
A Fracture Revealed, Not Healed
As the scale of her defeat in the Presidential election was announced, Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National (RN), was quick to gloss it. “Millions of our compatriots,” she declared (in a speech that must have been prepared for weeks), “have chosen the national camp and change,” and

Corrupter of the World
The depth and breadth of corruption in countries, leaders, and peoples has gained more and more public attention in recent years, another torment to add to those already disturbing the peace of the socially aware. It is tormenting because—like the warming of the globe, the advance of authoritarianism, and

Identity Mania
A review of The Identity Myth by David Swift. Constable, 320 pages (June 2022). In recent decades, anxieties afflicting Western democracies have arisen from new beliefs and conflicts about how citizens relate to each other—their relative status in society, notions of mutual respect, and the patterns that the past

Taiwan, Ukraine, and Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations Revisited
An attack on Ukraine by the Russian forces massed on its eastern border would nakedly demonstrate the nature of President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism and, by extension, the nature of authoritarianism itself. The Russian state seeks control of Ukraine for reasons of power, and to assuage a Russian population taught

Bitter Lessons from Afghanistan
A review of Can Intervention Work? by Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus; W.W. Norton, 272 pages (August 2011) The American War in Afghanistan: A History by Carter Malkasian; OUP, 576 pages (July 2021) The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock; Simon and Schuster, 368

Inflammatory Anti-Racism
In 2020, mid-COVID, the UK's Orwell book prize was awarded to the British writer Kate Clanchy for her memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. It was based on Clanchy’s experience of teaching in state schools, and among her pupils had been many students of colour