Analysis of Primary Source: Oliver Stanley Speech

While reading Oliver Stanley’s text of Speech to Foreign Policy Association, the first thing that really caught my attention was when he brought up his this idea, he stated, “it is not because of our common ancestry that has worn a bit thin by now; it is not because of our common language, that may only enable us to quarrel more intelligently”.  I agree with this notion. Although people have different minds and can have different opinions on certain situations, when there is only one answer to particular notion no one can oppose. Stanley goes on to express his idea and he says “It is because of our common way of life, whatever the differences, however deep our disagreements, you and we agree on the fundamentals, on the rule of law, one the liberty of thought, and on the dignity of individual fundamentals, which after the war will be needed in this world.” This may not be the best analogy but what came to mind while reading this speech was the idea of it being like subjects in school, let’s take math vs. English for instance. With a Math problem you can only get one answer if you do the problem correctly. With math 2+2 will always equal 4, and no one can say otherwise. Opposed to the subject of English where you can read a book with your class and each person will have a set of different ideas in their heads and can tell you that their interpretation which is negating someone else’s answer and the next student can do the same to that person and so on and so forth. Another example of Stanley’s idea is morals. Even if someone doesn’t have them, even if some is pure evil, everyone knows the morally right thing to do oppose to the wrong thing to do. When something is right, it’s right and you can’t deny that. Tying this back to Stanley’s specific scenario, he explains to us that no matter the person, because of their similar way of life, or culture if you will, the differences did not influence the end you can always agree on fundamentals