Political Authors From England

"CLOE, dear JACK, that once victorious Name, CLOE, the Object of my raging Flame, Whom I did more than Life or Friendship prize, In Fleetstreet now a common strumpet plies, Turns up to ev’ry Puppy in the Town, And claps the Temple Rake for half a Crown."

"CLOE, as soon as she has plaid the Whore, Repents the Deed, and vows to do’t no more; With the next Man she meets, to cure her Pain, She breaks her Vow, repents, and vows again; Breaks it again, so yielding is the Dame, And does the next Day and the next the same; Or keep thy Vows, frail Nymph, or vow no more, Cease to repent, or cease to play the Whore. Plain Fornication is a venial Evil, But Perjury leads headlong to the Devil."

"[What is Keir Starmer's Labour government for?] Is it for social justice? Equality? Liberalism? Freedom? No one knows, and Starmer actively dislikes talking in these terms. To return to [[Harold Wilson|[Harold] Wilson]]'s aphorism, from [[Jeremy Corbyn|[Jeremy] Corbyn]] to Starmer, Labour has gone from being nothing but a moral crusade to anything but. And by forgoing the theory of politics, Starmer is leaving himself open to the most obvious post-election day attack: now the Tories are gone, his principal argument for the necessity of himself has gone with it. What is the point of Starmer? What gels a wide but shallow coalition together without the Tory bogeyman at the door? What will the Starmer coalition be for as well as against? That question has not been answered in the election campaign."

"To harpe no longer upon this string, & to speake a word of that just commendation which our nation doe indeed deserve: it can not be denied, but as in all former ages, they have bene men full of activity, stirrers abroad, and searchers of the remote parts of the world, so in this most famous and peerless government of her most excellent Majesty, her subjects through the speciall assistance, and blessing of God, in searching the most opposite corners and quarters of the world, and to speake plainly, in compassing the vaste globe of the earth more then once, have excelled all the nations and people of the earth."

"The two editions of Hakluyt's Principall Navigtions, in 1589 and 1598–1600 respectively, embodied twenty years of concerted effort to build a tradition of maritime enterprise and achievement. This again was based in medieval record and legend and so showed the multiple initiatives of Tudor times in perspective, implying a national destiny. Moreover Hakluyt brought together the minds of those concerned, from ordinary seamen to lord admirals, from tourists in the Middle East to City magnates and royal favourites, and he engaged the support of those most committed to expansion, notably Richard Staper, Anthony Jenkinson and Michael Lok, all merchant pioneers, Sir John Hawkins, Ralegh and, above all, Walsingham. Thus Hakluyt did more than anyone to integrate and organize the disparate personalities, experiences and aspirations into a movement with a common consciousness and harnessed the horses of nationalism to the chariot of empire."

"And yet those five volumes may be called the Prose Epic of the modern English nation. They contain the heroic tales of the exploits of the great men in whom the new era was inaugurated; not mythic, like the Iliads and the Eddas, but plain broad narratives of substantial facts, which rival legend in interest and grandeur. What the old epics were to the royally or nobly born, this modern epic is to the common people."

"The sea-war in general and privateering in particular did much to associate English nationalism with militant maritime expansion. In attitudes at least the war marked a turning point, signalized by the publication of Hakluyt's Principall Navigations in the year after the Armada and of its extended edition in 1598–1600. Hakluyt's message of oceanic imperialism conquered the reading public with such triumphant ease because the public mind was now ready to accept it."

"I am told that the secret letters between Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough, in the first glow of their passion, are still extant in a certain house in the Green Park. They used to correspond under feigned and romantic names. When this intense friendship abated, the duchess was certainly more in fault than the queen. Such was the equality produced by their intimacy, that almost the sole remaining idea of superiority remained with her who had the advantage in personal charms—and in this there was unfortunately no comparison. The duchess became so presumptuous that she would give the queen her gloves to hold, and on taking them again would affect suddenly to turn her head away, as if her royal mistress had perspired some disagreeable effluvia!"

"The word CHURCH had never any charm for me, in the mouths of those who made the most noise about it; for I could not perceive that they gave any other distinguishing proof of their regard for the thing than a frequent use of the word, like a spell to enchant weak minds; and a persecuting zeal against Dissenters and against those real friends of the Church who would not admit that persecution was agreeable to its doctrine. And as to Affairs of State: Many of these Churchmen seem to me to have no fixed principles at all, having endeavored during the last reign, to undermine that very government which they had contributed to establish."

"Let me correct a story relating to the great duke of Marlborough. The duchess was pressing the duke to take a medicine, and with her usual warmth said, "I'll be hanged if it do not prove serviceable." Dr. Garth, who was present, exclaimed, "Do take it then my lord duke; for it must be of service, in one way or the other.""

"It is to her the the Duke is chiefly indebted for his greatness and his fall; for above twenty years she possessed, without a rival, the favours of the most indulgent mistress in the world, nor ever missed one single opportunity that fell in her way of improving it to her own advantage. She hath preserved a tolerable court-reputation, with respect to love and gallantry; but three furies reigned in her breast, the most mortal enemies of all softer passions, which were sordid avarice, disdainful pride, and ungovernable rage; by the last of these often breaking out in sallies of the most unpardonable sort, she had long alienated her sovereign's mind, before it appeared to the world. This lady is not without some degree of wit, and hath in her time affected the character of it, by the usual method of arguing against religion, and proving the doctrines of Christianity to be impossible and absurd. Imagine what such a spirit, irritated by the loss of power, favour, and employment, is capable of acting or attempting, and then I have said enough."

"The beauty of the Duchess of Marlborough had always been of the scornful and imperious kind, & her features and air announced nothing that her temper did not confirm; both together, her beauty & temper, enslaved her heroic Lord. One of her principal charms was a prodigious abundance of fine fair hair. One day at her toilet in anger to him she cut off these commanding tresses and flung them in his face. Nor did her Insolence stop there; nor stop till it had totally estranged and worn out the patience of the poor Queen her Mistress. The duchess was often seen to give her Majesty her fan & gloves & turn away her own head, as if the Queen had offensive smells."

"Lady Anne Egerton, the deceased Lady Bridgewater's only daughter, married first Wriothesley Duke of Bedford, and secondly to Lord Jersey. This lady inherited such a share of her grandmother's imperial spirit, as to match her pretty fairly, and insure daggers' drawing as soon as it should find time and opportunity to display itself. But, ere the stormy season set in, the grandame had acquired her picture; which she afterwards made a monument of vengeance, in no vulgar or ordinary mode. She did not give it away; nor sell it to a broker; nor send it up to a lumber-garret; nor even turn its front to the wall. She had the face blackened over, and this sentence, She is much blacker within, inscribed in large characters on the frame. And thus, placed in her usual sitting-room, it was exhibited to all beholders."

"Bishop Burnet's absence of mind is well known. Dining with the duchess of Marlborough, after her husband's disgrace, he compared this great general to Belisarius. "But," said the Duchess, eagerly, "how came it that such a man was so miserable, and universally deserted?"—"Oh, madam (exclaimed the distrait prelate), he had such a brimstone of a wife!""

"The Duchess...made court at the accession of the present family, by abusing Queen Anne to the Princess of Wales (afterwards Queen Caroline). One day relating her violent quarrel with her mistress, She said to the Queen, "then, Madam, you mean to bring over your Brother!" The Queen replied, "I wish I was sure he was my Brother!"—This implied two things, that She doubted whether he was genuine; & that if he was, She would bring him over. "And yet, continued the Duchess, the Creature (Caroline was shocked at such an expression used about a Queen—and might have been shocked more at the ingratitude of the Woman who used it), notwithstanding her letters, knew he was her brother." The Princess asked what She meaned by notwithstanding her letters—She meaned those the Queen had writ, and as She owned by her advice, as it was her then beleif, to persuade the Prince and Princess of Orange that Queen Mary of Este was not with child—which after King William came over, they found so much reason to doubt—enough, it is plain, to convince the Duchess that the Cheavlier was King James's Son."

"Lady Bateman struck the first stroke, and persuaded her Brother to marry a handsome young Lady, who unluckily was daughter of Lord Trevor, who had been a bitter enemy of his Grandfather the victorious Duke. The Grandam's rage exceeded all bonds. Having a portrait of Lady Bateman She blackened the face and wrote on it, "now her outside is as black as her inside". The Duke She turned out of the little Lodge in Windsor park, and then pretending that the new Duchess & her female cousins, eight Trevors, had stripped the house and garden, She had a puppet-show made with waxen figures representing the Trevors tearing up the Shrubs, and the Duchess carrying off the chicken-coop under her arm. Her fury did but increase when Mr Fox prevailed on the Duke to go over to the Court. With her coarse intemperate humour She said, "That was the Fox that had stolen her Goose". Repeated injuries at last drove the Duke to go to law with her. Fearing that even no Lawyer would come up to the Billingsgate with which She was animated herself, She appeared in the court of justice, and with some wit and infinite abuse treated the laughing public with the spectacle of a Woman who had held the reins of empire metamorphosed into the Widow Blackacre. Her Grandson in his suit demanded a sword set with diamonds given to his Grandsire by the Emperor. "I retained it said the Beldame, lest he should pick out the diamonds and pawn them.""

"Incapable of due respect to superiors, it was no wonder she treated her children & inferiors with supercilious contempt. Her eldest Daughter, & She were long at variance & never reconciled. When the younger Duchess exposed herself by placing a monument & silly epitaph of her own composition & bad spelling to Congreve in Westminster abbey, her Mother, quoting the words, said, "I know not what pleasure She might have in his company, but I am sure it was no honour." With her youngest daughter the Duchess of Montagu old Sarah agreed as ill—"I wonder, said the Duke of Marlborough to them, that you cannot agree, you are so alike!" Of her grand-daughter the Duchess of Manchester daughter of the Duchess of Montagu, She affected to be fond. One day she said to her, "Dss of Manchester, you are a good creature & I love you mightily—but you have a mother!" "and She has a Mother!" answered the Manchester, who was all Spirit, justice, and honour, & could not suppress sudden truth."

"I asked her Lady Suffolk] about the Queen's loving to see the Duchess of Marlboro—She said, as I have heard from others too, that the Latter always behaved rudely & yet making Court by abusing queen Anne. Lady Suffolk says she was so disgusted with this meanness, that She said to the Queen, "now, Madam, woud it be worse, if all these Stories were mere Invention?" She says, the Duchess was persuaded that by the very time Queen Anne came to the Crown, She had lost her favour, & only governed Her by her Timidity. Towards the end of her life, Queen Anne had had an operation in her back—the Duchess used to wait in the outward room, and say, I will not go in till that Nasty Thing is over—no wonder with so many Enemies, this was reported to the Queen."

"We all know what an astonishing personality Sarah's was: her beauty, her passionate devotion to her famous husband, her forthrightness, candour and sincerity, her possessiveness and tenacity, the jealous spirit that went with it, her quarrelsomeness and next to impossibility for anybody to live with. She was like a flame that scorched, rather than warmed, everything that came near her. And yet one would forgive her everything for her magnificent answer to the Duke of Somerset: "If I were young and handsome as I was, instead of old and faded as I am, and you could lay the empire of the world at my feet, you should never share the heart and hand that once belonged to John, Duke of Marlborough.""

"What they’ll find instead is demagoguery and Yiannopolous encouraging the audience to suppress dissent. When an attendee spoke out of turn to challenge him on the assertion that there is no gender pay gap, that person was ridiculed by Yiannopolous and then shouted down by the audience. Once that person was escorted out of the auditorium by security (the response to every disruption), Yiannopolous finally calmed the crowd. Then he asked, "Is anyone else here stupid enough to believe in the pay gap?", with the implication anyone answering in the affirmative would be subject to the same treatment."

"You remind me of a young, gay, alive Christopher Hitchens."

"I have come to believe, in the course of our bizarro unfriendship, that Milo believes in almost nothing concrete—not even in free speech. The same is reportedly true of Trump, of people like Ann Coulter, of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage: They are pure antagonists unencumbered by any conviction apart from their personal entitlement to raw power and stacks of cash."

"There's nothing the right wing loves more than a black person willing to say black people are the real racists or a queer person willing to say queer people are the real threat. If you're queer or a person of color and you're telegenic and articulate and willing to sell the rancid cum rag that passes for your soul, you'll never have to do an honest day's work again in your life."

"He's a trickster and trickster figures emerge in times of crisis and they point out what no one wants to see and they say things that no one will say."

"Shapiro has always been deeply conservative and does not pretend to be objective. But he says his market niche is giving cleareyed reads of current events, not purely partisan rants. He is often compared to his former colleague at , Milo Yiannopoulos. On the surface, they seem the same. Both speak on college campuses. Both draw protests. Both used to work for Mr. Bannon at Breitbart. Both are young. In fact, they are very different. Mr. Yiannopoulos, a protégé of Mr. Bannon, was good at shocking audiences, saying things like "feminism is cancer." But critics say that he was empty of ideas, a kind of nihilistic rodeo clown who was not even conservative. Mr. Shapiro broke with Mr. Bannon last year, saying Breitbart had become a propaganda tool for Mr. Trump."

"Yiannopolous makes nearly no arguments in his presentations. [...] No one will be educated on the reasoning of the Right by engaging with him."

"The Q&A provided no opportunities for give and take, either. Questions were provided to a moderator on note cards. If anything challenging was handed in, it wasn’t read. [...] This was not a forum for debate."

"A large segment of this country wants women to shut up and black folks to sit down. If you're putting your very best efforts into making that happen, as Yiannopoulos was, there's a rich market demand for your services that includes corporate book sellers and right-wing media outlets."

"My basic gripe with Milo is that he strikes me as fairly insincere. I mean, he appears to be trolling all of humanity at this point and having a lot of fun doing it. And half of what he says about social justice warriors and political correctness and Islamophobia is very incisive and amusing. But he seems to approach everything as a performance, and this leads me wondering what he actually believes."

"They were fine with his bigotry, his in-your-face, two-fingers-up transphobia, Islamophobia and misogyny. It took his defense of relationships between "older men" and "younger boys" for their queasiness to set in. The case of Milo Yiannopoulos is indeed a parable of our time."

"Milo's fan club avoids honest debate and truthful argument like the plague. It's a trick. They bite every hand that reaches out to them and then play the victim when one comes back as a fist in their face. You can't shove fingers into your ears and scream “la la la, I am not listening” like children when anyone attempts to speak with you and then turn around and ask for respectful discourse when we get tired of your bullshit."

"I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he’s missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with. I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end."

"This monster right here that you're so afraid of, the face you in your nightmares, was created by social justice warrior assholes like you! Now you have this wonderful faggot, that's what happens."

"His associates are the ascendant racist and neo-fascist movements of our time. He was a means to repackage their hatred for a certain demographic: as edgy, trendy, cool. Performative fascism, if you like. That’s why they call themselves the "alt-right", after all: allowing them to cloak themselves not as a renaissance of fascist movements that have produced only human carnage in their previous incarnations, but as a sexy in-group and subculture that all the new cool kids are part of."

"In the course of my Dangerous Faggot tour, I’ve had my fair share of bans… but here’s one I didn’t see coming. I’ve been banned from San Francisco! Me, the gayest person on the planet. Banned. From San Francisco, the queerest city in America. Apparently I’m just too dangerous of a faggot, even for a city that pumps AZT directly into the water."

"It was perfectly consensual. When I was the 14, I was the predator."

"I call myself a Trump-sexual. I have a very antiwhite bedroom policy, but Trump is kind of like the exception to that rule."

"Muslims are allowed to get away with almost anything. They can shut down and intimidate prominent ex-Muslims. They’re allowed to engage in the most brazen anti-semitism, even as they run for office in European left-wing political parties. And, of course, politicians and the media routinely turn a blind eye to the kind of sexism and homophobia that would instantly end the career of a non-Muslim conservative — and perhaps get the latter arrested for hate speech when he dared to object."

"When I used to kid that I only became gay to torment my mother, I wasn’t entirely joking. Of course, I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle — Who is? Who could be? — and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles. That’s not to say I didn’t throw myself enthusiastically into degeneracy of all kinds in my private life. I suppose I felt that’s all I deserved. I’d love to say it was all an act, and I’ve been straight this whole time, but even I don’t have that kind of commitment to performance art. Talk about method acting."

"I’ve finally been persuaded out of retirement. But my skills are a bit rusty, so the best role I could land was an unpaid internship with a friend. Pray for me!"

"Every time you write one of your commentaries it gets 10,000 comments. It goes even broader than the Breitbart audience, all over. Steven Bannon to Milo Yiannopoulos"

"You want the truth, Milo? You are a hurt 13-year-old boy. I don't know what pain you had to go through to make you so cold and distant from any feelings of compassion and basic kindness, but causing hurt makes you into the monster you are running from."

"When his comments about pedophilia/pederasty came to light, Simon & Schuster realized it would cost them more money to do business with Milo than he could earn for them. They did not finally "do the right thing" and now we know where their threshold, pun intended, lies. They were fine with his racist and xenophobic and sexist ideologies. They were fine with his transphobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. They were fine with how he encourages his followers to harass women and people of color and transgender people online. Let me assure you, as someone who endured a bit of that harassment, it is breathtaking in its scope, intensity, and cruelty but hey, we must protect the freedom of speech. Certainly, Simon & Schuster was not alone in what they were willing to tolerate. A great many people were perfectly comfortable with the targets of Milo's hateful attention until that attention hit too close to home."

"So I have an intern that was raped by a priest as a young teen, was gay, has offended everyone at some point, turned his life back to Jesus and Church, and changed his life"

"At every turn, the right has lauded him as a free-speech hero, while disregarding his attacks on the most vulnerable of targets. Yiannopoulos invaded Leslie Jones' mentions to shut her down, lob misogynist insults and invite his followers to do the same. He has suggested that women should stop "screwing up the internet for men," and instead of speaking out about online harassment, "just log off." He endlessly fetishizes black men, reducing them to hypersexualized stereotypes, then doubles down with yet more stereotypes. "I lift young black men out of poverty every day." Yiannopoulos, proud troll by trade, wrote in one Facebook post last year. "Sure, the next morning my driver takes them right back there but whatever." Apparently, the only way conservatives can think of to assert their free speech rights is by dehumanizing people based on race and gender identity."

"The lesson of this whole disgusting debacle seems to be that for half this country to hit rock bottom, they have to dig past racism, xenophobia, misogyny and religious hatred, and then keep right on digging until they hit pedophilia. It's not surprising that a segment which believes boasting about pussy grabbing is no biggie would be fine with any horrific thing Yiannopoulos said as long as he kept it to those it resents—the non-white, non-Christian and non-male—for demanding equal treatment, an idea it disparages as "political correctness.""

"It’s easy to mock video gamers as dorky loners in yellowing underpants. Indeed, in previous columns, I’ve done it myself. Occasionally at length. But, the more you learn about the latest scandal in the games industry, the more you start to sympathise with the frustrated male stereotype. Because an army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers, are terrorising the entire community – lying, bullying and manipulating their way around the internet for profit and attention."

"What I think people saw was an emotionally needy Ann Coulter wannabe, trying to make a buck off of the left’s propensity for outrage."

"He’s a trickster figure archetypally speaking. He’s a provocateur and a comedian. The funny thing about comedians is that they are like the jester in the king’s court. The jester was the only person who could tell the truth because he was beneath contempt."

"Something true most people won’t say: Steve Bannon sacrificed his whole life for his country. His life will never be the same again. He was called a white supremacist and neo-Nazi by the press because they recognized what a formidable adversary he was."