July 2018 Volume LXII, Number 7-8, No. 548
Curtin, an Over-Rated Prime Minister
The Secret World of Academia
Trump’s Rules, Trump Rules
Banality of Evil? Not Really
The War Against Tommy Robinson
Burke’s Legacy in Australian Politics
Contents
-
SIR: Hal Colebatch’s essay on John Curtin (April 2018) is […]June 28, 2018
7 mins
-
ANU's rejection of the Ramsay Centre confirms the academic situation in Australia is even worse than Britain and America, most particularly that the humanities faculties at our major public universities are quite simply unfit for the taskJune 29, 2018
8 mins
-
Dislike Trump all you will and as many do, but it's a fantasy to see the sackful of squabbling ferrets which passes for Europe's leadership challenging or replacing the US on anything, let alone the defence of the liberal democratic worldJuly 16, 2018
9 mins
-
No authority and anarchy results. Too much authority and liberty withers. I do not pretend to know where the limits should lie, but we can be certain that people often do things under the cover of authority that they would not do if entirely left to their own devicesAugust 2, 2018
8 mins
-
Tommy Robinson was released this week from a British prison after his contempt of court conviction was not merely quashed but scathingly condemned on appeal. Here, with videos and a link to that ruling, is the genesis and gist of England's disgraceAugust 4, 2018
7 mins
-
While there is no historical evidence Edmund Burke played any direct part in British plans to establish a penal colony in New South Wales, his tradition of Whiggism arrived with the First Fleet and arguably shaped the character of colonial Australian liberalismAugust 7, 2018
27 mins
-
Thomas Hobbes anticipated the modern state in his advocacy of government grounded in a pragmatic compact between the people and sovereign. Add his part in an historical mystery involving Francis Bacon and what novelist could resist? Certainly not this one
August 14, 2018
21 mins
-
Studies purporting to establish why conservatives and so-called progressives think they way they do have been all the rage of late, with brain scans and the like alleged to have established that political orientation is influenced as much by biology as reason. An interesting notion, it is well worth a closer look
August 18, 2018
19 mins
-
It is by no means inexplicable that classic liberalism, which pioneered the idea of the free individual, should by a process of rational critique mutate into an ideology that inhibits free expression if it undermines 'progress', peace, harmony and the mitigation of suffering and self-pityJuly 10, 2018
12 mins
-
The European Union is not nearly as good as the […]
June 28, 2018
31 mins
-
The High Court and the Parliament Perhaps Lewis Carroll would […]
June 28, 2018
20 mins
-
The development of polyphony, in which two, three, four or more voices or instruments each has an independent existence and yet work together to create a harmonious whole, was one of the signal events in Western intellectual history
August 30, 2018
15 mins
-
My friend Peter Bauer dedicated his life to exposing supposed wisdom as folly, knowledge as ignorance, compassion as cruelty, and orthodoxy as absurdity -- and to a large extent he succeeded in striking telling blows for common sense. Sadly, his was an incomplete victoryAugust 9, 2018
16 mins
-
A century ago, German forces on the Western Front were destroyed, thrown back or captured at Amiens -- a rout that finally broke the four-year stalemate and introduced the integrated 'battlecraft' that would forever change the face of modern warfareNovember 11, 2018
32 mins
-
The Nazis honestly made no bones about it: a race war. Stalin’s opportunistic response of abandoning decades of communist philosophy for a Great Patriotic War was a desperate gamble, which paid off. As Napoleon, the previous dictator to fail in Russia, put it: 'The moral is to the physical as three to one'
August 25, 2018
25 mins
-
“Only a physician can commit homicide with impunity” is a […]
June 28, 2018
12 mins
-
Paediatricians with a total of 931 years' experience reported only 12 cases of gender confusion, meaning just one genuine case might be expected every 76 years. Now, each year in Australia, hundreds are presenting for treatment which the ascendant orthodoxy decrees must be providedJuly 24, 2018
31 mins
-
The point is not that solar should not be considered, but that it should be considered, warts and all, alongside coal, nuclear and hydro with all their drawbacks. Too often, renewables' drawbacks and deficiencies are glossed over, not the least of these being that are unlikely ever to meet global energy needsJuly 5, 2018
29 mins
-
The real justification for getting rid of the ABC is not its bias, or not only its bias, but that it is no good at what the taxpayer pays it to do. The problem is not so much its chronic leftism as its incompetence. Want one example? You get plenty of obscenities in ABC 'comedies' but precious few laughsJuly 17, 2018
10 mins
-
Kierkegaard identified as one of man's distinguishing characteristics the recognition that he is a creature “before God”. It is such a foundational condition, yet alien to so much contemporary anthropology, that to exclude it means a healthy and balanced consciousness of self is lostJuly 27, 2018
16 mins
-
How Political Correctness is Destroying Australia by Kevin Donnelly Wilkinson […]
June 29, 2018
14 mins
-
Mario Vargas Llosa’s journey from Castro groupie to steel-eyed critic of both Leftism and populism gives the observations and commentary of his latest book the authority of a long life both lived and examined. To describe it as a joy of the first order would be to engage in understatementJuly 28, 2018
13 mins
-
Urban Peasant: A Haphazard Chronicle by Feiko Bouman Austin Macauley, […]
June 29, 2018
7 mins
-
In his rushed-to-press book, 'A Higher Loyalty', James Comey reveals himself as a congenital lawyer with a special talent for obfuscation and self-exoneration. That such a creature rose so high lends enormous credence to Donald Trump's grievances against the Deep StateJuly 20, 2018
18 mins
-
Classical liberal thought long predated Menzies, as John Manning Ward demonstrates in a new biography of Joseph Carruthers, who observed in 1902 how the infant nation was 'the most over-governed and over-taxed country in the world'. One can only wonder what he would make of Australia now
August 17, 2018
11 mins
-
The adaptation of 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' into a 1979 BBC series left le Carré with a good opinion of what long episodic versions of his work could be. 'The Night Manager', starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie, more than confirms the author's faith was not misplaced
September 8, 2018
17 mins
-
No scribe in the stalls has ever quite matched the Melbourne actor's brief turn as a theatre reviewer for the long-departed Argus newspaper. A small taste: "Writhing onto the stage," he wrote of one production's dancers, they treated the audience to "the agonised twistings of a run-over cat"August 11, 2018
14 mins
-
The US author Tom Wolfe, who died in May aged […]
June 29, 2018
7 mins
-
Let Us Watch Richard Wilbur: A Biographical Study by Robert […]
June 29, 2018
20 mins
-
A marketplace fable set in the Romano-Greco-Phoenician city of Tyre […]
June 29, 2018
17 mins
-
(Post-prandial remarks by P.D. Le Maire, Esq., at the inaugural […]
June 29, 2018
11 mins
-
I once wanted the ABC auctioned to the highest bidder, but my opinion has evolved. Rather than offload the tax-gobblers in one fell swoop, let us draw out the process one pencil, desk, chair and on-air personality at a time. After tormenting right-thinkers for so long, repayment in kind is overdueAugust 13, 2018
8 mins
-
1917 North Recruits who brought their horses from home […]
June 29, 2018
1 mins
-
Last Migration (for ADH) At night and in dreams […]
June 29, 2018
1 mins
-
Three haiku each afternoon too many crickets to hear one […]
June 29, 2018
1 mins
-
-
Gruel Oliver asked for more. Politely. (He still got […]
June 29, 2018
4 mins
-
Colouring In They sit colouring in bright blues, greens, […]
June 29, 2018
1 mins
-
Malaria “Memories linger in the blood, like malaria” (Geraldine Doogue, […]
June 29, 2018
2 mins
-
Birds of Paradox Bronze-wing pigeon Stout bronze body. […]
June 29, 2018
2 mins
