Explaining Marxism

Unlike many of my friends, I never had much confidence in Mrs. Indira Gandhi. This may have been due to no more than sexist prejudice, which has often caused me to doubt, in the troubled, waking small hours, whether politics is really a suitable occupation for a lady. I have yet to meet a political female (as opposed to the gentle, non-political variety we have known and loved all these years) perfectly able to grasp the concept of political freedom, at any rate in its more complicated form extending to the political beliefs and activities of those with whom one does not happen to agree.

But at least they have that moral certainty which is invaluable for the cut and thrust of political debate. When Mrs. Gandhi was asked about the thousand-odd political prisoners now held without trial in India, she replied (as reported by William Buckley in the Herald Tribune) that perhaps she should increase her number of political prisoners a thousandfold so that the world’s liberals would treat her as a serious progressive like her neighbor Mao Tse-tung.

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Auberon Waugh

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Unlike many of my friends, I never had much confidence in Mrs. Indira Gandhi. This may have been due to no more than sexist prejudice, which has often caused me to doubt, in the troubled, waking small hours, whether politics is really a suitable occupation for a lady. I have yet to meet a political female (as opposed to the gentle, non-political variety we have known and loved all these years) perfectly able to grasp the concept of political freedom, at any rate in its more complicated form extending to the political beliefs and activities of those with whom one does not happen to agree.

But at least they have that moral certainty which is invaluable for the cut and thrust of political debate. When Mrs. Gandhi was asked about the thousand-odd political prisoners now held without trial in India, she replied (as reported by William Buckley in the Herald Tribune) that perhaps she should increase her number of political prisoners a thousandfold so that the world’s liberals would treat her as a serious progressive like her neighbor Mao Tse-tung.