How could an ‘innocent’ citizens’ initiative for democracy bring about powers of government that would pose any threat to our freedom? To answer this question, we first need to remember that freedom is not only lost to boots and bayonets. We can, actually, vote away our own freedom. By giving up our rights to government, small slices at a time, we can lose control over our lives just as definitively as if it happened through open oppression.
It seems that both the architects of the Brave New World and the serfs who live in it actually fear the state of nature found in the Rousseauian paradise. In fact, we have a profound aversion to nature. Rather than acting like animals, we feel a kind of queasiness not only when we witness the more animal-side of human life, but even when we witness animals acting like animals.
There is an ethical case to be made against vaccine mandates. It is far from straightforward, and it requires careful reasoning and methodical analysis. This conversation would be centered around the question about the role of government in our lives.
Until a few months ago, the French media believed that the presidential campaign would be a repeat of the 2017 campaign, with a second round that would pit Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen and end with the re-election of Emmanuel Macron. Today, nothing is written in stone, and the fundamentally unpredictable nature of political life gives us hope.
Nowadays, HR departments are focused on pursuing a ‘woke’ culture, dictating what staff can say or do or even think (or increasingly not), and introducing evidence-free, trendy but transient initiatives such as mandatory unconscious bias training, and ‘Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’ courses.
In terms of ecology, conservatism is far from a nostalgic fixation. It can feed a profoundly human ecology, testify to a deep love of life, and help develop lasting attachments to a life shaped by the constant search for perfection and harmony.
The ‘classical liberal’ emphasis on negative freedoms tends to appeal to older conservatives, perhaps because they assume that what they grew up with was the spontaneous, neutral state of things, ever ready to mushroom forth again, just as soon as things return to normal. Yet sometimes, finding one’s home means building it, and that might take a village.
As a sovereign country, Ukraine is in its full right to make whatever constitutional reforms it sees fit. Their right to independence is as strong as is Russia’s right to national security. If one is weighed against the other, national sovereignty always wins.
The European Commission’s promotional material makes ‘Next Generation EU’ comes across as oddly remote from the task of actually facilitating Europe’s next generation. Nor is it meant for a specialized audience, as it lacks any reference to how one might actually procure the product being advertised—namely, funding.
We rarely learn from history; but we persistently repeat it.
The critiques of postliberals are all useful correctives in this regard. Nonetheless, conservative scholars—and perhaps even more so conservative politicians—must beware the potential perils of embracing postliberalism as a term and concept.
A reformed Ukraine could be the most dangerous development imaginable for those in Moscow who would like to keep things the way they are.
The terrible incident of the Notre Dame fire should have been the occasion to renovate a church so damaged by the ravages of time, to make it even more beautiful. Instead, the sorcerer’s apprentices in charge of its destiny have preferred to indulge in their dreams of experimentation, as if a centuries-old cathedral were a creative laboratory subsidized by the Ministry of Culture.
Having managed the country with the sole aim of keeping her ‘clientelist’ system in power for as long as possible, Angela Merkel is disappearing from the political scene—just as the first cracks in the German ‘ship of state’ are beginning to show.
If the EC and ECJ are to have general power of competence, then the EU becomes not about the pooling of sovereignty but about the removal of sovereignty of the member states.
Bullying a part of the population into undergoing a certain medical procedure is a poor precedent, given the dystopian applications of the instrument that one can imagine.
Like any great performer, Boris knows his audience. So when, last month, it came to his first in-person speech at a Tory Party conference as leader—it is not surprising that we heard little about the challenges facing the UK. Instead, we were left smiling at jokes about lockdowns accounting for the fall in reported crime or, better still, about the return of beavers to the British countryside—“Build back beavers”—and enough alliteration to keep a poet happy for months. Here was Boris promising nothing except that it would all be alright.
Progressives believe that the right-wing populists must be destroyed. Not because populists are smashing norms; it is because they are, in many cases, defending the norms that progressives are busy dismantling.
A good chair can be ‘conservative’ because it speaks of ‘home’—the place that Roger Scruton said “defines us, that we hold in trust for our descendants, and that we don’t want to spoil.”
There are numerous instances of international organizations, such as the OECD and the WHO, not asking for—and in some cases even suppressing—input from those with different opinions. Is this “cancel culture” among multilaterals?
While our current monetary system rests on national currencies and regulated banks, every new user of a cryptocurrency unlocks the potential of a system that cannot be overruled, made redundant, or inflated away. This is what scares monetary authorities the most.
When people live in an ideological ‘echo chamber,’ it encourages them to become more intolerant of what other people think.
We are a deeply superstitious people. Unfortunately, there are those who have taken full advantage of this over the past two years to effect massive economic- and power-shifts, none of which have been to the benefit of civil liberties, families, or small businesses.
A closer look at the ‘number three’ of the Islamic State—a man who grew up in Brussels and became the mastermind of the 2015-2016 terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels.
Despite the challenges it faces, the U.S. is still the best option to help maintain the age-old balance of national identity and power.
Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” With its new measures, Italy— and, for that matter, the many other European governments pursuing a similar path—is sacrificing a lot of liberty in exchange for hardly any extra safety.
One easy way to cultivate the humility and sanity we need is to celebrate the upcoming festivals of the Autumn months rightly and well.
As the National Trust is essentially a conservative organisation, so too its membership largely comprises people with conservative instincts, that is, people who like long walks in the countryside, historic buildings, and fine art. It is astonishing, therefore, that the National Trust chose to go in a direction that, if continued, would lead to its suicide.
The EU puts little faith in the people of Europe; it prefers to oversee national policies—all for the common good, it argues—and to preach progressive values. It is a self-absorbed and overbearing organisation, drowning in red tape, one that costs billions to taxpayers across the continent.
When healthcare becomes a part of politics, directly gifted by the State, rather than associated with the State’s duties in an indirect way, it necessarily becomes part of the State’s governmental repertoire. This is a problem.
