Jan-Feb 2019 Volume LXIII, Number 1-2, No. 553
The Three Waves Myth
Grotesque Generosity
The Last of the Tory Squires
Not Merely Wrong but Entirely Bogus
Driving Out the Drover
Vale Les Murray, 1938-2019
Contents
-
Sir: Nugget Coombs’s portrayal of Australia before Western arrival (“The […]January 1, 2019
6 mins
-
Here is an idea for Education Minister Dan Tehan: veto grants to all fields in the humanities where the research can all be done from an academic’s office and campus library, and where the only effort required is to read books and look at computer screens. That is, after all, what academics are already paid to doJanuary 2, 2019
8 mins
-
I first met Tom Stuttaford in the mid-1960s when he […]
January 1, 2019
9 mins
-
It is a characteristic of our age that what no one truly believes so often and so quickly becomes intellectual orthodoxy -- look to the escalating denigration of Captain Cook as but one example -- and from which the slightest deviation invites opprobrium and banishmentFebruary 8, 2019
8 mins
-
Just on fifty years ago a tsunami of change demolished the old-style no-frills classroom, banishing 'Harry Dale the Drover' and most other poetry. The New Left wanted it all gone, along with the much-loved Victorian Reader, lest children get the incorrect idea that Australia's past was not all massacres and imperialist oppressionJanuary 29, 2019
8 mins
-
Les Murray, Quadrant’s Literary Editor from March 1990 until this year's January issue, passed away yesterday. At the time we asked our writers for their thoughts on Les and his tenure. Here once again are those statements of admiration and love, republished to mark the passing of a great poet and a great manApril 30, 2019
85 mins
-
That only white people can be guilty of racism is preposterous. Most people are aware of non-white people vilifying other ethnic groups in racial terms. Why is this not racism? Why should the perpetrators not be held as accountable? Doesn’t it imply an inability to take responsibility -- a racist presumption if ever there was one?January 14, 2019
31 mins
-
Postmodernist theory, with its emphasis on subjectivity and relativism, became the mechanism—more by happenstance than good planning—by which Marxism's anti-bourgeois hostility reconciled itself with the anti-bourgeois sentiment of bohemianism. From there it was a short step to PC gags and censorshipJanuary 16, 2019
21 mins
-
Something that honour and democracy have in common is that they don’t work on a supranational scale. The largest possible democracy takes place at the level of the nation-state: beyond that, as the experience of the EU shows, there is only unaccountable bureaucracyJanuary 19, 2019
19 mins
-
There are contradictions between China’s overt national confidence, its growing domestic repression, and its paranoia, both internal and external. Perhaps there is an understanding that, despite China’s impressive rise, time actually may not be on its sideFebruary 7, 2019
24 mins
-
Recent reflection on liberalism in Quadrant and elsewhere comes at […]
January 1, 2019
14 mins
-
Why no mention in the French president's Armistice Day address of the British and Americans whose bones rest in French soil? Perhaps because neither the British nor the Americans are currently on-message with the project for a morally transformative European imperium.February 13, 2019
20 mins
-
During angry street marches in Barcelona, one man raged against […]
January 1, 2019
29 mins
-
Corporate leaders seem not to grasp that their embrace of 'socially responsible' agendas -- be it gay marriage, expensive electricity or any other fashionable crusade of the Left -- inherently embraces the values of some groups while alienating others. Daft indeed, yet that is happening time after time, company after companyJanuary 24, 2019
19 mins
-
Twenty-five miles east of Timbuktu, amidst the scattered acacias and […]
January 1, 2019
24 mins
-
It is sometimes said that a unitary state of Australia would be more efficient and policy could be implemented more easily. Well, which do you think is the more efficient—Russia, the biggest country in the world, or Singapore, one of the smallest?January 30, 2019
10 mins
-
The necessary starting point for any discussion of Dyson Heydon […]
January 1, 2019
27 mins
-
A conservative historian David Kemp is not, as his treatment of Eureka, to cite but one example, makes abundantly clear. His approach both rescues the rebellion from Marxist historians and shows it for what it really was: the triumph of a democratic, individualist and revolutionary liberalismFebruary 5, 2019
18 mins
-
Accounts of the clash between Aborigines and a party of shepherds were confused at the time and have only grown more so, encrusted with agendas and cherrypicking. What we know of subsequent retaliations is that Faithfull’s men would be hanged for murder had the full truth emergedFebruary 20, 2019
19 mins
-
The parable of the talents is instructive. First, there is a rich man with servants in the parable. Second, the servants did not start equally well off nor, distinctly, did they end equally well off. Capitalism comes to mind much more so than socialism in this storyFebruary 25, 2019
20 mins
-
It is popularly assumed that the mainstream church is destined to decline to extinction across the Western world. That is not true in Sydney where, committed to Scripture, the Anglican Church still grows. Record numbers of clergy are being ordained to the point of oversupply. It doesn’t make the news that the Christian path is narrow and steep but not dourFebruary 15, 2019
8 mins
-
Silicon Valley's tech entrepreneurs are inclined to fanciful schemes and perspectives that have little grounding in reality. It is truly frightening that their immense power gives these arrogant utopians the ability to take the world in directions that most people would simply reject outrightJanuary 18, 2019
13 mins
-
The daughters of the American rich who invaded London in quest of titled mates tended to be spirited and good company, not milksops like the general run of British debutantes. Whatever their other attractions, the 'buccaneer belles' have inspired a social history par excellenceFebruary 9, 2019
14 mins
-
While some folks talk a big game about principles, what they really prefer is someone socking it to their enemies. Donald Trump won in 2016 because he could be relied on to punch every conceited political moraliser and mediocre pseudo-intellectual who attempted to stand in his wayJanuary 11, 2019
11 mins
-
For a dead and apparently lifeless planet, Mars certainly gets more that its share of attention. From HG Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs to Ron Howard and, most recently, Sean Penn, the distant red orb has proven irresistible to any and all with more than an ounce of imaginationFebruary 24, 2019
18 mins
-
Our subsidised theatres do not read unsolicited play scripts and have set up layers of barriers to keep real writers away, favouring scripts word-processed by and for the ABC-Guardian-Fairfax Cultural Complex. Playwrights' agent Margaret “Peggy” Ramsay would have given them something to think aboutFebruary 17, 2019
10 mins
-
Nikos A. Salingaros: Dr Daniels, how did you become interested […]
January 1, 2019
16 mins
-
It would be impossible in a short article to do […]
January 1, 2019
13 mins
-
To whom could the young, innocuous American rebels of the Fifties look? Brando was too negative for broad appeal. Ditto James Dean, whose cool was that of an outsider. Then along came Elvis, one of those rare individuals who become the symbol of their timeFebruary 23, 2019
11 mins
-
White jonquils! I remove the florist’s paper, bury my nose […]
January 1, 2019
8 mins
-
Heath had been driving for a little under six hours. […]
January 1, 2019
24 mins
-
How to get an engineless vehicle up a hill was a question salesman Dan had heard before, so he was disappointed but not surprised when customers Bob and Annette decided to keep their aging Coalition Conservative. Good for a few months yet, their big problem was how to get it repairedJanuary 25, 2019
8 mins
-
Bonny Scotland O it’s grand to be a Scottish […]
January 1, 2019
2 mins
-
Abbott’s Boobies Papasula abbotti. Endangered seabirds of Christmas Island. White, […]
January 1, 2019
5 mins
-
Bishop Joseph Hall of Norwich Bishop Joseph Hall of […]
January 1, 2019
3 mins
-
Interwoven for M.K. It’s not a scarf I often […]
January 1, 2019
1 mins
-
Midwinter Birthday From where we stand those Hokusai claws […]
January 1, 2019
4 mins
-
Black Poplars Whereas we are of here, and have been […]
January 1, 2019
2 mins
-
The Castle Come in. This is the place and I’m […]
January 1, 2019
3 mins
-
Tribute Someone out there crossmatched A, O, AB, or B, […]
January 1, 2019
1 mins
-
Gin-Soaked Love O why did you turn from my gin-soaked […]
January 1, 2019
1 mins
