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If it has to be asked, there’s no answer: What is Britishness anyway? What has made someone British has not been a single quality or small set of qualities that distinguishes him from foreigners. No such bright line was ever needed, because until very recently there hadn’t been demographically significant immigration to Britain for over … More ...

Politicians, like all promoters and salesmen, are optimistic by nature. Why else would they put so much effort into pursuing office when success is so doubtful and the rewards so dubious? A current version of the eternal story is presented by the World magazine cover story on Polyglot Politics—The GOP’s Latino outreach. The conservative … More ...

A Swede sent me a link to a fascinating but horrifying article he had written about the child-abducting Nordic social services state. From the article it appears that in Scandinavia the laws take seriously the liberal concept of the child as an independent subject of rights. As a result it becomes impossible to take … More ...

Melanie Phillips continues stumbling from the corruptions of liberalism toward traditionalist conservatism. While we’ve noted that her views on sex remain mired in the contradictions she notes in liberalism, her recent Dogma and the destruction of excellence shows a real gain in theoretical clarity. Standing back from the destruction of British institutions from marriage to … More ...

Quote for the day: “Every group has its code words. These words serve an important social function—they enable the members of the group to deliver a harsh judgment on others without accountability.” (Deal Hudson)

Two stories from Britain illustrate the discipline now imposed on words or actions at odds with the emerging order of things: Top Tory backs blast at gays and lesbians and Farce as heroes nick thug.

The first involves a senior Tory baroness, Caroline Cox, who lent her support to a book written by an … More ...

Some tricks worth thinking about: Seeing through the lies. Long pauses, short sentences, and frequent errors in diction or grammar can be a tip-off that someone’s lying. Here’s a more complicated system: Become a Human Lie Detector. Act truthful in one way and something else you do will betray you.

No system works … More ...

The forces of built tradition are rallying in Britain and making headway against modernist tyranny: All the King’s Architects: The surprising success of Prince Charles’s anti-modernist crusade. Unfortunately, there are no pictures in the online version of the article, so unless you’re unusually good at visualizing buildings from lists of details you’ll want to … More ...

Rumors that the Right owns the ‘net are greatly exaggerated. It sometimes seems that way, since the Internet is one of the few settings in which the Right is allowed to exist and make its points, but Google searches on leftist and rightist slogans suggest the contrary. The buzzwords of the Left (e.g., … More ...

The French are doing our schools’ “zero tolerance” policies one better: French pupils face jail for insulting teachers. Apparently they mean it. The cabinet has already allocated $5 billion for hiring specialized judges and constructing detention centers.

Why can’t something more informal and gentle than the slammer keep young people in order? The old … More ...