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Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) Quotes

Thomas Eugene Flanagan is an American-born Canadian author, conservative political activist, and former political science professor at the University of Calgary. He also served as an advisor to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper until 2004.

Flanagan has focused on challenging certain historical interpretations of Native and Métis history. In connection with his multi-year research and publications on Louis Riel, Flanagan published a reinterpretation of the North-West Rebellion, defending the federal government's response to Métis land claims. He began publishing works on Riel—leader of the 1885 North-West Resistance—in the 1970s, which evolved into a multi-year 'Louis Riel Project' that he coordinated. During the 2012 provincial elections he served as the campaign manager of the Wildrose Party, an Alberta libertarian/conservative provincial party.As part of his political activism, Flanagan began to write as a columnist in 1997 in The Globe and Mail, National Post, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen, Maclean's, and Time. He regularly made appearances on Canadian television and radio as a commentator until January 2013, when he began a "research and scholarship leave" from the University of Calgary prior to his retirement. Wikipedia  

✵ 5. March 1944
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Thomas Flanagan (political scientist): 16 quotes0 likes

Famous Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) Quotes

“Well I think Assange should be assassinated actually. I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something. There's no good coming of this…”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Power and Politics with Evan Solomon, CBC Newsworld, November 30, 2010, 6:10pm.

“I want to illustrate the concept of a solution in mixed strategies with a concrete example using real-world data, but I have not been able to find an appropriate one from Canadian politics.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 2, Game Theory, p. 30.

“For the foreseeable future, Canada will have to be functionally bimetric, as well as a bilingual, country.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 4, Models of Metrication, p. 58.

“Thomas Flanagan: Well I'm feeling pretty manly today…”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Power and Politics with Evan Solomon, CBC Newsworld, November 30, 2010, 6:10pm authenticate here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VADui7m9rgw&feature=related

“There is no iron law here, but there is clearly some tendency for larger-than-necessary coalitions to disintegrate.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 5, How Many Are Too Many? Size of Coalitions, p. 88.

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) Quotes

“Flanagan, Thomas(1998). Game Theory and Canadian Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-7946-6.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

References

“Ever since Comte first set the agenda of social science, his megalomania lingers on in sociology, political science, and other disciplines.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 1, Rational Choice, p. 19.

“Finally, it should also be noted that the very existence of a bicameral legislature is itself another defence of the status quo.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 8, Staying Power of the Status Quo, p. 138

“But if politics is an art, it is not like sculpture or painting, where one side acts and the other is passive material. It is more like drama without a script, or dance without choreography - in other words, improvisation. Either player may surprise us again with a new move.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 3, Stalemate At Lubicon Lake, p. 54.

“Public opinion can become polarized into a bimodal distribution with only a few people in the centre and many more lying toward the extremes. But under such circumstances, democracy will probably break down into civil war, and spatial models of party competition will be irrelevant until order is restored.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 9, Invasion From The Right: Reform Party in 1993 Election, p. 142.

“I prize every candle in the darkness of the universe, even if it is not a supernova of blinding illumination.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 10, What Have We Learned?, p. 170 (Last text line...).

“Canadian society' or the 'Canadian nation' cannot decide anything, because no one is in charge.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 1, Rational Choice, p. 5

“In its Morgentaler decision of January 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the centrepiece of Canada's abortion law, section 251 of the Criminal Code. The court held that it conflicted with section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the 'security of the person'. This ruling radically changed the legal status quo; it was as if Parliament had repealed that section of the Criminal Code without passing a replacement amendment.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 8, Staying Power of the Status Quo, p. 120.

“Like all of mathematics, game theory is a tautology whose conclusions are true because they are contained in the premises.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 10, What Have We Learned?, p. 164.

“The foot, the pound, and the pint are all close to the size of many things used in daily life. In contrast, the metre, the kilogram, and the litre are all rather large, and the centimetre, the gram, and the millilitre rather small, for many practical uses.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 4, Models of Metrication, p. 64.

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