A population with a large proportion of people dependent on welfare payments, easily cowed by forceful authority, heavily influenced by social media, insufficiently sceptical of the 24-hour news cycle and partly fuddled by alcohol and drugs will not suddenly express prudent values. Those who seek to shape and control know this

'Unsure what I was admitting, sensing a scary but exciting liberation -- a clarifying shift in my vision of myself and the world -- I stared ahead. It was as if some lens in my mind had clicked into focus: what was blurry was now clear'

Charles Dickens (1812–70) was perhaps the greatest novelist of the […]

If Australia finds itself in a real crisis—not a COVID crisis or climate change crisis—when our freedom, our homes and lives are threatened by aggressors, then we’ll wish we had read and absorbed the best of Machiavelli’s advice. In a sense, he wrote a book during violent times for violent times

We’re blest to have The Fortunate to remind us of all that has accrued -- in politics and philosophy, in industry and in our economy -- for our good. The wealth and liberties didn’t just happen; they aren’t an accident of history. They came through the careful work and thought of generations of robust, enterprising people.

Any system built on lies will eventually collapse, but it will cause great harm before this collapse and what replaces it may not be any better. Throughout, decent people will need to protect their own humanness by developing virtue and bravely living in truth

Men and women who don’t have the vocation of marriage -- those who are psychologically immature and lacking the needed skills -- but who get married anyway will find their lives very difficult and divorce frequent. They and their children pay the price of conditioning by a culture that doesn’t value careful discernment, traditional virtues and, above all, prudence

In our coastal town as Christmas approaches, droves of holiday-makers […]

Arthur Koestler’s 1940 novel Darkness at Noon is a masterpiece. […]