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.

As the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde said some years ago, 'Populism is an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism'. When the voters insist that something isn’t working, as the recent EU Parliament election demonstrates, it is this commitment to raw democracy that manifests itself at the ballot box

Caricatures of left-wing authoritarians have been a feature of popular culture -- including not only farces but also such sophisticated comedies as Yes, Prime Minister -- and they awaken an immediate echo in their mass audiences. There’s a reason for that. We’ve all met the leftoid sorts with jackboot inclinations

If something doesn’t exist in theory, can it exist in […]

Partisan reporters -- is there any other sort these days? -- seek to persuade readers of various general truths rather than merely report what comes their way. Ireland's landslide rejection in early March of two woke referendums illustrates the gulf between what voters are told they should believe and what they actually do

Michael Mann’s lawyer told the Washington DC jury that finding against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg would vindicate their progressive sympathies and dissuade others from critiquing the methods and conduct of warmist science. And that’s what the panel did, treating the case as an opportunity to punish climate heresy. If this verdict stands, scientific debate and free speech both fall

Times are getting harder for conservatives and classical liberals, who face challenges not only from the traditional social democratic Left but also from the new revolutionaries of wokeness. That hard going, it must said, can be laid at the feet of the centre-right itself, which too often fails to represent voters in the centre and on the right

When the entire world is looking nervously into the Abyss, […]

Constitutionalising your favoured political program, as Albanese & Co. attempted with the Voice, runs into the difficulty that it’s a high-profile public activity difficult to conceal and, when revealed, forcing its proponents into all kinds of undignified postures of denial and casuistry. To avoid those risks, Left progressives have come up with a more subtle and discreet method of evading democracy: namely, 'sortition'