Scott was on the brink of divorce when he started talking to Sarina. The 41-year-old soon found himself falling in love. Reinvigorated by his new romance, Scott began helping his wife around the house without resentment. Sarina’s radical empathy had …
Ideology has poisoned the West
A century has passed since William Butler Yeats sensed the stirrings of a “rough beast” with a gaze “blank and pitiless as the sun”. That beast’s apocalyptic hour has come around again, its rebirth announced by the galloping horsemen of …
Our universities need a revolution
What is the point of university? It used to be, when Harvard was founded in 1636, “to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity”. But in recent years the university has taken on an altogether narrower character. Learning is no …
Michael Gove won’t save the North
Recently, the Prime Minister found himself on Tyneside but thought he was on Teesside. So what’s the problem, other than straightforward stupidity? The problem is that the British road to power rarely leads north, and at a time of much …
Did Ukraine need a war?
War has always been the father of innovation: a reset for societies forced to adopt whatever methods work just in order to survive. The outburst of voluntarism that has gripped Ukraine is a striking example: mutual aid groups, local volunteer …
The founding myth of Stonewall
Like most origin stories, the Stonewall uprising has been the subject of popular mythmaking. Various branches of the LGBTQ+ rainbow now take credit for the moment, 53 years ago this week, when a group of patrons at a Greenwich Village …
Fragile students just need a hug
The number of children killed by preventable accidents declined in every UK nation between 1980 and 2010. The number of children killed or seriously injured by a car gets lower by the year; the incidence of severe burns has declined …
Schools can resist the trans wars
People get very worked up about children’s books. In 1987, the Right-wing press stirred up a shameful moral panic about Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin, a harmless picture book that featured a gay couple and was kept on such …
The cost of Biden’s racialism
Joe Biden may have once bragged about his cooperative relations with segregationists, but he still arguably owes more to African-American leadership and voters than any politician in recent history. After all, it was black voters who bequeathed him the two …
Where is the moral case for abortion?
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 …