The question of when human life begins is like the question of when human life ends: it is a question of values not science. Interviewed by NBC, a woman stood before the Supreme Court building in the US with her …
Your Fitbit has stolen your soul
Philosophers have seldom lived up to the ideal of radical doubt that they often claim as the prime directive of their tradition. They insist on questioning everything, while nonetheless holding onto many pieties. Foremost among these, perhaps, is the commandment …
The Left killed the pro-choice coalition
In 1992, while the ascendant evangelical Right was pushing to roll back abortion rights as part of its “family values” platform, the Democratic party stumbled on a pro-choice message that would not only win the presidency but also define the …
Black kids should study Larkin
On a Friday morning in March 2020, I entered a secondary school for the first time since I had left for university. I was there for an interview. The opening was for a tutor, not a teacher: instead of handling …
The truth about Canada’s Indian graves
On 27 May 2021, the Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc — a First Nations government in British Columbia — announced that ground penetrating radar (GPR) had located the remains of 215 “missing children”. These were allegedly “undocumented deaths” from …
Why did my daughter become trans?
Our third child was a quirky girl, into gymnastics, baking, music. She liked things requiring new outfits. She was keen on Disney princesses. She had some particular passions — fluffy clothing for a while, a collection of handbags, cast off …
Stop pretending Britain is America
The year was 1927, and Lieutenant-Colonel Reginald Applin, DSO, OBE, was on the warpath. The Conservative MP for Enfield was a man of decidedly robust opinions. In his youth he had served in the North Borneo Armed Constabulary. In middle …
The emptiness of awareness campaigns
If you’ve been on the London Tube recently, you’ve probably come across posters warning that staring is sexual harassment and is not tolerated. Publicity campaigns to address social challenges can be effective when the problem is well-understood and the message’s …
Harm reduction has captured the US
It seems that every large city in America has marked off a neighbourhood where drug addicts are free to die in the streets. San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, downtown Portland, Skid Row in Los Angeles, Hunts Point in New York, Kensington …
Chaos has consumed Israel
It’s all too easy to view the chaos of Israeli democracy as an outcome of close elections and irreconcilable differences. But elections have been close before, and fundamental disagreements on policy have barely registered since Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid …
America’s fake caste war
If you listen to NPR or read The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Washington Post, you might think that Indians who live in the US, immigrants and their native-born children, are determined to impose the subcontinent’s caste system …
What progressive extremism experts get wrong
In 2017, when Maajid Nawaz appeared on Bill Maher’s Real Time, he openly discussed his past membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group that calls for the restoration of the Islamic caliphate. Back then, he enjoyed some renown as a “counter-terrorism …
The nightmare haunting the Tories
In a vast, bleak industrial hangar, endless coffins are laid out, as far as the eye can see. So begins a scene in Dennis Kelly’s conspiracy drama, Utopia, set amid the turmoil of the Winter of Discontent. In February 1979, …
How universities were corrupted
When are we going to do something about the state of our universities? We must surely by now be familiar with the symbols of this unfolding crisis. Philosopher Kathleen Stock, who was harassed by students and staff to such an …
This is not a class war
Headlines scream about a looming “class war“; reports warn of an inevitable “summer of discontent”. Britain’s newspapers are trying their hardest to evoke the chaos of the winter of 1978-79, which, in the neoliberal fairy-tale version of history, marked the …