March 2024 Volume LXVIII, Number 3, No. 604
In Defence of Extremism
Vale Brian Kiernan, 1937–2024
A Man of Disquiet: Fernando Pessoa
Freaks: The Crooked Timber of Humanity
In Defence of Extremism
And Howe!
Contents
-
So now I have your attention, let me clarify: I do not propose to defend extremism of the kind we hear about daily -- the violent, law-breaking, society-upending kind. I am thinking more of extremism in Aristotle’s theory of the virtues, which can tell us something important about economics and even social changeJune 7, 2024
15 mins
-
Brian Kiernan, who died on March 1, was a major […]April 29, 2024
7 mins
-
The name Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa is not well known […]
April 29, 2024
9 mins
-
When I get the chance, I like to take them […]
April 29, 2024
15 mins
-
So now I have your attention, let me clarify. I […]
April 29, 2024
15 mins
-
Andrew Bolt regards Alan Howe as 'probably our leading writer on music. I have never known someone with such encyclopaedic knowledge.' He is not alone in that estimation, but what really surprises about the newsroom veteran, newspaper editor, frustrated drummer and Magpies tragic is the many other strings to his bowApril 7, 2024
16 mins
-
The Philistines remain with us as a permanent fixture of our culture and have always been a conspicuous element in society. For this reason, and bearing in mind the extraordinary and lamentable meltdown of our education systems, it is against considerable odds that poetry-writing continues to flourish in Australia.April 7, 2024
17 mins
-
In August 2023, well before the Sydney memorial at the Opera House, I was honoured to attend a Camberwell celebration of Barry’s life in his home suburb. Although both were very moving send-offs, if he had to choose between them, I suspect Barry would nominate the Melbourne event. Or would he?March 30, 2024
8 mins
-
For all the effort invested, in the end the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban was inevitable. Everything the Taliban assured negotiators they wouldn’t do, they did. As Fred Smith, who worked for DFAT in Uruzgan province and elsewhere, writes in The Sparrows of Kabul, 'the problems that brew in failed states become our problems'March 29, 2024
10 mins
-
Many have been slow to recognise the war being waged by 'progressives' who control much of our bureaucracy, media and corporations. Their corrosive influence has elevated postmodernist absurdities about race, gender and animism over history, science and freedom of speech and movementMarch 28, 2024
13 mins
-
Contemporary debates about moral issues are increasingly detached from any broader ethical perspective. As Shimon Cowen demonstrates in his worthwhile A Populism of the Spirit, hedonistic materialism's penetration of the culture is now so deeply established it is fostered by mainstream policy and enshrined in legislationMarch 27, 2024
7 mins
-
If the High Court were to conjure up indigenous sovereignty, would not this be succumbing to the same phenomenon which European peoples struggled to exclude from operation within a civilised state: laws arising from religious belief and imposed upon the general population by priests or, in this case, indigenous elders and activistsMarch 27, 2024
23 mins
-
"It was a matter of interest to me that many Australian academics seemed to think the only creative works of any consequence in South-East Asia were novels set in villages or kampongs, presented mostly in a simplistic way by decent but essentially parochial storytellers about deprivations referable to callous European rule"March 26, 2024
28 mins
-
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 fallMarch 25, 2024
9 mins
-
Gabriele Tergit's Käsebier Takes Berlin was a German publishing success in 1931, and then it slept. Though its author was a Jewish journalist it was not even noticed when books were burnt in 1933, by which time the author had fled Germany for Czechoslovakia, then Israel, finally settling. Then, in 1977, the novel was republished and a glorious, captivating mess brought fame to an 83-year-oldMarch 23, 2024
10 mins
-
US foreign policy under Donald Trump’s tenure was nationalist but not isolationist. He stood up to Russia when it counted -- at Khasham in 2018, for example, when he unleashed hellfire on Wagner soldiers threatening a US base in Syria, prompting Putin to thereafter steer well clear. Today everything has changed. Iran attacks American bases with apparent impunity while Houthis sink Red Sea shippingMarch 21, 2024
21 mins
-
It is a matter of national concern when senior ADF officers prefer to talk about climate change rather than military art, and define strategy in the language of corporate governance rather than that of Clausewitz. Moreover, when Special Forces soldiers can be accused of war crimes—but no senior officers are held accountable—something is wrong in the professional culture of the ADFMarch 19, 2024
25 mins
-
The Australian example vaptures the loss of confidence of Western civilisation vis-à-vis the rest of the world. It is detectable in Europe and in the United States. Oddly enough, that loss of confidence also partakes simultaneously of moral grandiosity, that at long last indubitable moral truth has been found. Quite apart from its absurdity, this attitude is no pleasanter to behold than jingoismMarch 17, 2024
8 mins
-
"We got into the car, and a few minutes later he said: 'I'll just stay with you a couple of nights, a week tops. Any longer and we’ll be barneying.' I wondered how long it would take before he got me in a choke-hold. He was a year younger than me, but he’d always been the bully. The more you tried to fight with him the tougher he fought"March 17, 2024
21 mins
-
The National Trust earned a place in British life but decisions made by its management in recent decades have dampened public enthusiasm for the body. Its extensive portfolio, for example, is reported to have lost several million pounds in value, in part owing to investment in underperforming funds recommended by eco-friendly wealth managersMarch 16, 2024
10 mins
-
To quote Paul Keating, a man with whom I would not normally find common ground, 'The state of the arts in a country goes to the heart of what a nation is.' That Australia’s arts are so encumbered by questions of identity at the expense of quality and authenticity would suggest our nation is not at all in such a good wayMarch 14, 2024
11 mins
-
PwC was hired by the Victorian Treaty Advancement Commission to help determine who was an elder. After consulting 201 elders in 19 workshops, '80 per cent of those consulted wanted a way to challenge spurious elders'. This which not only turned out to be impossible, it called into question just how reliable were the 201 elders consulted in the first place!March 12, 2024
17 mins
-
My task is to teach the youth the art of listening once more through exposure to the masterpieces of Western music. To paraphrase the Bible, 'Where your heart is, there your treasure will be.' I am an explorer, digging up buried treasures and revealing their beauty to students. This vital endeavour, an act of remembering our culture, would be more fruitful were our schools not case studies in ill discipline and dysfunctionMarch 11, 2024
14 mins
-
You don’t end up in Argentina’s shattered situation due to isolated and random events. You get there incrementally, one tax, one rule and one regulation, one woke judge's juling at a time. How to claw your back? New President Javier Milei has some ideas involving chainsaws and public servants that might just be do the trick hereMarch 10, 2024
9 mins
-
The nakedly political dismissal of hydroxychloroquine during the Covid years is a shameful illustration of destructive forces brought to bear on how medicine is practised in Australia. Now that the panicdemic has receded, that official spurning of an effective medication directly indictments those charged with safeguarding the public goodMarch 5, 2024
15 mins
-
What is to be done about the wilful refusal of Western and Third World intellectuals to recognise the positive legacies of colonialism? As professor and author Bruce Gilley observes the 'intellectual turn will require a massive Enlightenment” which can only really come from ... proper research rather than ideological bias'March 4, 2024
12 mins
-
As best one can tell, separatists’ underlying goal is to preserve the integrity of Aboriginal culture.. Putting aside distasteful similarities to the horrors totalitarian regimes perpetrated in the name of 'cultural purity', no culture has ever been strengthened by being quarantined from its broader environment.February 29, 2024
11 mins
-
The Dog Who Doesn’t Question Foolish faithful dog, here at […]
February 29, 2024
3 mins
-
Expressions of Errol Flynn Sweeping above the Technicolor knights On […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
Definition of Modern Woman It’s not about chastity belts or […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
Anyone for Tennis? I do enjoy verbal tennis wordplay may […]
February 29, 2024
2 mins
-
Global Citizen In the past, there was the bit when […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
Waking to Rain Sounds of wet run everywhere, soak is […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
an avocado either the flat slice the underside of a […]
February 29, 2024
2 mins
-
Green I am Green, I’m the colour of bile I’m […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
The old house I am almost there at the old […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
Chosen Chosen to be holy and the infidel. Chosen to […]
February 29, 2024
2 mins
-
Spring Funeral a good day for burying Irish Poets you […]
February 29, 2024
2 mins
-
Bewildered When I was four I asked my big brother […]
February 29, 2024
2 mins
-
2023 My eyes want to close My heart wants a […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
Transparencies With you it always works like magic— your absence […]
February 29, 2024
2 mins
-
For Queen Elizabeth II With nothing beautiful in our Cheerless […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
Sapporo Snow i In the leafless tree every forked twig […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
Hello mother Hello father Here I am on Intifada Jihad’s […]
February 29, 2024
1 mins
-
Reading Edgar Allan Poe when I was about twelve, I […]
February 28, 2024
18 mins
-
These three volumes of poetry, all published in 2023, differ, […]
February 28, 2024
13 mins
-
Biber expertly applies symbolism and programmatic elements throughout the Mystery Sonatas, and his use of stylistic forms is unexpected. Dances, not normally associated with sacred music, dominate the collection, while tempo markings such as adagio and allegro are scarcely employed. Stylus phantasticus—that is, florid passagework in the solo instrument over an extended or sustained bass—is also used to great effect. The complexity of these devices and techniques is artfully integrated; what the listener hears is, simply, beautiful music.February 28, 2024
10 mins
-
George Orwell’s classic essay “Politics and the English Language” was […]
February 28, 2024
10 mins
-
O’Sullivan’s Law states that all organisations that are not explicitly […]
February 28, 2024
8 mins
-
Madam: I wish to draw readers’ attention to a factual […]
February 28, 2024
8 mins
