Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
Hitler: The Most Baffling Question
On December 11, 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Adolf Hitler summoned his puppet parliament to the Reichstag building in Berlin, and delivered a fiery ninety-minute speech in which he declared war against the United States. Half the speech consisted of an extended, virulent personal attack on President Franklin Roosevelt. Hitler decided to declare war against the US without anything but cursory consultations with senior Nazis or military leaders.
Soon after the end of the war, an official US State Department analysis of the conflict concluded that it found “the most baffling question in the whole Nazi story to be the prompt German declaration of war on the United States”. This view has been repeatedly echoed by subsequent historians. “The underlying logic of the Führer’s policy towards the United States defies analysis … It was an irrational act” is a typical example. My aim here is to see if Hitler’s strange decision can be rationally…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
