you are not a conservative by the time you are forty you dont have a brain?
2007-03-02 05:15:01 · 8 answers · asked by hadit l 2 in Politics & Government ➔ Other - Politics & Government
Churchll was a leading light in the liberal party until after the Great War 1914-18. During that time he sent thousands of men needlessly to their deaths at Gallipoli. An error which haunted him for the rest of his life. After the war, he joined the Conservative party, during which time he ordered trrops to shoot innocent people during the General Strike. Also during the period between the wars he was vilified by other Conservatives as a hot head and a war monger. Fotunately he had just the kind of attitude that was needed to lead his country to victory in WW2..
So he was a Liberal when he was 20 and long afterwards. Then he became a Conservative in later life. He made dire mistakes which cost many lives as both a Liberal and a Conservative, but still ended up a hero due to his stance against Hitler's Nazis.
His brand of Conservatism was always coloured by his previous Liberalism. He was always a contoversial figure in his time, and not one to readily change his mind. His attitudes and ideals didn't really change at all between the time he was a Liberal and the time he was a Conservative. He changed party's not because he had changed, but because he saw which way the wind was blowing and switched to the party he thought would benefit him most. So the quotation in question is politcally very clever, but is far from being a truism.
2007-03-02 12:05:18 · answer #1 · answered by Sad Sam 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yes.
Basically, what he is saying is that when you are young & idealistic, you want to change all that you see wrong about the world around you--you have the compassion to want to stop the pain & suffering in the world.
By the time you are 40, you are more pragmatic, and realize that it is not as easy as it looks, and not everyone is going to cooperate ...many must be forced to do the right thing, using the very means you were once against.
A hard to stomach example of this is when you just throw a bunch of food at the poor starving people in Africa (or wherever) but do not address the underlying problems that created this situation, and give them the means to be self-supporting; all you end up with is a population that is--for the moment--no longer hungry, but bored and horney, so a year later, the population has doubled, and the problem is just twice as bad.
Being pragmatic helps one address problems in ways that actually solve them, rather than just postpone them, or move them elsewhere.
2007-03-04 23:06:39 · answer #2 · answered by grapejuice 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
He was certainly right about the first one, bot so sure about the second.
Mind you, considering conservatism in Churchill's terms, he may well have been right. His was a very different brand of conservatism to a lot of the ill informed, extreme right wing neocon nonsense you here from many supposed "Conservatives" these days.
2007-03-02 13:56:37 · answer #3 · answered by Spacephantom 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I don't know who that particular saying was ascribed to. But, I think it goes more like this. "If you vote Tory when you are under forty, you have no heart, but, if you vote Labour when you are over forty, you have no brains".
Still a lot of people with no brains I am afraid.
2007-03-03 17:27:52 · answer #4 · answered by Veritas 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes. Absolutely.
2007-03-02 13:24:23 · answer #5 · answered by DJ 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes
2007-03-02 13:21:31 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Look what he did to UK.Won the war[luckily because of Red Army and American Hardware] but lost the Empire.
2007-03-02 13:22:59 · answer #7 · answered by Dr.O 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No I don't think he was right BUT what a wonderful political statement to make
2007-03-02 13:40:27 · answer #8 · answered by Kate J 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋