Ever notice how the exact same words can mean very different things depending on their context? Last week, when the Scottish Parliament passed the Children (Equal Protection from Assault) Bill, a Left-wing and a Right-wing newspaper both ran the same headline: ‘Scotland becomes first UK country to ban smacking’. The implication of one was thatContinue reading “Good intentions and bad laws”
Category Archives: politics
Conservatives in crisis
Amid the angry exchanges which have ensued between true believers and “the establishment” since Congressional Republicans, led by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, failed to defund Obamacare by shutting down the federal government, a discordant note demanding attention. The always tempered and considered Jonathan S. Tobin, an editor at Commentary magazine, threw up this possibility: AContinue reading “Conservatives in crisis”
What’s the matter with Thomas Friedman?
It’s a question Israelis and Israel advocates of all political stripes have been asking in recent months. What has caused Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and pro-market liberal, to lurch from centre-left defender of the State of Israel to increasingly shrill basher of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government, and the state itself? WeContinue reading “What’s the matter with Thomas Friedman?”
By their fruitcakes ye shall know them
You can always judge a politician by their followers. Mitt Romney attracts the committed, Ron Paul the committable. Grassroots campaigners are essential in American politics, in those states with lengthy caucus and primary processes, and even elsewhere thanks to the Internet’s empowerment of the ideologically energised. Politicians must rely on these people to get their messageContinue reading “By their fruitcakes ye shall know them”
Ron Paul, an unexamined phenomenon
The American primary process, a kind of elongated sweeps for the cable news channels, is a four-yearly vaudeville show that doubles as a selection process for future leaders of the free world. Imagine the aesthetics of American Idol welded to the intellectual demeanour of pro football. When it’s the Democrats, there’s also a touch of the campusContinue reading “Ron Paul, an unexamined phenomenon”
Let us now praise an infamous man
Christopher Hitchens is gone. ‘Dead’, he would prefer. ‘Gone’ is too mystical, a tacit indulgence of superstitious notions of a life beyond the temporal. ‘Death is certain,’ he insisted. ‘There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.’ Now who will rail? Now who will rage? Now who will reason? Hitchens was more than anContinue reading “Let us now praise an infamous man”
Israelophobia – the ‘new’ old prejudice
Something is rotten in the modern Left. An unhealthy segment of what likes to call itself the ‘progressive movement’ increasingly loses its mind when it comes to the subject of Israel. These people long ago allowed their objection to certain Israeli government policies to calcify into an irrational hatred of the entire State of Israel.Continue reading “Israelophobia – the ‘new’ old prejudice”
Stephen Daisley 