He loved it so much he spent his life trying to turn it in to something else.
Utter codswallop. That's the very foundation of liberty - the ability to work towards a society you regard as a better one, as long as you do it in a non-violent and democratic way. Change is an inevitability - without it women and most men would still be voteless, women would still be subject wholly to their husbands and fathers and unable to own property, and domestic violence would be "reasonable chastisement". There would be no assistance for the poor, the elderly or the sick, and nor would there be free and compulsory universal education. Change is not necessarily bad! And engaging in a country's public discourse in order to support and implement changes you sincerely believe are to the better is one of the most patriotic things you can do. That is so no matter what end of the political spectrum someone hails from.
Socialism is vile. It treats people as things, and socialists are always astonished to discover that without the checks and balances of democracy it always descends in to dictatorship. It is anathema to Liberty and anathema to humanity.
Most of that is meaningless adjective soup. Do you always talk in such vague and nebulous terms when trying to defend your position? Don't you have access to any facts? But there is one point that is plainly ridiculous: the entire point of capitalist economies is to treat people, in the form of labour, as a commodity. As much of a commodity as the raw materials, power bills and housing costs necessary to produce the end product. As such, they are treated as things - as objects, as a resource. It's ridiculous to argue that a system that produces such horrors as the Bangladeshi factory collapses or the Texan factory explosion is somehow an exemplar of "Liberty". It's just a figleaf soundbite, not merely meaningless but actually mendacious. Unrestricted capitalism exploits the economically weak majority in order to assist the tiny group with power and money. That's the default setting. How is that "Liberty" for the overwhelming majority of people, and how does it treat them as human individuals rather than a resource? It's stupid to argue otherwise. Socialism attempts to ensure that working people benefit from their work and that they live lives in which nobody suffers extremes of poverty or want. Yet to you, that is "treating people as things". Quite bizarre. Accepting the human dignity of each and every individual is the least dehumanising and objectifying system of belief possible. It seems impossibly idealistic to me, as I don't think human nature is as altruistic as socialism in its extreme form requires, but I have to say, I find the underlying aims laudable. How are the underlying aims of capitalism - that the few exploit the many - laudable, in a world where your birth defines so much about your life chances? It harnesses the least admirable traits of humanity well, drives the economy forward as a result, and for that reason I think it very much has a role to play, but pretending capitalism is the guardian of "Liberty" is just laughable. Left in its purest form it simply ensures an oligarchy. Which is the antithesis of liberty for the vast majority of people.
And why on earth are you sneering that socialists are always astonished to discover that without the checks and balances of democracy it always descends in to dictatorship? I appreciate it's a handy straw man argument if you happen to be someone more comfortable tilting at windmills than actually dealing with the realities of a diverse political landscape, but Miliband actually wrote a book on democratic socialism. He didn't feel the Labour party went far enough, true, but that's hardly an unusual or even very extreme position, is it? In case it's escaped your attention, without the checks and balances of democracy extreme right wing governments also descend into dictatorship and terror. It has nothing to do with the views and everything to do with the kind of enraged venom aimed at opponents your own posts display. You hate people with views that differ to your own and feel it acceptable to call them "vile" and opine that they have no right to hold or express them, because to do so is an assault on "Liberty"? Seriously? And you don't see that as an attack on democracy on your part? I can't think of many things less likely to foster a healthy democracy than hysterical rage when people hold views you dislike, and an insistence that those views have no place in the country and those who hold them clearly hate the place. Demonising diversity is profoundly, fundamentally anti-democratic.
Yes, woe unto the nation now that the state is being rolled back to its size in 2005.
And with that you expose your own wholesale ignorance of what is happening in this country at the moment. Perhaps if you read papers other than the Mail - or even better some books - then you might learn something? Policy on the NHS, education, welfare reform, for example. (You might even understand the difference between anarchism and parliamentary socialism, which at present you do not.)
Editorials set the direction for the paper but they aren't produced in a vacuum and unless they share the ethos of the average reader.
Indeed, which is presumably why the Mirror's circulation fell, and as the paper was no longer owned by the Rothermere clan (unlike the Mail, then and to this day) it was free to alter its political tack from that the family had set. Which it did. Might I suggest you actually start reading up on these things yourself instead of blindly parroting the Mail's line, and then clinging to it stubbornly when presented with the actual facts? You might post a little more effectively.
And Claig, I suspect that the overwhelming majority of those who read the Mail do so to learn what sort of knickers Kim Kardashian wears and whether Simon Cowell is having an affair with Cheryl Cole. Touching as your faith in the Mail's political influence is, I fear it's a fantasy.