December 2018 Volume LXII, Number 12, No. 552
A Lesson in Economics
Terrorism Studies
Clive James on Les Murray’s retirement
What a tangled Brexit web we weave
Nonsense, Well-Intentioned and Otherwise
Hark the Gender Angels Sing
Contents
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Sir: While reading Peter Smith’s excellent article “Exorcising Marx and […]December 1, 2018
4 mins
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The murder and attempted murder in Bourke Street, Melbourne, last […]
December 1, 2018
8 mins
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For health reasons, Les Murray has decided to retire as […]
December 1, 2018
2 mins
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George Bernard Shaw once began a BBC radio talk in […]
December 1, 2018
9 mins
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It takes two to be deluded about alternative medicine. Like the buyer, the sufferer should beware. But which of us can face life wholly without illusions and even, on occasion, of delusions? Were I to suffer a disease incurable by orthodox methods, I'm not entirely sure I would reject elixir of hedgehog or decoction of sea-slug. Idiocy is annoying only in othersDecember 30, 2018
8 mins
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When so many are doing their best to eradicate Christendom's civilisational heritage -- reinventing marriage, state-sanctioned disposal of the inconvenient elderly -- Christmas alone survives in traditional form. But perhaps for not much longerDecember 9, 2018
8 mins
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We live in an age in which irreversible character assassination is a public entertainment, the slanderers being for the most part well-bred, well-paid, intelligent and enjoying the tacit backing of social-media giants Facebook and Twitter. They raise lynch mobs in 140 characters and have established a worldwide Reich wholly antithetical to the freedoms of speech, thought and associationJanuary 17, 2019
13 mins
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The news from Washington is that 85-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lionised liberal so often depicted as the Supreme Court's heroic bulwark against Trumpism, has lung cancer. When the time comes, will it be possible to find a replacement prepared to face the Jacobin accusations and evidence-free slanders heaped on a blameless man?December 28, 2018
42 mins
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Why did Australian authorities allow Momena Shoma into the country after Turkey, and perhaps Tunisia and the United States as well, rejected her visa application? They did, alas, and the international student's host almost paid with his life when 'sudden jihadi syndrome' saw her plunge a knife into his throatDecember 10, 2018
16 mins
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Philippe Lançon survived, just, the Islamist massacre in the office of Charlie Hedbo and has now written of his hard road to a recovery of sorts. Today, with news of another Christmas market massacre, his story is a timely reminder that West remains under attack regardless of media and officialdom's reluctance to name and counter the enemy withinDecember 12, 2018
15 mins
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The Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, […]
December 1, 2018
20 mins
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As our ideas have multiplied, our beliefs have diminished. That’s the big gap in Centre-Right politics which former Canadian PM Stephen Harper knows we must strive to fill. People crave a moral purpose, and if we don’t offer them any inspiration, others will fill that vacuum, but not necessarily to our countries’ goodDecember 1, 2018
11 mins
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It isn't the role of the state to prohibit the sale of cinnamon buns, but the hoi polloi's access to sugary treats is one of the things McKinsey alumni and author Anand Giridharadas decries in a tellingly unaware book urging the elite to change their ways. As a member of that same elite, he might start by looking in the mirrorDecember 20, 2018
16 mins
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As a vehicle to satisfy the human thirst for recognition and belonging, identity politics has proven an empty vessel. While promising to elevate the status of various minorities it has eroded human dignity, and while claiming to offer solidarity it has sown division and discordDecember 13, 2018
17 mins
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November did not get off to a good start. There […]
December 1, 2018
8 mins
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Engineer and polymath Peter Fenwick built a great company by marching to his own drummer, always with integrity to the fore. His thoughts on topics diverse as economics, leadership, ethics and liberty have produced two books and a fascinating conversation with Quadrant's Edward CranswickJanuary 6, 2019
17 mins
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Churchill confided how he 'felt like', but didn't, tell Stalin, ‘I fight tyranny whatever uniform it wears.’ Clearly the moral compromises of the Soviet alliance weighed on his conscience, as is evident in his memoirs' bleak final volume. He grasped that one vile despotism had been replaced by anotherJanuary 3, 2019
17 mins
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One of the many virtues of Salvatore Babones' The New Authoritarianism is its dissection of 'progressive' liberalism, a political philosophy that assumes the task of 'administering freedom'. When it comes to re-engineering society as the Left would prefer, there is no shortage of solons or arrogant presumptionDecember 19, 2018
13 mins
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Beauty by Stefan Sagmeister & Jessica Walsh Phaidon, 2018, 280 […]
December 1, 2018
13 mins
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Peter Boettke's F.A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy has beaten a path through several decades of intensive work by a great thinker to identify the most important and fruitful line of march for scholars and friends of liberal democracy. We are fortunate that classical liberalism has such an energetic championJanuary 21, 2019
14 mins
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The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien HarperCollins, 2018, 304 […]
November 29, 2018
9 mins
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The Netflix series Victoria earns top marks for costumes and art direction, and the acting isn't bad either. But as an accurate representation of history, let's just say the dresses are fetching the sets very easy on the eyeJanuary 13, 2019
16 mins
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Critic Sheridan Morley watched an old movie and saw a winking endorsement of child sex abuse. Well, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a film no more than innocent entertainment. Alas that modernity's eye for the sordid subtext so often distorts a blameless pastJanuary 1, 2019
10 mins
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Would it be open to Shylock, apart from all else, to complain of the masquerading Portia’s rank hypocrisy when, early on in Shakespeare's travesty of a trial, she exhorted him to be merciful yet proved so vindictively incapable herself of summoning that virtue when the balance tilted against him?January 4, 2019
20 mins
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In spite of imperfections, the story A Child in the Dark shows Lawson briefly displaying the strengths of storytelling that made him famous. And the depiction of the central relationship evokes a tenderness and delicacy of feeling that is unusual in his work, sympathetic to his creations as he often isJanuary 7, 2019
9 mins
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Be of the Right in Australia's literary milieu and editors won't even respond to your submissions. Publishing subsidies prove unobtainable, there are no invitations to writers' festivals and curators of anthologies spurn your work. It is that politicalDecember 17, 2018
25 mins
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There are many fine war poets, and I particularly like […]
December 1, 2018
6 mins
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The other day in the marketplace who should I come […]
December 1, 2018
14 mins
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The man pointed at me, not in an unfriendly way, […]
December 1, 2018
8 mins
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By their own estimation, so-called progressives are kind, caring and awash with empathy for all mankind. Meanjin scribbler Patrick Marlborough must have missed that memo, given his aren't-I-smart slagging of the late Bill LeakDecember 23, 2018
8 mins
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from Huntingdonshire Codices Thaw is also one of the […]
December 1, 2018
4 mins
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Being Nice You don’t say kick the bucket, you say gone […]
December 1, 2018
3 mins
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Broad Arrow Café Broad Arrow Café was busy that day, […]
December 1, 2018
4 mins
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The Spatter Painter 1 After the Art With teeth a […]
December 1, 2018
1 mins
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Logs Carrying logs from the back garden, I walk over […]
December 1, 2018
4 mins
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Edge In the sleepy midday quiet of the living […]
December 1, 2018
1 mins
