The Perversity of Transgender Politics

It is such a strange phenomenon, Transgender Politics. It is built on the fantasy that human beings can voluntarily choose their gender. Many other aspects of our biological endowment are not challenged in such a way. I haven’t heard for example of brown-eyed people demanding that they should be called blue-eyed or short people demanding […]

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The Death of Charlie Kirk and the Erosion of Democracy.

Charlie Kirk died in a mindless, murderous attack that reflects a growing assault on our democracy. Democracy is built on the foundation of free speech and the vigorous intellectual competition of ideas. In democracies we shouldn’t seek to silence those who disagree with us. We should listen respectfully to their ideas and if we disagree, […]

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Remembering My Father

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are largely occasions created for commercial reasons to make us feel compelled to buy presents and increase retail sales. They are cynical manipulations of our inherent feelings (normally) of affection for our parents. I must confess that I was blessed with the parents I had. I loved and admired them […]

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The Existential Threat of Radical Islamism

It is a strange quirk of the human condition that we almost universally romanticise the past. T H White captured the sentiment in his lovely book The Once and Future King. The myth of King Arthur and Camelot reflect our desire to reclaim an idealised past. As in many such myths (including the Christian one) […]

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Globalisation, Chaos and Political Instability


When we step back to analyse what is going on socially and politically in the world it is hard not to be dismayed by the contradictory trends. On the one hand we have the seemingly inexorable move to globalisation. Both the world’s capital markets and labour markets are seemingly growing more encompassing, demolishing national borders […]

July 2, 2016

Offense and Other Nonsense


This is an era when the rarest commodity is a person who says what they think and thinks about what they say. There is a sense that we are being deafened by a cacophony of multimedia noise at the same time we are being crushed into conformity. Chris Kenny, Associate Editor, The Australian The good […]

June 26, 2016

Challenging the Dangerous Ideas of Radical Islam


Well the USA has just suffered another radical Islamist inspired atrocity. The appalling loss of life in the Orlando club massacre at the hands of a gunman who swore allegiance to the Islamic State, reminds us again of the terrible danger we face at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Rather than analyse this specific case, […]

June 18, 2016

It’s Time to Listen


I have written quite a few articles on free speech in recent times, but it has suddenly occurred to me that I might have been unknowingly pursuing the wrong objective. Whilst I would surely argue that that we should be able to speak our minds without undue impediment, that is unlikely to help unless people […]

June 11, 2016

Putting Aside Guilt


Takygulpa Rinpoche sat on his little stool on his front porch. He was making a kite for a boy who had recently lost his father. He often fashioned such things for children just as his father had done for him and his sister. Augustus sat nearby watching admiringly as the old Master deftly fashioned a […]

June 4, 2016

What Happened to Free Speech?


Our society is suffering immeasurably from the fact that free speech is now routinely curtailed. To put a point of view that is at odds with the left-wing politically correct position is immediately to expose oneself to unjustifiable vilification. If for example I try to argue against same-sex marriage, I will be immediately accused of […]

May 28, 2016

On Children and Parenting


Let me start this week’s essay with a lovely quote from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibrain. And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.” And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through […]

May 21, 2016

The Education Dilemma


Many of us are appalled by the seemingly inexorable deterioration of Australia’s educational outcomes relative to other nations. Despite the fact that in recent decades our funding of education has greatly increased, our children are leaving school worse equipped than they ever have to make a positive contribution to our society and to help us […]

May 14, 2016

Losing Our Identity


Identity politics seems to raise its ugly head everywhere these days. It took me a while to digest the good Dr Phil’s admonition that “nobody is special”. But then it occurred to me that I had come to believe many years ago that we all are as one. And surely this amounts to the same […]

April 30, 2016

Responsible Parenting


Every day when I read the papers I am disappointed to find myriad instances of social dysfunction. There will be stories about domestic violence, road rage, bullying, vandalism, children and young adults involved in petty crimes, and so on. More and more the response to this malaise is for an outraged member of parliament to […]

April 22, 2016