July-August 2024 Volume Volume LXVIII, Number 7-8, No. 608
The Unnoticed Resurgence of Faith
The Pagan Ecstatic: Arnold Bax
MeToo Comes to France
And Then Come the Nightjars: Down on the Farm
Clancy of the Overflow: How Squatters Made Australia Rich
The Importance of Being Germany
Contents
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The clear assumption by many politicians, public servants, and journalists, is that Australia is inevitably going down the path of “no faith”.August 25, 2024
20 mins
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Arnold Bax was not a lewd man, but he was forcefully sensual, a self-styled 'brazen romantic. Farewell, My Youth goes as far as to pine for the 'lovely, bewitching entanglement of sex!' This must have been, for its time, a radical expression. His music, with its many conditions of ecstasy, deserves to be heard widelyAugust 25, 2024
41 mins
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Apart from growing up in fatherless homes, what the three most prominent women at the centre of the scandal have in common is the arrogance of their predators. Quite correctly, they assumed there would be no price to pay and, beyond that, they would be admired for their 'freedom' in defying those despised 'bourgeois conventions'August 25, 2024
22 mins
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The unusual dual nature of the nightjar is presented in both the beginning of the film, where its cry signifies a bad omen of the horrible things to come, and at the very end, where it represents a sign of hope and renewal.August 25, 2024
14 mins
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The life of John Clancy as a squatter, the land he had to walk off due to poverty, and the Overflow where he worked, a wealthy squatting sheep run that remains today, are emblematic of the settlement of rural Australia in the nineteenth century.August 25, 2024
12 mins
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Losing your state once may be reckoned misfortune but losing it twice begins to look like carelessness. Reunited in 1990, the Fatherland became a nation for the third time and has since acted with more caution, realism and perhaps wisdom than everyone in Europe and America has always liked.August 25, 2024
51 mins
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Powerful though Jefferson was, Tocqueville, blessed by a stronger-yet connection to philosophy’s ancient task, could go beyond the Jeffersonian critique of governing systems, to unveil a deeper, more personal, source of the malaise in the democratic age.August 25, 2024
19 mins
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Before the new pope has literally said a word, his chosen name may speak volumes. Who will the next pope be? I would be delighted if the cardinals were to elect Gregorian alumnus Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's current Secretary of State Cardinal. He is certainly papabile, as the Italians say, but at this point speculation seems crass, or at least inappropriateAugust 25, 2024
9 mins
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There is something very dystopian and peculiar about our present dispensation, but this has developed out of our embracing liberal principles as much as any departure from them; and this should be obvious without the state requiring everybody be locked at home and encouraging experimental injections.August 25, 2024
21 mins
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The new generation of 'anti-racists', including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin DiAngelo and Ibraham X. Kendi, have found various ways to confirm their neoracist analysis. In its simplest form, this one sentence by Kendi encapsulates their argument: 'When I see racial disparities, I see racism'August 25, 2024
17 mins
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Vaclav Klaus made astute points about the EU elections. First, he rejected the term 'populism' as a dangerous progressive label used to attack 'rational thinking and political freedom'. Second, environmentalism, institutionalised in Europe, is the number one danger, the basis of the 'new society'August 25, 2024
9 mins
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Quadrant mourns Lee Shrubb, Executive Editor from 1977 to 1983. Son Joshua writes of a working life consumed by 'chivvying typesetters, dragging the proofreader from the pub, and finding an alternative when the printer burned down." As a tribute to a remarkable woman we republish an excerpt of a refugee's sunny childhood in the Bondi of the FortiesAugust 25, 2024
15 mins
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Seventy-five years after the old empire became the new Commonwealth, there’s no more like-minded group than the CANZUK countries. Why not build on that affinity by making all trade between them tariff-free? Why not work towards mutual recognition of trade and professional qualifications?August 25, 2024
9 mins
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In simpler times the government ran the country, parliament made the laws, and the courts decided what was illegal. What’s happened over recent decades is a tendency for unelected judges to insert themselves into political decision-making on the assumption that their decisions are superior to those of elected and accountable ministersAugust 25, 2024
14 mins
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Bastiat was born before his time. He couldn’t have imagined how much worse things could get. Yet to come was Keynesianism and, coming up behind, the wellspring of unseen economic carnage and limitless waste, so-called climate change.August 25, 2024
8 mins
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Accept a silly author's even sillier argument and you will believe marriage is a patriarchal pyre upon which all married women find themselves sooner or later. Accordingly, the sixteenth-century witch-burners and torturers are -- go on, have a guess -- modern husbandsAugust 25, 2024
8 mins
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The gain of just six seats at the 1943 election was bitterly disappointing, even though one of its casualties was Chifley’s deputy, Frank Forde. Not for the first time Menzies seriously contemplated quitting politics, and some of his followers were plotting to have him replaced. I am old enough to recall the refrain “We’ll never win with Menzies”. Then fortune smiled upon him once againAugust 25, 2024
23 mins
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It is more than a cliche to say that it is better for the guilty to go free than for an innocent person to be convicted. The failure of a prosecution, particularly a difficult prosecution, is not, therefore, necessarily a criticism of those represented the Crown. That is not, however, the way elements of the press saw the sensational acquittal of the original Doctor DeathAugust 25, 2024
23 mins
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T.S. Eliot was uncomfortable with Hamlet, notably describing the play in 1919 as being not only “puzzling and disquieting as is none of the others” but also “dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible because it is in excess of the facts as they appear”.August 25, 2024
11 mins
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SBS promotes New Gold Mountain as showing the plight of Chinese on the gold fields from their perspective. However, according to those I spoke with from Ballarat’s Chinese Library, that view is not shared by descendants of Chinese gold seekers. They are disconcerted by SBS’s depiction of their historyAugust 25, 2024
21 mins
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If, like me, you detest as patronising and condescending the ritualistic 'acknowledgements of country', you simply cannot get a senior administrative position in an Australian university—though an unwillingness to sing the national anthem or celebrate Australia Day would probably not hurt you one iotaAugust 25, 2024
18 mins
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Adolf Hitler admired Islam for its hatred of Jews. In his memoir, Inside the Third Reich (1995), Albert Speer reported that “Hitler believed Nazis and Muslims were united in their cause because we were jointly fighting the Jews.”August 25, 2024
20 mins
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Bruce Pascoe has made many claims to be of Aboriginal descent but has never produced a scrap of solid evidence. The 'our people' of which he writes in the opening pages of Black Duck are not his people and never have been. Race appropriation is offensive, but for page after page Australia's leading fauxborigine keeps piling it on...and on...and onAugust 25, 2024
14 mins
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A population with a large proportion of people dependent on welfare payments, easily cowed by forceful authority, heavily influenced by social media, insufficiently sceptical of the 24-hour news cycle and partly fuddled by alcohol and drugs will not suddenly express prudent values. Those who seek to shape and control know thisAugust 25, 2024
21 mins
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As the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde said some years ago, 'Populism is an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism'. When the voters insist that something isn’t working, as the recent EU Parliament election demonstrates, it is this commitment to raw democracy that manifests itself at the ballot boxAugust 25, 2024
10 mins
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Increasingly, we feel not that we live in countries with a government of the people, by the people, for the people, but that we are a people of the government, by the government, for the government. Even now, though, our lives are not hell, unless we choose to make them such ourselvesAugust 25, 2024
9 mins
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In March, the Australian Law Reform Commission recommended that faith schools no longer be permitted to preference enrolments and staff according to faith and witness, and that they be required to facilitate “alternate” views on religious and moral matters being taught in their schools.August 25, 2024
27 mins
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Academics and others who dare to question the majority view are brutally told the science has been settled. Many such dissenters from catastrophist orthodoxy have lost their jobs, been denied promotion, or subjected to constant harassment and ridicule. This not the way science should be doneAugust 25, 2024
4 mins
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So-called indigenous rights are an important part of the neo-Marxist agenda for weakening legitimate government. The damage and division witnessed in New Zealand is more of the same -- yet another case study in the consequences of elevating identity above good senseAugust 25, 2024
7 mins
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Though such irony is not the book’s dominant tone it serves to remind us that O’Brien is not a poet who takes himself too seriously. Humour is a welcome and recurrent element, reminiscent perhaps of the “comic relief” in Macbeth’s “porter” scene.August 25, 2024
6 mins
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A decade ago, George Pell was perhaps the best-known Christian—and Richard Dawkins perhaps the best-known atheist—in the English-speaking world. They debated each other on the ABC’s Q+A program on April 9, 2012, before a live audience.August 25, 2024
13 mins
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These are interesting and valuable poems to ponder in times when little country churches are put up for sale as bed-and-breakfast investments or to create a capital fund for bishops to do new things, while paying reparations for abusive clergy. Or perhaps it is the last of the nuns’ religious houses, since they are no more.August 25, 2024
9 mins
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Madam: I don’t know if you were following the stoush back in 2014 between the previous poetry editor of Overland, Peter Minter, and Quadrant and me. A lot of fireworks—even Andrew Bolt got involved.August 24, 2024
3 mins
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"I felt a massive tug at my waist, as my body was taken in a nightmare grip by something I couldn’t see. A darker darkness than even the ocean bottom closed around me—whether the jaws of my nemesis shark or the iron-sinewed tentacles of a giant squid it didn’t matter—I knew it was goodnight for me"August 24, 2024
26 mins
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“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,” wrote Kierkegaard. Though I don’t agree with him, I understand what he means.August 24, 2024
11 mins
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Cameron happens to be an Australian comedian, which means his relationship with the sound of laughter is possibly a little strained. As is widely known, our local comic sources some years ago replaced jokes with studiously inoffensive tribal recognition indicators (sourdough bread is a constant) and various manifestations of woke.August 24, 2024
9 mins
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The scallop shell Lying in the sand and almost forgotten […]June 30, 2024
1 mins
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At Rest and Looking Up Today Flying in There were […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
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Tactics A woman is hitting back & forth across the […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
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Endling for Benjamin, the last thylacine Like stripes they’ll love […]
June 30, 2024
3 mins
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Frozen Kittens They’re not staying in the house! My mother, […]
June 30, 2024
2 mins
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Sylvia Plath Groans My dad’s heart gave out one early […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
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Sudden Song Out walking Thoughts swirling Enclosing me In myself […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
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Inside My Chest Inside my chest, a funeral drum beats […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
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Collaring the Wolves Driven from his pack by a younger […]
June 30, 2024
2 mins
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In the Nadir of Night In the nadir of night […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
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The Database Driving home from work in slow stop-and-go summer […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
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The Monitor Station In a Hyperbolic System A monitor station […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
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The plight of pianos I I worry about the […]
June 30, 2024
4 mins
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A Line of Comfort The flowers are always a great […]
June 30, 2024
2 mins
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A Parodic Original of the Species (from “Modern Ruins”, a […]
June 30, 2024
3 mins
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Painting Weather Brueghel painted snow and got it right Van […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
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On the Discovery of a Ladybird Book Ambling over misty […]
June 30, 2024
2 mins
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As Night Comes On “Christ that my love were in […]
June 30, 2024
1 mins
