September 2022 Volume Volume LXVI, Number 9, No. 589
The Crude Maoist Origins of Today’s Culture Wars
I Don’t Like Broccoli
The Cinematic Vision of Henry Lawson
The Triumph of Memory over Forgetting
‘Against the Ice’: All but Frozen
The Arduous Path Back to Stability and Growth
Contents
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The fervour that informs contemporary anti-racist rhetoric, and that of environmental groups like Extinction Rebellion, and the LGBT+ movements that share its goals and feed off its righteous indignation, represents a calculated, iconoclastic assault on the West’s history and cultureMarch 2, 2024
28 mins
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"Jackson thought himself a reasonable man who hardly ever raised his voice or even felt angry, partly because he’d seen his father blow his stack once too often. He had been quite successful in tamping down his crabby genes and learning how to smile through adversity. But Beth had her ways..."February 24, 2024
17 mins
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In the parlance of the silver screen, Lawson so often gives a detailed 'treatment' of the film he envisages through his imaginary camera-eye. There is no dialogue, and he pays much attention to the actions and gestures of, for example, the ill-starred drover and his companions detailed in his short story The Australian CinematographNovember 17, 2022
18 mins
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Milan Kundera believed that overcoming totalitarianism was a battle of memory over forgetting. As one of those who had come back from the land of the dead, such sentiments also were in the forefront of Solzhenitsyn’s mind. Like others, he felt under an enormous obligation to speak on behalf of all those fellow inmates who perishedNovember 15, 2022
10 mins
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Netflix's Against the Ice takes its share of cinematic liberties with the actual story of two stranded arctic explorers, up to and including an entirely fictional encounter with a hungry polar bear. But indulge the plotline's embroidery and what remains is a visually striking and largely true story of adversity and enduranceOctober 2, 2022
14 mins
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Our post-Bürgenstock expectations have been sorely disappointed. Were they right, those who argued that trusting central bankers and allowing currencies to float freely was an unwarranted risk? That only a return to gold could ban inflation for good? Implementing remedies -- stable money, smaller government, freer markets -- will be a huge taskSeptember 29, 2022
14 mins
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There was a dark horse lurking from the mid-twentieth century onwards—humanistic psychology—which became the deadliest conduit of critical theory’s anti-Western thrust. Amongst those few who recognised the threat and stood against was Paul Vitz, who one might go so far as to call the Solzhenitsyn of Western psychologySeptember 27, 2022
17 mins
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How to push back against wokeist ideology and its claim to champion a new humanism? First by noting how critical race theory, critical gender theory and the like are less progressive than regressive because they aim to abolish a civilisational arrangement that has provided us with 'a whisper of intimacy and irreplaceability'—the origins of our true humanitySeptember 26, 2022
21 mins
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Keen travellers that most Aussies are, many of us suffered agonies locked down during the pandemic. Happily, with the borders open again we’ve been making up for lost time. In a random quiz at an airport near you, some recently returning travellers told us how their trips wentSeptember 22, 2022
8 mins
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The wagon of state will rumble on towards the same cliff edge no matter who holds the reins. And with cliffs as nice as those in Wentworth and Warringah, who’s to mind? Teal is the new black, and Albanese wears it more comfortably than Morrison ever did. Oligarchy never looked so elegantSeptember 20, 2022
8 mins
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The problem, writes Joanna Williams in her important new book, 'How Woke Won', is that viewing the world through the lens of Critical Theory has come to be accepted as common sense by a cultural elite that dominates the media, corporate life and the academy. Finding the courage to speak out is the first step on the road back to sanitySeptember 18, 2022
8 mins
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'The movement of Australian women artists to Paris in the first half of the last century was a pilgrimage, a lay pilgrimage, but a pilgrimage just the same,' note Clem and Therese Gorman in 'Intrépide: Australian Women Artists in Early Twentieth-Century France', a worthwhile addition to the history of Australian artSeptember 17, 2022
9 mins
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I have in the past had one or two struggles with young sub-editors over the new moral correctitude of language, and so far I have been able to gain my point. I am, however, under no illusion that my little victories can be anything other than local and temporary, as the linguistic police are now everywhere and insistentSeptember 16, 2022
8 mins
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but central bankers have bungled their jobs. What we're seeing was entirely predictable yet seems to have come as a complete surprise -- another instance of being led astray by the same old error-strewn Keynesian scriptSeptember 13, 2022
16 mins
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You may have noticed that today’s progressive activist, busily toiling away at the latest cause, has something like an allergy to merriment. This lack of chirpiness, as Noah Rothman persuasively explains in 'The Rise of the New Puritans', is a mark of pious commitment to the tasks still to do: remaking our entire social, political and cultural orderSeptember 7, 2022
13 mins
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In applying the fruits of a prodigious imagination the father of the Stolen Generations myth is saying he has extensively researched Aboriginal child removals and is therefore competent to make up 'facts' about a specific case. Garnish with florid prose -- 'She turns to stare at the aching blue of the Harbour' -- and what you get isn't history or anything like itSeptember 5, 2022
11 mins
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James Allan observes in his important new book that today’s constitutional orthodoxy rejects what is unkindly described as 'ancestor worship', the taking into account the intention of 'long-dead constitutional makers'. The preference these days, he writes with disdain, favours the beliefs, sentiments and favoured policies of a handful of top judgesSeptember 3, 2022
14 mins
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In securing Brexit, Boris Johnson made more history in six months than did some prime ministers in their entire terms. But the very day Brexit became reality, the BBC reported that two Chinese nationals staying at a York hotel had tested positive for a scary new virus. With hindsight, that was when the gods of happenstance and politics ordained the PM's fateSeptember 2, 2022
12 mins
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Squeezed a room’s available it has your name tucked in […]August 31, 2022
1 mins
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The Yellow Glove After the painting by William Dobell, 1940 […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Hand In Hand Father’s Day, 2021 I’m waiting for the […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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On Sleep What is night but the blending, Of all […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Forest Be careful what you contemplate. A forest is a […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Off the Main Way Away from the highway out of […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Rosary in Clifton Park The silver cloths of mist which […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Love Story but for a moment there we were just […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Bill Rush: ‘Settling for Less’, ‘Lethargy in the Time of Virus’, ‘The Flight of Currency’ and ‘Bats’
Settling for Less For six decades, putting one foot after […]August 31, 2022
2 mins
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Wind with a different destination Young once you trusted In […]
August 31, 2022
2 mins
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Subtext I am talking of the dent in the hallway […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Rainy Day once I saw a water snake skimming across […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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School of Grace Australian International Academy Yes, I remember them […]
August 31, 2022
3 mins
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Burying the lede Long may the masthead prosper And editors-at-small […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Rinosseros He don’t know why a ju-grub grow How a […]
August 31, 2022
2 mins
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Miss Calvert only read love poems to her class and […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Three Bushranger Trials in Berrima, New South Wales, September 1841 […]
August 31, 2022
1 mins
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Britain awaits the announcement of its next PM on September 5, but regardless of who wins the psychological crisis of Toryism can’t be cured until the party regains its grasp of sound money, prudent economic management and a culture of enterprise. It has 28 months to do so before an election -- and a perfect storm to navigate until thenAugust 31, 2022
10 mins
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Three sure-fire ways to save a great deal of time: […]
August 30, 2022
8 mins
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The Hidden Words of Jesus: “These are the hidden words […]
August 30, 2022
35 mins
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David Barnett, who died in Canberra last month, was a […]
August 30, 2022
7 mins
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People speak of the Tall Poppy syndrome in Australian culture […]
August 30, 2022
14 mins
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The colonisation of the Australian continent was a traumatic and […]
August 30, 2022
28 mins
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Indian democracy is under siege. As India celebrates seventy-five years […]
August 30, 2022
26 mins
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One of the major arguments for the creation of the […]
August 30, 2022
8 mins
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Medicinal Cannabis Sir: There is no agreed definition of medicinal […]
August 30, 2022
11 mins
