The centenary of the Russian Revolution is an opportunity to restore the reputation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Harvard Commencement Address, 1978

(This is an article written for the next edition of The Salisbury Review.) When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn rose to deliver his Commencement Address at Harvard University in June, 1978, he was arguably the world’s leading cultural figure: a globe-bestriding literary giant in the tradition of Tolstoy; an implacable, grim-faced Old Testament prophet in the mould of Jeremiah; a heroic, seemingly indestructible truth-teller who survived imprisonment, exile and cancer to bear witness to the horrors that ensue whenever Communism is put into practice.

Let's demand those Nobel Committee commies award one of their prizes to Thomas Sowell

Yes, I know - I've already written about Thomas Sowell twice in recent weeks, but I've been asked to do something on him for The Salisbury Review, so I might as well kill two birds with one stone and post it here (if you spot any glaring errors, please let me know):

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” 

The economist, political philosopher and social commentator Thomas Sowell - America’s most consistently quotable public intellectual - recently retired at the age of 86. His legion of admirers, who think it’s scandalous that he has never been awarded a Nobel Prize for economics, will miss him. But, given his age, and the fact that he has written forty books, 2,000 syndicated columns, and a host of scholarly articles, essays and book reviews, nobody can doubt that he has earned the right to retire from the battlefield, especially at a time when left-liberalism - the political and economic philosophy he has spent over half a century mercilessly bludgeoning - appears to be in retreat.

James Delingpole marked Christmas Day with possibly his best article of the year

There's nothing quite as exhilarating for those of us on the Right as James Delingpole pistol-whipping the virtue-signalling left-liberal enemy. His 25th December Breitbart piece was his most spirited assault in quite some time. His main theme was the tendency of leftists, in the wake of a Islamist terrorist attack, to deflect attention from the actual perpetrators of the foul deed - and from the religion which they follow - by singling out some (usually perfectly reasonable) comment made by a right-winger in the wake of the attack, and employing the tactics of "point and shriek" and "isolate and storm". The latest instance of this was Nigel Farage's linking of the Berlin slaughter to Angela Merkel's deranged immigration policy, and his subsequent spat with Brendan Cox, the widower of the murdered Labour MP, Jo Cox. Delingpole became a subsidiary target of left-wing pseudo-anger when he tweeted, "When are we allowed to say that Brendan Cox is a total arse?":

Arise, Sir Roger! - the award of a knighthood to Roger Scruton shines out like a good deed in a naughty world

Sir Roger Scruton

I suffered a moment of confusion while scanning the knighthood recipients in the Queen's 90th. Birthday Honours list when I saw the name of Angus Deaton among them. The coke-sniffing, two-at-a-time sex romping former Have I Got News for You? presenter? Had he, I wondered, done a Profumo by devoting himself to good works in order to atone for past transgressions? He might very well have done, but it turned out to be a professor at Princeton, whose name is spelled slightly differently.  Anyway, my friend David Moss reminded me - in a comment on a post I'd written about our old university supervisor, Roger Scruton, in 2011 - that I'd concluded it with a bold (some might say rash) promise. Responding to Scruton's claim that "it’s still possible to gain a vision, to stand on a little peak - perhaps not the peak on which Spinoza stood, or Plato, but a peak of one’s own -  and look across at all this sea of ignorance and confusion and hysteria… and smile at it", I wrote:

"That Bloody Woman" - my review of the second volume of Margaret Thatcher's biography for The Salisbury Review

I posted some remarks about Charles Moore's book on January 16th, but here's the full version, which has just been published in the Spring edition of The Salisbury Review.  For anyone who doesn't already subscribe, you should do so immediately in order to read "In the Tattooist's Parlour", a fascinating article by a former factory worker and tattooist, Victoria Sweetwater, about what life (her life) is like in one of this country's bedraggled Northern multicultural dystopias. It's startling to read an account of the tensions between working-class whites, Asians and Poles not written by someone who sounds like a visiting anthropologist observing primitive tribes in their natural (or unnatural) environment. Ms Sweetwater (presumably an alias, but it would nice if it wasn't) was apparently a left-winger until she came across The Salisbury Review. Meanwhile, here's my Thatcher review:

"Mrs Thatcher is the point at which all snobberies meet" - why she drove the snobby Left round the twist

Possibly the best chapter in the magnificent second volume of Charles Moore’s three-volume biography of Margaret Thatcher (The Authorized Biography, Volume Two: Everything She Wants) is the penultimate one, “What they saw in her”, in which he examines the Left’s reaction to the Member for Finchley during her second term as Prime Minister (1983-87). According to Charles Clarke, who was Neil Kinnock’s Chief of Staff in the ‘80s, “Margaret Thatcher’s greatest strength was our uselessness.” Their uselessness took a very specific form: an utter inability to understand or even to examine the reasons for Mrs Thatcher’s extraordinary electoral success. Convinced of her wickedness, they thought that “they only had to point this out loudly enough and voters would desert the Conservatives.” Moore goes on, “Never… did they coldly analyse why she was winning, in order to ensure that she would lose.”

As another wave of fascist thugs threatens our freedom, it's time to revive Karl Popper's reputation as a political philosopher of genius

I've just finished this article for the next edition of The Salisbury Review. I mentioned that I was writing it in my piece on "Is this all the fault of Islam"  earlier this month (here). Back in 2012, I identified Popper as one of my four greatest 20th Century intellectual heroes (along with Wittgenstein, Hayek and Jung) in a blog about the importance of political and economic feedback (here). So I'm delighted to be doing something - no matter how nugatory - towards celebrating Popper's role as a great defender of liberty. His contribution to political philosophy appears to have been almost entirely airbrushed from history by left-wing academics, who apparently view him as a traitor to their cause. Well, sod 'em - Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH FBA FRS was a brilliant, cantakerous, feisty, unclubbable, utterly honest fighter for truth and common sense: I'd love to have heard him on the issue of Islamofascism and the smiley-faced tyranny of the EU.

The changing face of global leadership - Reagan v. Obama (hat-tip: Marcher Lord)

“You could hear a rat piss on cotton” – the wit and wisdom of black libertarian economist Walter E. Williams

Libertarian classic: "The God of the Machine", Isabel Paterson's 1943 trumpet blast against the liberal fascism of the New Deal

Isabel Paterson

I wrote about Isabel Paterson's astonishing book in June 2012 (here), but that mainly consisted of one long quote, a few slapdash observations, and, besides, it was all mixed up with a review of a television series being broadcast at that time. I've now written what I hope is a proper appreciation of the great lady for the latest edition of The Salisbury Review, albeit under a pseudonym.  I'm not a libertarian, but I've read quite a few modern books on the subject, and none of them comes close to Paterson's masterpiece, which strikes me as the wellsprung of every libertarian - and many conservative and right-wing - works published since her bracing game-changer first appeared. If my article were available online, I'd link to it, but it isn't, so I've made it available here (God, that sounds pompous!):

Scarlett Johansson is a heroine for standing up to Oxfam’s disgraceful anti-Israeli bullying

Scarlett Johansson doesn’t mean that much to me, probably because she tends to appear in the sort of film I don’t watch (the last one I can remember seeing her in was Lost in Translation ten years ago, which nearly bored me insensible). I’ve seen her in tons of TV and magazine adverts for "luxury" brands over the years, but I wasn’t aware of her role as an ambassador for Oxfam until I read today that she had given up her role with the charity after eight years because of her connection with the Israeli company SodaStream.

Right-wing warriors James Delingpole and Dan Hannan plus a rockabilly outro - podcast heaven!

James Delingpole produces a regular podcast ("Radio Free Delingpole - broadcasting to you from Occupied Europe") for the American conservative Ricochet website, consisting of a 40 minute telephone chat with another right-winger. The latest edition, which you can listen to here, features the Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan. If you don't read the Guardian and you're not a wet, pseudo-Conservative social democrat, it'll act as pick-me-up after six looooonnnnngggggg days (with even more to come) of uncritical, swivel-eyed, semi-mystical Mandela-worship.

Economic historian Niall Ferguson's bloody demolition of smug lefty economist Paul Krugman

Niall "Does your Mum sew?" Ferguson

Several of my left-wing Facebook “friends” have at various times posted links to articles by the American economist, Paul Krugman, who writes regularly for the New York Times. As Krugman is a confirmed leftist who (now that there’s a Democrat in the White House) opposes “austerity” and loathes Republicans, fellow-lefties are forever quoting him. I read a couple of his articles, which mainly consisted of him bragging about how he’s always right and showing contempt for anyone who disagrees with him. Now, to quote from Machete (see here), he appears to have “fucked with the wrong Mexican” – or, to be precise, the wrong Glaswegian.

“So we’re bombing Syria because Syria is bombing Syria? And I’m the idiot?” - Sarah Palin

I've always had a soft spot for Sarah Palin. Okay, she may be a bit fuzzy when it comes to world geography, but, unlike Barack Obama, I suspect she knows the US doesn't consist of 57 states and probably doesn't imagine that Hawaii is in Asia. She just posted these comments on her Facebook page (here) regarding the proposed plan to bomb Syria  - it all makes sense to me:

A salute to Barry Goldwater: the Hero of the Right who made Reagan's presidency possible

I suspect that when young(ish) British conservatives hear Barry Goldwater's name, they experience a frisson of distaste. Here, the mainstream MSM invariably portrays him as a dangerous right-wing nut-job who – had he won the 1964 presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson - would have dragged the world into nuclear war, reintroduced slavery, and destroyed the American economy with his extreme fiscal conservatism.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan delivers a rousing eulogy to Mrs Thatcher in a pub

Garland's marvellous Mrs Thatcher cover illustration for The Spectator

RIP Margaret Thatcher: the greatest politician and the greatest Briton of my lifetime

Sowell Mate: the wit and wisdom of the great Thomas Sowell

Source: Stories blog

Playwright David Mamet's brilliant contribution to the gun-control debate

David Mamet

Like everyone else, I’ve been reading an awful lot of articles about gun control recently. Whenever the subject has cropped up on TV, I’ve tended to switch over, because most of the coverage in the UK has consisted of liberals using the issue to attack every American who didn’t vote for Barack Obama, while simultaneously using Britain’s comparative lack of gun murders as the excuse for a liberal smug-fest. (I can handle this sort of self-righteous guff when it's written down, but the sound of liberals being morally superior tends to set my teeth on edge.)