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World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.

David Frum

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David Frum
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: June 30
Blogger
Journalist
Lawyer
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City of Toronto
David Jeffrey Frum
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More quotes by David Frum

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By abrogating all moral standards in their war against Israel, Arab and Muslim leaders initiated a process of moral collapse that has ended by soaking their own societies in blood. The terror they intended to inflict only upon others has rebounded with a hundred times greater horror upon their own lands.
David Frum
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[In politics,] when there is no reason to speak, there is a reason not to speak.
David Frum
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Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?
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So long as Donald Trump is powerful and popular, Fox News is going to achieve an advertising bonanza unheard of in the era of modern cable, because people will pay them to talk to the president.
David Frum
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Speech writers are more vulnerable to vanity than any other group of people in Washington.
David Frum
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Democracy is not about protests. Democracy is about meetings.
David Frum
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Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.
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I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated.
David Frum
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So if I have two pieces of cake, do I have twice as good an experience as the first piece of cake? One of the things I've found in life is that the first piece of cake is the best.
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Crown Prince Rupprecht, the heir to the throne of Bavaria who commanded the army group facing the British at the Somme, was the senior direct lineal heir of James Stuart, the Old Pretender of 1715. Had there been any Jacobites left in Britain in 1916, they would have had to regard this south German prince as their rightful king.
David Frum
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We're not free because other people are nice, maybe other people aren't nice that day. We're free because we expect the institutions of government to work impersonally. That we expect people in government to understand they don't work for the president or the prime minister, they work for the government. And the government is always there.
David Frum
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Republicans have to move to a point of greater unity.
David Frum
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Canada has a real civil service, which the United States doesn't have, an independent civil service. Canada also has a stronger federal system.
David Frum
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We live in an age of de-democratization. The number of democracies in the world has been going backwards since 2005, and even many existing democracies including in Europe have been becoming less democratic.
David Frum
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People who want to wage cultural wars ought to keep in mind that cultural views often don't move at all for a very long time, but when they move they can move very fast.
David Frum
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Donald Trump doesn't believe in much, doesn't want to do much.
David Frum
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Look, the media are trapped by changes in the technology and business of their industry.
David Frum
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[democrats] hated Richard Nixon, and no wonder. It was Nixon who sent Alger Hiss to jail, and Nixon who waged the Vietnam War after the Democrats gave up.
David Frum
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The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel).
David Frum
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Democracy requires you to learn how to lose as well as how to exercise power when you win. And that requires restraint all around. One of the reasons it works is because when you win you don't do things that are so upsetting to the losers that they feel like they have less, they have more to gain by turning over the system.
David Frum