“Culture is only really culture when it has diffused itself through every root and fibre of our endurance of life. Then it can become wisdom, a wisdom that can accept defeat, and turn defeat into victory. It can render us independent of our weakness, of our surroundings and of our age, a fortress for the …
Continue reading ‘The difference between being educated and being cultured.’ »
“I am opposed to the UK government’s key policy (Brexit), but then so, until recently, was she (Theresa May). There’s a job that doesn’t need doing and, increasingly, it feels like she is just the person not to do it.” (David Mitchell, Guardian Weekly, April 13) Meanwhile, a friend pointed out that the ineffectiveness of …
In recent months, there has been a surge in the number of immigrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Immigrant rights advocates say that is because they’re fleeing extreme violence in their home countries — violence that shows no signs of abating. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has broad powers over the nation’s immigration courts, …
Continue reading ‘Immigration again: victims of domestic and gang violence’ »
“Here’s some advice to my fellow liberals: If you want to defend liberal democracy in this age of “noisy populist movements”, stop condemning people who disagree with you about immigration. In both America and Europe, liberal commentators tend to treat every call for immigration curbs as a xenophobic assault on democracy. “Yet the conflation of …
Continue reading ‘Are you being a “fascist” if you want to curb immigration?’ »
What can be done to stem the populist anger felt by people who feel adrift in the modern economy? Across the world politicians have been seizing on the same remedy: raise the minimum wage. Businesses and economists have long claimed this would cost jobs: yet that’s not what happened when Germany introduced a minimum wage …
