Culture & Society

Coercion to Consent: from Eugenics to the Right to Choose

Coercion to Consent: from Eugenics to the Right to Choose

September 29, 2015 at 11:16 am 0 comments

From the hype surrounding the film Fifty Shades of Grey, based on books by a female author, E. L. James, those unacquainted with its subject matter might assume that it was a romantic if slightly saucy ‘chick flick’; but the whole phenomenon highlights how the eugenics idea has risen likeRead More

Freedom vs. privacy

Freedom vs. privacy

March 19, 2015 at 3:15 pm 1 comment

“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one,” wrote Benjamin Franklin. In common with most pronouncements by Enlightenment thinkers, this is a pithy, epigrammatic phrase. There’s only one problem. It’s not true. Moreover, it’s rather the opposite of truth, and was so evenRead More

Piers Morgan and anti-Semitism

Piers Morgan and anti-Semitism

February 18, 2015 at 4:11 pm 0 comments

“Jews didn’t desert New York after 9/11 so why on earth does Netanyahu want them to run away now?” asks one of our more objectionable columnists. In other words, he fails to see the difference between flying planes into buildings full of multi-national, multi-cultural and multi-confessional victims, and attacks thatRead More

The right to choose and the chosen people

The right to choose and the chosen people

February 14, 2015 at 9:21 am 0 comments

From the amount of money now spent on children it would be easy to assume that they are the most wanted and cherished children in Western history; and yet we are money-rich but time-poor, because with both parents in paid employment, much spending is for the sake of convenience andRead More

France draws fire – who’s next?

France draws fire – who’s next?

January 10, 2015 at 2:09 pm 0 comments

Here, some 100 miles south of Paris, things are peacefully quiet. In Paris itself there is no peace and there is no quiet. Yet another lot of innocent blood has been spilled by Muslim terrorism; yet another well of typographic paint has been uncapped. I can’t really add much toRead More

The solicitous Dutch warn us in English

The solicitous Dutch warn us in English

January 2, 2015 at 6:07 pm 0 comments

Amsterdam is lovely this time of the year, partly because it’s half empty. The Dutch, flying yet again, have all gone away on holiday, to be replaced by tourists from all over the world. Some of them are from Britain, and it’s mainly for their benefit that the few DutchRead More

The sexual revolution  Brave New World or hell repackaged?

The sexual revolution Brave New World or hell repackaged?

November 17, 2014 at 7:55 pm 0 comments

November 2013 marked fifty years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but also the passing of Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis, each prophetic in his own way.

Huxley’s most famous work Brave New World (1932) predicted that people would be bred like animals and graded according to their pre-destined place in society. As we will see, the idea had already been canvassed in fiction, and the Eugenics Society was busy working on the scientific breeding of humans. But has Huxley’s ‘brave new world’ come to pass?

The price of restraint is death

The price of restraint is death

November 11, 2014 at 6:23 pm 0 comments

Yesterday afternoon a young woman stood by the side of a road holding up a sign. It read “Gush Etzion”. Those two words summon up spittle-flecked rants about Zionist settlements from the anti-Israel left.But for Dalia, it was just home. And then it wasn’t. Dalia caught a ride to aRead More

Most things do work in France – except politics

Most things do work in France – except politics

October 4, 2014 at 7:46 pm 0 comments

I don’t know if Andy Street, head of John Lewis, plays football, but he’s certainly a master of our second most popular sport: French bashing. Nothing in France works, he says. In absolute terms he’s not far wrong: most things in France don’t work as well as they should. ButRead More

National self-determination as the enemy of nationhood

National self-determination as the enemy of nationhood

September 22, 2014 at 12:43 pm 0 comments

It’s hard not to notice the semantic confusion arriving in the slipstream of the Scottish referendum. No one seems to be any longer sure of anything: nationhood, home rule for Scotland, England or possibly Merseyside, democracy, constitution, why the chicken crosses the road or whether or not it comes beforeRead More