Monday 25 June 2018

Foolish Consistency

Here is the "consistency" - applying the law impartially:
Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser in the Trump White House, is quoted prominently in a recent New York Times story. “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” Miller said in a story bylined by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”
A foolish consistency.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
 - "Self-Reliance", Ralph Waldo Emerson

No comments: