What would Churchill have done? II
Long time Cat readers will know that I’m a great fan of William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill. The opening page and a half must contain some of the best writing in the English language....
View Article800 Years of the Magna Carta
At Runnymede, at Runnymede, What say the reeds at Runnymede? The lissom reeds that give and take, That bend so far, but never break, They keep the sleepy Thames awake With tales of John at Runnymede....
View ArticleRobert Conquest (1917-2015)
It is essential to mark the passing of one of the great historians and enemies of totalitarians of all varieties. Robert Conquest passed away on August 3 at aged 98. I think it is even possible that I...
View ArticleNagasaki – a US POWs perspective
In the late spring of 1945, I saw that the cruelty with which we prisoners of war were treated was only increasing. Our guards told us that Japanese units facing attack had received orders to kill all...
View ArticleLets hear it for the Protestant missionaries
Robert Woodbury gave a talk at CIS last week on this topic. Should have blogged on it but was too busy. Next best thing, read the source paper. From the American Political Science Review Vol. 106, No....
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Bernanke rewriting history
Ben Bernanke is taking credit for having saved the US economy. Okay – what else would he say? But this comment leapt out at me as not possibly being correct: But there is no doubt that the jobs...
View ArticleTheatre of Witness
You must bear witness to our suffering, and to the injustice done to us. Last words of a woman about to die, spoken in the gas chamber to the Czech Jew, Filip Muller. Friday evening in Washington DC we...
View ArticleBack to the future day
Today is the day Marty McFly arrived in the future. On my recent Chicago trip one of the tour guides was a Chicago Cubs fan and told the story that this year the Cubs would win the World Series. He...
View ArticleWhat they said: On Thatcherism
Tony Abbott: …your invitation to give this lecture suggests there was at least a hint of Thatcher about my government in Australia … Adam Creighton: … indeed the biggest similarity was in the manner of...
View ArticleRemembrance Day: November 11, 2015
In Flanders Fields – John McRae In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns...
View ArticleThe war aims of the Islamic State
The choice between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull is a choice between someone who gets the major issue of our time v someone who does not. I watched Tony’s interview with Bolt on Sunday and he must...
View ArticleC’mon, seven days from now it will all be last week’s news
Everyone lives at a moment in time which vanishes even as a new present arrives. Don’t worry. Be happy. This is today. TERROR SCARE HITS GERMANY: COPS WARN ‘NOT TO WALK IN GROUPS’ MERKEL DEATH KNELL:...
View ArticleLearning history
This caught my eye in the AFR this morning: Paul Little and his wife Jane Hansen have donated $10 million to Melbourne University to promote the teaching of history. Ms Hansen, a former investment...
View ArticleEven more holiday reading. Horowitz and The Open Society and Its Enemies.
On the plane to Phoenix, finished reading Radical Son by David Horowitz who was a leading player among the radical “generation of ‘68” that set the campuses on fire and got serious about taking over...
View ArticleThatcher, Reagan, and Gorbachev
In February 1984, Margaret Thatcher flew home from the Moscow funeral of the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. Frustrated by his equally aged successor, Konstantin Chernenko, the British prime minister told...
View ArticleWhat makes war inevitable
My favourite book of all time is Herodotus’s Histories. It is the first historical narrative ever written and tells the story of how our way of life was preserved in the face of a Persian invasion in...
View ArticleLeft/progressives and government vs women at the start of C20
How the progressive left pushed women out of the US workforce. By 1910, fully 45 percent of the professional workforce was made up of women. New clerical jobs, unknown a century earlier, were...
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Allegedly the Nazis weren’t nice people
There are so many ways one can respond to the Immigration Department’s latest gaffe (emphasis added). The Immigration Department secretary Michael Pezzullo yesterday launched a strident defence of his...
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