I’ve been teaching Tocqueville’s Democracy in America for a very long time. But only recently have I come to appreciate some of his deepest assumptions and their implications about the whole democratic experiment. In particular I’ve been thinking about the …
The Left has forgotten its philosophy
A mere glance at the headlines underscores what most working people under 40 intuit. Unfathomable wealth inequality, flat or barely improving wages, falling life expectancy, and a massive housing shortage are overturning the hard-won gains of the 20th century. And …
Bruce Springsteen is the last American liberal
Memories of 11 September, and the dark days that followed, are universal among geriatric American millennials. As a member of the generation that came of age in the Nineties and early 2000s, I can easily return to those early hours …
Without socialism, liberalism will die
Brexit. Trump. Meloni. Le Pen. Liberalism is struggling — and no wonder. Since neoliberalism emerged triumphant in the Eighties, and certainly since the Financial Crisis ravaged communities from Dundee to Delaware, sensible centrists have dramatically failed to improve the lives …
In defence of stereotypes
Everyone seems to agree that you shouldn’t put people in boxes. Men and women are uniquely individual, and therefore not to be stereotyped. Why not, however, isn’t so clear. It can’t be because all stereotypes are negative and offensive. The …
The narcissism of liberal gods
By now it’s a cliché that liberalism in the Anglosphere has become a religion, whether or not its adherents know it. But less often remarked is a fact somewhat in tension with this claim: namely, that its worshippers get to …
Can the Left reclaim free trade?
For the past half century, the Right has been the self-appointed guardian of the free market. In one of her first acts as Conservative leader in 1975, Margaret Thatcher strode into a meeting and banged a copy of Friedrich Hayek’s …
Liberalism didn’t protect Salman Rushdie
Why did he do it? Hadi Matar, 24 — dim, lugubrious, incel-y — had by his own admission “read, like, two pages” of The Satanic Verses. Judging by his slacker patter, one wonders whether he fully understood them. Yet there …
Why I married a British Asian
Marriages are supposed to be made in heaven — not in dilapidated local authority registry offices. My wife and I were getting a civil marriage, as our Islamic wedding the previous year, for all its ceremonial pomp, had been a …
Blasphemy laws have returned to Denmark
Towards the end of Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine Part Two, our marauding anti-hero burns a copy of the Quran, along with other Islamic books, as a kind of audacious test. “Now, Mahomet,” he cries, “if thou have any power, come …
Free speech is still worth fighting for
Freedom of expression is probably the most widely acknowledged human right in the world. Lip service is paid to it even in totalitarian states. Freedom of expression is not worth much in Russia or North Korea, but their constitutions guarantee …
Liberals have forgotten what free speech means
Away from the horror unfolding in Israel, the past month has provided one long acid test for the West’s commitment to liberal values. What are we to make of middle-class bien pensants asserting that mass murder requires “context”, of the …
Israel and the identity trap
Yascha Mounk is one of the foremost critics of the potent new ideology that has swept the globe — variously labelled the social justice movement, “woke” and identity politics. In his new book, The Identity Trap, he takes on this …
John Gray: liberal civilisation is finished
John Gray recently visited the UnHerd Club. Below is an edited version of his conversation with Freddie Sayers.
Freddie Sayers: Is it your view that liberal civilisation has passed into history?
John Gray: Yes, and it’s not coming back. …
John Gray: liberal civilisation is finished
John Gray recently visited the UnHerd Club. Below is an edited version of his conversation with Freddie Sayers.
Freddie Sayers: Is it your view that liberal civilisation has passed into history?
John Gray: Yes, and it’s not coming back. …