BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Sometimes, tragic though it may be, I wonder how the spirits of great thinkers are reacting to current events. How many times would Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek have facepalmed at Rishi Sunak during the Covid crisis? How would Edmund Gibbon react to statue toppling? What would John Maynard Keynes make of Kwasinomics? Would Antonio Gramsci be turning in his grave … Continue reading Alinsky’s Great Flaw
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Introductory Notes: In Greek mythology Sisyphus was the founder and king of Ephyra. He was punished by Hades for cheating death twice by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down every time it neared the top, repeating this same action for eternity. In the final chapter of his ‘Myth of Sisyphus’, Albert Camus … Continue reading Our Sisyphean Liberty
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There are people who are always wrong – Carole Cadwalladr, Owen Jones, Peter Jukes, Polly Toynbee, Marina Hyde – and they serve a useful purpose in life in that you can set truth by their polar opposite. The dangerous people are the ones who are right only some of the time – the “almost right” – who lull you into trusting them … Continue reading Blair Forever Almost Right
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There has been a tendency on the Left to purloin useful words and to try and rob them of their meaning. We have seen this with words like progressive and liberal which – once crucial – are now reduced to a blancmange. And when words have proven difficult to pinch there has been an effort to dilute them by adding a modifier. … Continue reading Postmodern Conservatism Does Not Exist
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN A choice between two equivalent options has come to be known as a Morton’s Fork. Under Henry VII, John Morton was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1486 and then Lord Chancellor a year later. He justified a King’s benevolence by holding that a man living modestly must be saving money and, therefore, could manage to pay for the benevolence, whereas a man … Continue reading False Fork
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN “Where are there flying cars, Daddy?” “Flying cars are everywhere. We call them planes.” “Ha! Planes are not cars, Daddy. I’m not gullible!” People are so focused on form (in this instance a flying object that looks like a car) that they overlook the function (conveyance by flight). Original visions of inventions or ideas set boundaries because in part we can see … Continue reading First Principles
BY DAVID EYLES The failure of Soviet communism was beginning to become obvious in the 1960s, as the slaughter and repression of the preceding decades slowly became more widely known in the West. This led Socialists and Communists in the West into a crisis of confidence which steadily deepened during the 1970s and 1980s. By 1989, the atrocities of the Soviet era were exposed to … Continue reading The World’s Gone Mad Part I
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN As a soldier friend of mine often likes to repeat post-port, you get to really know a person when they are faced by death. However, as those who have joined the near-death club with two fingers rather than a pistol to draw upon can testify, the crucial moment soon passes and drawing conclusions as to the survivor’s character is an intolerable task, … Continue reading The Art of Giving Virtuously
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN It’s funny how everyone exhibiting political soundness has suddenly become “far right”. Apparently, more than half the country are now “far right”, racist, hard Brexiteers. Those, for example, who express support for the populist Italian Government’s logical stance on immigration are supporting a “far right” regime. Meanwhile even the term populist is being redefined as fascist, racist and “far right”, which makes … Continue reading The Peculiar “Far-Right” Smear
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Throughout History power has been shaped by the Crowd. Whether the Bolshevik hordes or Wat Tyler’s Peasants’ Revolt, when the masses marched and massed in sufficient numbers in valuable locations they succeeded in altering the status quo. Often their countrymen would not hear about changes affecting them because of the actions of the Crowd until many days or weeks later; when historic news … Continue reading The Crowd is Dead
