China has made considerable effort to study us, while we have done little to understand them. From universities now reeling at the withdrawal of high-fee students to the cheap goods on the shelves at Bunnings, Xi & Co., are shaping our future as much as their own. To not recognise the current state of play as both weakness and warning would be most unwise

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Perverse creatures that we are, we take pleasure in being certain that we are right. Requiring the legislator, therefore, to sanction certain speech acts because their audience might take offence draws the courts into an area that until very recently was the province of parsons, priests and other pulpiteers

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Much-garlanded author Tara June Winch offers the sort of history literary award judges support with other people’s money, one notable admirer being the present conservative Prime Minister, who supported her views with a flattering endorsement and his own $80,000 (tax-free) book prize

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Careful attention to how Jesus uses scripture and draws from it principles that imply radical conclusions gives insight into the nature of his intensive earlier study. It is a complex and difficult task. Certainly, the program of reconstructing Jesus’ PhD from his later seminars and Q&A sessions is only in its infancy. Much further research is needed.

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Only Evangelical preachers still thunder away about the Bible; in less enthusiastic churches you are more likely to hear platitudes than the Beatitudes. Happily, though, sin is still uncompromisingly condemned. The evil of climate change denial, for example, or racism are regularly preached against. For Easter Sunday, a reprise of Christopher Akehurst's 2014 column

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First, take a bunch of low achievers who become teachers because no other discipline will have them. Next, add a NIDA-trained 'climate expert' and his relentlessly wrong eco-scare flick. Now bring them together and what do you get, apart from a nice little earner? Kiddie climate 'activists' clogging the streets for starters

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Why is capitalism so often in the firing line of Christian churches? Perhaps they believe the Bible's enjoinment to share with the poor does not sit easily with the acquisitiveness that drives free enterprise. If so, today's Good Friday holiday is as good a moment as any to read this essay from Quadrant's archives and think again

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A 2018 study concludes that Taiwan on its own could fend off a Chinese invasion and it seems the People's Liberation Army believes the same. What must be considered is that Xi might launch an invasion, find he was losing and opt to go nuclear—or he might do so from the start

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Last week Victoria's Appeal Court overturned the conviction or a man accused of sexually abusing a child in 1962. So how did the Herald Sun choose to illustrate its reports? With several pictures of the Cardinal, who had absolutely nothing to do with the alleged crime.

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On page after page the parallels between Ivan Bunin's past and our present turn this from a book about the past into a warning from our own future. 'One of the most distinguishing features of a revolution,' he writes, 'is the ravenous hunger for histrionics, dissembling, posturing and puppet show. The ape is awakened in man'

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Nigh on 80 years ago, Jacques Barzun embarked on a tour of US schools and what he observed, even then, was cause for concern. Later bringing the same critical eye to universities, he lamented the rise of a credentialled ignorance as institutions abandoned their key responsibilities. All these decades later, his work reads as a warning unheeded

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The Porter case tells us everything we need to know about the pathetic age we inhabit, from its rabble-rousing media hacks to mediocre politicians and talentless toadies enjoying unnatural relations with office furniture. By the way, aren’t those aforementioned desk molesters gay? Hardly mentioned, as it's hetero males who are the designated targets

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Those with a greater instinct for charity than truth are invited to sling some tax-deductible cash to Professor Bruce Pascoe's not-for-profit 'Aboriginal agriculture' startup, Black Duck Foods. Those wary of a fauxboriginal who makes stuff up as his narrative need demands will reap the dividend of a good laugh at the expense of corporations and institutions backing a monumental fraud

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In what would be his last book, Jonathan Sacks insists he has not been overcome by cultural pessimism. Yet his less sanguine readers will note in chapter after chapter the signposts he observes on Western civilisation's descending path, beginning with the outsourcing of moral responsibility to the state

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In the modern gender jungle 'My Fair Lady' is no longer a light and durably popular entertainment, an exercise in humour and irony, but a 'text' to be deplored for its 'infuriating smugness', bullying and mansplaining. To quote Professor Higgins, there are indeed some female heads full of 'cotton, hay and rags'

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Politicians are hailed for spending public money on worthwhile schemes even as they are condemned for increasing taxes. It is therefore unsurprising that, when new schemes are announced, they are presented as gifts from a generous government. 'Which citizens will be disadvantaged to pay for that?' is a question seldom heard

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Protest Daniel Andrews ruinous lockdowns and you can expect his VicPol enforcers to arrive en masse, armed, armour-clad and ready to manhandle those who do no harm. Stop the CBD in its tracks, as tofu-brained Extinction Rebellion nuisances have been doing all this week, and responding officers will hardly respond at all

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If a different, more sensible, and better-informed Globalisation 3.0 is to emerge, it will require deep and independent thinking about human societies beyond the certainties and myths of current academia. Emmanuel Todd’s 'Lineages of Modernity' is a prime example of such thinking

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How could so many general interest media organs have been so thoroughly incurious about the details of an Indian tycoon's plans to remake Whyalla into a green energy showpiece? Perhaps because they took their cues from the financial press. It is here the AFR must necessarily utter a 'guilty as charged, m'lord'

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Lockdowns remain the politicians’ favourite tool because they deliver eye-watering dividends, prompting public acclaim even for Victoria's Daniel Andrews, whose many and various sins of omission and commission received scant attention while the panic was at its height. What next? There is little ground for optimism

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The more closely one looks at each purported case of an unjustified shooting of a black man by a policeman in America, the more dubious many of these claims seem. The BLM movement and its allies have perpetrated an enormous hoax, unfortunately with deadly and widespread consequences

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When the broadcaster solicited entries for an essay competition on the theme of 'growing up in diverse Australia' three of the top four finalists produced well crafted and often witty memoirs. The fourth, though, is a sad demonstration of how difficult it must be to write with the monstrous chip of a lifetime's resentment weighing down one's shoulder

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Using a grievous assault on a woman or, as recently in London, the heinous murder of a woman, as an opportunity to vent against men in general is not productive. Men are as outraged by such crimes as are women. Men don’t have the answer as to what can be done to prevent the evil of some. Neither do women

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You can’t expect a straight answer from World Health Organisation virologists, who have a professional interest in extolling the absolutely safety of bio labs. They aren't, of course, as spills of lethal agents all over the world demonstrate. In regard to Wuhan, 'Whoops, we did it again!' are words that will never, ever be uttered

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