Lyle Shelton’s earnest arguments against legalising prostitution, pornography and 'adult entertainment' are at no point hateful or bigoted, as his critics charge. But he seems reluctant to accept that in all these cases he is grappling with social issues that have, to say the least, no simple solutions

Read More

Popular drama tends to present democracies as flawed at best and monstrously corrupt otherwise, an impression apt to be be bolstered in the young by teachers spouting post-modern bile. It's past time, I reckon, for the movies to depict what the alternative is like, with bloody China standing ready for its closeup

Read More

My assumption was that the failure of Keynesian policies to regenerate growth after the GFC would lead to a re-examination of modern macroeconomic theory. Such innocence! Virtually no one blamed the anaemic recovery on Keynesian policies, nor are they likely to do so now

Read More

Each man, woman and child in Ireland now owes the world’s banks €34,000. But here’s the thing: the Irish remain devoted, abject Europeans, much as slaves might thank their masters for such lovely fetters. But don't mention that servility, or any other shortcoming, lest the howling begin

Read More

Australian soldiers in Afghanistan face enemies all around, from declared Taliban warriors to treacherous faux comrades who have gunned them down without mercy or warning. The allegations in the Brereton Report are shocking -- but so is the rush to judgment

Read More

In the immortal words of Victoria’s one-time premier Joan Kirner, education must be 'part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system'. Were Ms Kirner still with us, she would be mightily pleased with Education Services Australia's dark green Scootle portal

Read More

Conservative pessimism is allied with prudence: man is not perfectible, the future is not under our rational control, make haste slowly. The pessimism of the Left is dangerously different, making a virtue of misery to justify the prescriptions social engineers and activists advance to remedy it. What it is really all about, though, is the pursuit of power

Read More

The perceived importance of maps reduces to a misconception, or at the very least a simplification, of geopolitics, for it is technology and economics that change geography, and maps adjust to reflect that. It is this furphy -- that maps decree destiny -- which needs to be kept at front of mind mind when considering Belt & Road

Read More

Truly, we live in interesting times, the grand scheme to run an industrial civilisation without the 24-hour contribution of conventional power sources being the most interesting development of all. Given the legions of rent seekers and their shills in state and federal parliaments, it will pay to think ahead: get in early, beat the rush, install a diesel generator today!

Read More

Given the deadly combination of drought, heavy fuel loads, many fires and vulnerable communities, the summer's disasters were ordained. These had nothing to do with climate change. Rather, they were the inevitable consequence of foolish policies, incompetent governance and culpable land management. The royal commission grasped none of this

Read More

Unlike International Women's Day, the November 19 date set aside to mark those issues specifically relevant to the male of the species shares discordant billing with another UN-endorsed day of celebration, World Toilet Day. No, it's not a feminist joke, but it would still be nice to see plumbing fixtures exalted on some other day

Read More

The widespread notion of a pre-literate society as some sort of Eden amongst the eucalypts has been irrefutably dismantled by franker and more truthful anthropologists. Yet despite the wealth of evidence, the tendency to whitewash and obfuscate the barbaric aspects of Aboriginal society does more than persist, it grows stronger

Read More

The site purports to be a forum for readers to rate the latest books -- an innocent enough activity, or so you might think. But not when SJW scolds invade the comments threads to fling abuse and demand boycotts of authors whose opinions they don't like and whose books they haven't read. Authors, for example, such as alleged 'transphobe' JK Rowling

Read More

Back in 2017, Israel's transport minister proposed that a railway connect Saudi Arabia with Israel’s port of Haifa. Three years ago that seemed fanciful but not any more, not after the Trump-brokered pacts with United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Israel is no longer an imposter in the Greater Middle East but a key piece of the puzzle

Read More

To maintain white men are more favoured than any other racial/gender group is to ignore that they are much less likely to receive the protection of the law, more inclined to take their own lives and, generally, much less socially successful than almost any other ethnic-social group

Read More

What Greg Clarke, formerly head of the English Football Association, had to say about women in soccer, Indians in IT departments and gays in locker rooms can't be faulted on facts or tolerant sentiment, yet purity of heart couldn't save him being issued with a red card and banished from the game. Speak softly, friends, or pay the price

Read More

Variously compared in his lifetime to Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, Richelieu, Henri IV, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Chateaubriand and Clémenceau, he begged to differ, saying Tintin was a more apt doppelganger. Fifty years after his death, the man whose abrasive hauteur annoyed Churchill, aggravated Roosevelt and every president thereafter remains 'the greatest Frenchman'

Read More

Modernism proclaimed itself ‘anti-civilisation’, characterised by a fanatical rejection of the core values, traditions and conventions that had sustained Western Civilisation for over a millennium. Depressing as that may be, take heart! As Kenneth Clark noted, civilisation has plumbed the abysmal depths before, pulled itself together and recovered

Read More

In many Republican strongholds a curious thing happened on election day: while his party received the votes it expected, Donald Trump's tallies were way down. According to a bipartisan team of computer scientists and data analysts, there is only one explanation: the fix was in

Read More

The electoral standoff that sees Donald Trump in court and Joe Biden jumping the gun to proclaim himself 'president-elect' is an invitation to soar into the stratosphere of speculation. Could this affair, like another contest 144 years ago, end up being decided on Capitol Hill? If so, Trump wins

Read More

Is it mere ignorance that sees Australian journalists in the US providing only the most superficial coverage of the post-election contretemps between Trump's legal team and the various Democrat-run states where voting and counting, to put it mildly, was deeply suspect? We are poorly served by such reporters but, alas, it seems they are only kind there is

Read More

Any ad campaign to promote the much prophesied 'decarbonised economy' will be a challenge indeed. Instead of the quick, convenient, comfortable and easy ways of modern life, the agency's brief would be to find positives in the slow, inconvenient and uncomfortable. Green lies are nothing new, of course, but this brief would defeat even the most gifted dissembler

Read More

While swine flu was not as infectious as Covid, governments did not close down societies and economies and trample civil liberties. Why is COVID different? Several factors help to explain the extraordinary reaction. Media, both social and conventional, inflated the perception of risk. Bad news sells, and the madness of crowds now spreads electronically

Read More

If, as widely alleged in leaks and reports, investigators have drawn admissions that SAS members committed war crimes in Afghanistan, the offenders need to be punished to the full extent of the law. But what of their superiors? As Australia endorses the 'Yamashita standard' holding superiors responsible for their subordinates' actions, equal justice demands the brass must also face a reckoning

Read More