President Joe Biden likes to tout the exceptionalism of “our democracy”. It is, he said in his commemorative remarks on the 9/11 attacks, “that which makes us unique in the world”. He also likes to tout the idea that “our …
The tragedy of Australian republicans
The Australian Republic Movement (ARM) has always been nervous about making its move too early — it has been waiting for this moment for a long time. For the past decade, polls showed that Elizabeth II, who visited Australia 16 …
The last American aristocrat
Not long after the Trump election I was invited to a dinner party of the sort I’d only recently learned existed. Here’s how it goes. The host is wealthy, as are half the guests, and the other half are intellectuals …
The EU has created a new dictatorship
Seifeddine Ferjani was just ten years old when he arrived in the UK. It was 1990, and his family had been forced to flee Tunisia after his father, Said, became close to the opposition figure Rached Ghannouchi. For the next …
Peter Thiel on the dangers of progress
You can tell a bit about someone based on their preconceptions about Peter Thiel. Whether the reflexive response to the name is “malign far-Right plutocrat”, “philanthropic saviour of all that is good” or “who?” is a reasonably reliable guide to …
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 …
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 …
Is Europe’s far-Right always wrong?
“In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t about Putin’s attack against Ukraine… It is about democracy, sovereignty — fundamentals like freedom of speech and human rights. It is about Western democracies’ ability to stand up for themselves and the …
Do we need Caesar Elon Musk?
In 1515, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull stipulating that all published material translated from Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldaic into Latin, or from Latin into the vernacular, should be moderated by sensitivity readers. Without such precautions, the document …
Is Obama sabotaging Biden?
Barack Obama has always been good at bringing Americans together, making us feel like we’re on the right track. So his involvement in a new Netflix nature documentary series feels decidedly on-brand: not only does the series celebrate something we …
This war can save liberalism
Francis Fukuyama helped define how we understand contemporary history in his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man. His new book, Liberalism and its Discontents, is a trenchant defence of an ideology under attack. Freddie Sayers spoke …
How a divided America empowers Putin
For more than a decade, Vladimir Putin has sought to sow division and undermine American democracy. Now that he’s distracted by the conflict unfolding in Ukraine, his successor has stepped into the spotlight: America’s political class.
Once wars united people, …
Was Ukraine betrayed by its elites?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is only the most recent and violent violation of its sovereignty. The deeper roots of the crisis lie in Ukrainian elites’ failure to represent their whole nation and to uphold its sovereignty, aided and abetted …
Putin can’t win a Cold War
When Harry S. Truman rose to his feet before a Joint Session of Congress to deliver the speech that won the Cold War, exactly 75 years ago today, some of his listeners might have been forgiven for wondering what on …
The rise of Europe’s fake populists
After seven inconclusive rounds of voting, on Saturday the Italian parliament re-elected Sergio Mattarella as the country’s president and official head of state. It didn’t come entirely as a surprise. As I noted on UnHerd, the two most likely winners …