My grandfather Jesús came to the United States to work on the railroads and harvest crops at the tail end of World War II. He arrived through the bracero programe, the first legal guest-worker system in American history. Designed to …
Rachel Reeves, the pound shop George Osborne
The curse of finance ministers whose country’s business model is broken is that they are powerless to transform the economy, yet too powerful not to take the blame. But when the economy is merely stagnating, not yet in free-fall, preventing …
Trump can’t end Mexico’s cartel war
Most residents in the town of Jerécuaro in Central Mexico were asleep when the car bomb exploded in the plaza at 5.10 am on 24 October, blowing out the windows of stores and scattering debris. But when a second car …
Will our universities ever recover from Covid?
From job losses to course closures, British universities are in meltdown — as panicked institutions are desperately shedding their crumbling 20th century identities. Yet if academics, subjects and even physical buildings all look set to go, with administrators scrambling to …
Chatbots are not your friends
Humans are lousy companions. Hence the dogs. We grumble, we interrupt, then we’re unavailable. We also number in the billions yet are somehow lonely. It’s the curse of our species: evolved to be social, surrounded by bores. Nevertheless, the old …
Bring back paternalism for the mentally ill
Donald Trump is a master at disrupting stale bipartisan orthodoxies and remaking the politics of familiar issues. He did so with free trade and industrial policy in his first term, forcing even the Biden administration to adopt his views. This …
Britain’s post-imperial delusion
I only salvaged a few objects from my late dad’s home when it was cleared. But these included two that could be said to bookend his era of British history. The first was a barometer, presented to a Harrington ancestor …
American empathy has turned to ashes
The great British historian Arnold Toynbee created the challenge and response theory of history, in which civilisations — like people — flourish or collapse on their ability to respond to adversity. By that measurement, American civilisation is in free fall.…
The cruelty of ‘corridor care’
This week, while carrying out a SITREP or situation report in hospital, I came across a 93-year-old woman lying on a trolley in a corridor. Tailgating her was a 94-year-old man, also on a trolley, also suffering from a terminal …
Don’t let ancient languages die
Joseph Justus Scaliger. If you’re not a classicist or a historical linguist, you likely don’t know him. But if you are, he is a giant on whose shoulders you stand. Born in France, in 1540, he made his name at …
‘Experts’ killed trust in vaccines
Vaccination rates against childhood diseases have been on a downward slide for the past few years in the United States. Nationally, for example, the share of kindergarteners with completed records for the measles vaccine dropped to 93 percent last year, …
How Bob Dylan fought the proto-woke
The American birthright entails both the freedom and often times the necessity of making yourself up from scratch. Many of America’s most famous heroes were self-made men, from Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. The same is true …
The devilish appeal of Satanism
Jared Mammon is not the sort of person you’d associate with the Prince of Darkness. A mild-mannered Floridian with a day job in finance — hence his alias — he could easily pass under a demon hunter’s radar. Yet when …
Hezbollah’s options are running out
Joseph Khalil Aoun. He’s mostly unknown outside his native Lebanon, but is already helping transform the Middle East. Having previously served as the head of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the new Lebanese President has been quick to make his …
The far-Right is coming for Farage
Nigel Farage is a study in contrasts. He’s the Dulwich College-educated former investment commodities broker who has defined his political career in opposition to the establishment. A Thatcherite disciple, his project is the ruin of her party. And, for a …