Catholic notes
My personal thoughts on Cardinal Pell’s conviction From what I can tell, this is the crime for which George Cardinal…
Milo: right, but wrong
I’m pleasantly surprised that Sarah Hanson-Young condemned Milo Yiannopoulos for being a ‘paedophilia apologist’ – which he undoubtedly is. The…
Against bum-pinching
BOSTON, UNITED STATES – Is bum-pinching acceptable in the workplace? That seems to be where the conversation veered here in…
Playlgbtiq
I keep turning a thought over and over in my head: What would we think of Hugh Hefner if he…
Donald the Democrat?
BOSTON, UNITED STATES — No one’s surprised or disappointed that Trump reneged on his promise to deport illegal immigrants who…
Melania notes
It’s hard not to feel bad for Melania Trump. One doesn’t exactly get the impression that she wanted to be…
The demon of the absolute
BOSTON – UNITED STATES The word of the week over here was ‘iconoclasm’. Estimable journals have been dropping it, from…
The Christian case for doing whatever the hell you want
I usually don’t bother reading articles with titles like ‘The (X) Case for (Y)’, where X = a right-wing ideology…
With Bannon gone, it’s civil war
At its most coherent, Trumpism has always been a heretical offshoot of Bannonism: the same populist-nationalist spirit without its conservative,…
Who’s a true conservative?
The Prime Minister’s potty, semantic quibbling in London has taken up with characteristic zeal by Peter Van Onselen. His column…
Theresa May and three heresies
There’s still a whole lot of libertarian grand-standing going on about the British general election, much of it predicated on…
The answer isn’t Liberal
Let’s pretend for just a moment that Tony Abbott is the right-wing hardliner everyone says he is. Let’s pretend he’s not as…
Trumpism, post-Trump
BOSTON, UNITED STATES — Professor David Flint made a statement in the last print issue which I’d like to tease…
Honey Badgers make me cringe
I want to believe. I really, really do. I want to believe that all this post-conservative ‘New Right’ stuff. I…
Trump’s broken promises
BOSTON, UNITED STATES — It wasn’t even a year ago the American people were assured Saudi Arabia would finally be…
Why we need a Theresa May
Theresa May is doing counter-populism right. The Tories have just released their manifesto for the June election, and it has every strength the Liberals’ depressing,…
Budget 2017: pseudopulism fails to sway the polls
Theresa May is headed for a triple-digit majority in parliament, just two years after the Tories cobbled together a government…
Trump and Comey: the G-Man goes
BOSTON, United States — Even if the president and his staff are completely innocent of collusion with Russia, Trump’s done…
Christianity, public life and the Thomas Moore option
I’ve always had a soft spot for Britain’s Liberal Democrats. Our tryst began in 2014, when ex-leader Nick Clegg sent…
Ba’athism or Islamism?
BOSTON, UNITED STATES — Thought experiment: what if NATO deposed Assad, installed a democracy in Syria… and the public voted…
Trumping Putin at his own game
BOSTON, UNITED STATES — If you want proof that humans evolved from apes, listen to teenaged boys laughing. Even when…
Trump’s strike: a move even peaceniks should back
BOSTON, UNITED STATES — Donald Trump’s strike on a Syrian airbase marks the United States’ first direct act of aggression against…
Oh Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm…
Winston Churchill said of Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s first Labour PM: I remember when I was a child, being taken to…
Let’s bomb the crap out of North Korea
By no means am I one of those American ‘neo-conservatives’ who’d liberate every tin-pot dictatorship at gunpoint. If some people…
Why I can’t get excited by science
God knows why, but I found myself browsing that Humans of New York website yesterday. Terrible site. It’s basically emotional…
