An open letter expressing a generic defence of free speech was published in Harper’s Magazine last Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, two signatories had been hectored into retracting their support, a third had been reported to their employer, and a broad swathe of the activist ecosystem was busy proving the letter’s point that censorship and shaming, Read More
One of the traps politics sets for the unwary is the temptation to enter into process-oriented politics. What I mean by this is a politics devoted to upholding the perceived integrity of a particular process rather than devoted to producing a particular outcome. Politics becomes about doing things in the right way rather than getting Read More
“If I were in that march, and these racist lunatics were waiving [sic] guns at me, I’d like to think I’d rush them and beat their brains in. And I wouldn’t apologize for it for one goddam second” — Jerry Taylor, President of the Niskanen Center () Think about it for a second. Wouldn’t it Read More
Newspapers across the United States are tying themselves into knots justifying the decision to capitalise ‘Black’ while keeping ‘white’ lowercase. The Chicago Sun-Times provides a useful illustration; its new approach capitalises ‘Black’ and ‘Brown’ but retains ‘white’ in lower case as “a wider descriptor of people of numerous origins”, resulting in the curious conclusion that Read More
I have no intention of explaining how I obtained this letter; suffice it to say that circumspect investigations have confirmed its authenticity, and the identity of the correspondents. My dear Wormwood, I read your latest letter with great trepidation. You may well feel that things with your patient are proceeding marvellously; he has been persuaded, Read More
Once again, Tom Holland has put it best: “Whenever people steeped in Christian assumptions experience a particular upsurge of moral fervour, iconoclasm has rarely been far behind.” With the police watching politely from the sidelines, enterprising mobs across Britain and America are taking matters into their own hands; monuments to the old ways must fall, Read More
As protesters crammed themselves into Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, as they screamed “hands up don’t shoot” at unarmed British police officers, and as they threw objects and grapple with the same — some of whom had just taken a knee in solidarity with George Floyd — all I could think was how fortunate it Read More
It is unconscionable that @StarWars has not yet tweeted the words #BlackLivesMatter — Chris Taylor A Bugman is your typical big left leaning city dweller… Everything about his personality and life is not defined by who he is, but by what he buys and his consumerist tendencies — Urban Dictionary Businesses don’t make money by Read More
Let’s say that one day you’re minding your own business, watching a film on Netflix or something similarly mundane, and because you haven’t learned the first lesson of 21st century living — never tell anyone what you think — you make the fatal mistake of writing down your thoughts and posting them online. Before you Read More
4,400 years ago Urukagina, ruler of the Mesopotamian city-state of Lagash, set down the first known code of law. The full text is lost to history, but cuneiform script on a clay cone tells us that, among other provisions, it made clear that the powerful could not force others to sell them their possessions. From Read More