every one of the communities that has come to call our country home has made Britain a better place.” Suggestio falsi and suppressio veri can hardly go further. [City Journal] Read more
