Author Archives: stephenkmacksd

Philosophical Apprentice comments. After this collection of David Cameron’s successors: Teresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, Adrian Wooldridge, in the role of ‘Bagehot’ announces: Britain | Bagehot Headline : Reading the death certificate on Boris Johnson’s political career … Continue reading →

Old Socialist comments. Who can forget that team of Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait that birthed such best sellers: ‘The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea’, of 2005, ‘God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the … Continue reading →

Political Cynic comments. JUN 16, 2023 I won’t waste The Readers valuable time: I’ll just quote from Mr. Lowry’s essay in Politico of June 15, 2023: Headline: Opinion | A Trump Pardon Could Drain Poison from the System Sub-headline: If … Continue reading →

Philosophical Apprentice comments. JUN 15, 2023 What makes Lesley Chamberlain ‘indispensable’? Begin with her June 2, 2023 essay in the TLS: Headline: A perverted age Sub-headline: The downfall of Weimar’s licentious aesthetes Chamberlain reviews two books: February 1933: The Winter of … Continue reading →

Old Socialist’s long quotation from ‘Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist’ by Alexander Zevin provides long overdue historical context! JUN 12, 2023 The Economist reads | The anti-imperialists strike back What to read to understand imperialism and colonialism. … Continue reading →

Political Observer on The Economic Metaphysics, as practiced at The Financial Times. JUN 10, 2023 Political Observer wonders at the long term viability of such Economic Metaphysics? Headline: Economists predict at least two more rate rises to quell stubborn inflation … Continue reading →

Philosophical Apprentice collects some of the evocative dross of his ‘Class Day Ceremony’. JUN 8, 2023 Stephens always plays the victim: This is a speech about speaking your mind when other people don’t want you to. To those of you … Continue reading →

Political Observer comments. JUN 4, 2023 What might The Reader make of Daniel Hannan’s June 3, 2023 essay on the Spanish election, as an object lesson to New Labour’s Keir Starmer? Headline: Cut taxes and trust people to choose: what … Continue reading →

Literary Apprentice offers … JUN 1, 2023 ‘High -flown English’ by Thomas Meaney: … There’s a memorable scene in Experience during which Amis kicks Hitchens’s shins under the table to get him to stop grilling Saul and Janis Bellow about Israeli atrocities. Amis’s … Continue reading →

Myra Breckenridge comments. MAY 29, 2023 Beginning:ennui I’m bored; you’re bored; we’re all bored. By our books and movies and television shows, the endless blandness of the Netflix queue, by our music and theater and art. Culture now is strenuously … Continue reading →