Leadership Quote by Stockwell Day

Day’s line is the polite Canadian cousin of a culture-war slogan: universal respect, selective approval. It’s built to sound expansive while quietly drawing a boundary around what respect is allowed to require. By grounding human worth in “God’s design,” he reaches for a moral authority that feels older than party platforms and sturdier than polling. The move is strategic: if dignity is granted by God, it can’t be revoked by politics, but it also doesn’t have to be renegotiated to accommodate shifting social norms.

The key hinge is the distinction between respecting people and rejecting “choices” or “opinions.” That framing does two jobs at once. It reassures moderates and faith communities that compassion is non-negotiable, while giving cover to oppose specific rights claims or lifestyles without wearing the label of bigotry. The subtext is: I’m not attacking you; I’m standing on principle. It’s a rhetorical insulation layer, especially useful in debates where personal identity is treated by one side as a choice and by the other as constitutive.

Context matters: a conservative politician speaking in a pluralist democracy has to manage two audiences simultaneously - constituents who want moral clarity and a broader public that demands civic equality. The quote tries to square that circle by redefining respect as baseline courtesy rather than endorsement, solidarity, or policy support. That’s why it works: it’s morally warm, politically flexible, and just ambiguous enough to let listeners project their own definitions of “respect” onto it.