A collection of 74 posts
Under current social conditions, even the most layered and qualified opinions can be distorted, misrepresented, over-simplified, exaggerated, and generally treated as those of enemies whose voices must be shut down.
Huxley’s dissection of a seventeenth century social pandemonium, whipped up in an era of shifting sexual mores, is a timeless indictment of the latent monstrousness within all human beings.
Think about the horses who were replaced by cars. Cars do the same thing horses do—they move people from one place to another—but without all the crap.
In true mobbing fashion, the extreme and racist allegations that Ibrahim was a typical Arabic misogynist and sexual predator simply do not add up. In fact the opposite is true.
Campaigns that mischaracterise issues and stigmatise opponents reduce the complex to the simplistic in ways that are fundamentally unhelpful
Now that they are channeling the self-censoring spirit of our times, the soul is being sucked out of the business, and the art, that I love. This essay is my attempt to explain how we got here.
I’m not the only reader left longing for an editor who displays a lordly disregard for public opinion
Visionaries may be moody, obsessive loners but without them to provide a good idea in the first place, implementers end up working diligently to implement a faulty vision, like clockwork toys set off in the wrong direction.
Some of the greatest lessons I learned in actual social justice came from my parents, even if they didn’t use the term “social justice.”
Bannon’s deplatforming has reignited the debate about the responsibilities that mainstream event organisers and media broadcasters have when giving a platform to far-right views, and what limits we should place on public discourse.
Students now work in tandem with administrators to make their campus ‘safe’ from threatening ideas.
It wasn’t that these women cross-dressed to be men. It’s that they cross-dressed not to be women.
Christianity’s moral vision was not as revolutionary as a casual student of history might suppose. Nor did it equip Western society with a unique set of virtues that were unknown to the ancient world.
Historically, it has been the European openness not only to foreign goods, but also foreign ideas – those which work, those which enhance our physical and mental wellbeing – that has signalled the forward march of modernity.