Romanian-French philosopher Emil Cioran (1911-1995), once remarked that "the only interesting philosophers are those who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness," a similar take on academia, shared by fellow Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994). Like many of Cioran's aphorisms, it is deliberately provocative. T...

One of the greatest ironies of modern Australia is that we compel every adult citizen to vote, yet devote remarkably little effort to ensuring they understand the political system they are voting for. Compulsory voting is often celebrated as the hallmark of Australian democracy, producing consistently high electoral participation. But participation...

The news that business figures paid roughly $10,000 a head for the privilege of dining with Anthony Albanese in Adelaide is less surprising than it is revealing. Among the guests were some of his sharper critics from the resources sector. Money still talks, even when the conversation is likely to be strained. What is more striking is the price itse...

The demand that followed the Berlin Pride van-ramming was as predictable as it was hollow: do not politicise the tragedy. Organisers, officials and commentators rushed to insist that the deaths and injuries must not be "instrumentalised," that society must not be divided, that the proper response is unity and silence on harder questions. Yet the at...

US Democrats spent a decade pouring petrol (gasoline in the US) on every institution, every norm, and every standard of public decency, and now they are shocked that the fire has a mind of its own. Victor Davis Hanson's recent analysis lays out a timeline that anyone with a functioning memory should recognize: the Democratic establishment did not g...

Every profession requires regulation. Doctors, nurses, psychologists and other health practitioners wield enormous influence over people's lives. Patients need confidence that incompetent, impaired or unethical practitioners can be investigated and, where necessary, removed from practice. That is why Australia created the Australian Health Practiti...

The Substack essay "White Immigration is Good" by Celina101 (linked below), argues that Australia occupies a distinctive position among Western countries on immigration. Unlike European nations, which face large inflows from Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia with limited alternative sources of culturally similar migrants, Australia still ha...

The numbers look seductive on paper. Raise net overseas migration by another 40,000 a year and the federal budget's underlying cash balance improves by more than $80 billion over a decade. Cut it hard and the same ledger bleeds nearly as much. Treasury and the Parliamentary Budget Office can generate these projections with a few keystrokes, and the...

  More than half of inmates in several western states are non-German citizens. The figure excludes foreign-born individuals with German citizenship, meaning the true figure is likely to be far higher. Foreign nationals now account for almost 45 percent of Germany's prison population, with the proportion approaching 60 percent in Berlin an...

The recent knife attack in Paris, in which a jihadist allegedly targeted three women in broad daylight before courageous bystanders intervened, should provoke uncomfortable questions about how modern societies expect vulnerable citizens to defend themselves. Calls inevitably follow for more police, more CCTV, tougher sentencing and greater surveill...

Privacy did not vanish in a single dramatic seizure. It was dismantled room by room, device by device, convenience by convenience, until the idea of an unobserved life became a historical curiosity. What remains is a total surveillance society in which the last sanctuaries, the bedroom, the car, the quiet conversation, have been instrumented and co...

Britain once exported the idea that free speech was the oxygen of a free society. That inheritance is now being methodically dismantled under the polite language of safety, trust, and the fight against "misinformation." The latest Labour proposals do not ban dissenting opinions outright. They simply arrange for those opinions to become nearly impos...

There is a reliable rhythm to democratic politics that the theorists of high-minded restraint prefer not to discuss. When the polls soften, when inflation nags, when the daily grind of governance produces only middling numbers, history offers a time-tested corrective: a bit of foreign action, preferably involving explosions that can be watched on l...

Marxism abandoned the factory floor and went straight for your kid's university orientation, and it worked; as you read, the eager socialist beavers are out at Australian uni campuses spreading the Marxist faith. There's a reason the Soviets couldn't hold a candle to American productivity, couldn't feed their own people, and eventually collapsed un...

In March 2026 India's High Commissioner to Canada, Dinesh K. Patnaik, offered an unusually frank assessment of the relationship between the two countries. Canada, he observed, had the resources and the space but not enough people. India had the people. "With a 40 million population, you need at least about 100 million," he said. "You need people to...

 Royal assent arrived in June, the Combatting Hate Act slipped into force in the middle of July, and before the month was out government officials were already standing on Canadian doorsteps asking about social media posts that had been written months or even years earlier. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms began receiving the rep...

 If you think anything is going to change, you might need your head read... Victorian Labor has unveiled its latest attraction, a brand new ringmaster for the same old circus. Jacinta Allan MP has packed away the top hat, and Ben Carroll MP has stepped into the spotlight, all in a desperate attempt to convince Victorians that the show has some...

 A Substack post by Michael T. Snyder of July 29, 2026, discussing Iran's supposed surprise attack on American forces, gathered recent reports of ballistic missiles, proxy drones, damaged oil facilities, and a chilling piece of Iranian propaganda into one continuous warning: the conflict is no longer containable, and the violence will not stay...

Whatever one's views on the politics of Cuba, socialism, American sanctions or the Trump administration's strategy, there is one aspect of the Cuban story that deserves admiration from almost everyone: the extraordinary ingenuity of ordinary people. Yes, those living under the yoke of communism. For generations, Cubans have become masters of making...

Alan Ritchson may play Jack Reacher, a fictional vigilante who solves problems with fists, fractured bones and an occasionally creative disregard for procedural law, but someone should remind him that the United States is not an episode of an Amazon action series. In the real world, political disputes are meant to be settled through elections, cour...