The Joy of Curmudgeonry

“[T]he first Whig was the Devil.” Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell, 28th April 1778, Life of Johnson , ed., R.W. Chapman (Oxford: ...

gynocrat — e.g., “I am not only a feminist — I am a gynocrat.” — q.v. Martin Amis [1]; etymology doubtful, poss. from Gk. gyno- comb. form...

Though it is true that I am an anti-democrat, I would never go so far as not to have criminals strung up by their ankles in parks and town-...

Whilst we acknowledge that wisdom is eternal, and bears repetition, foolishness is showing unmistakable signs of persistence.

It is not often that a philosopher plays the role of fish in a barrel, and still rarer that one who does has a name that is most appropriat...

The Right Honourable John Prescott MP has admitted to suffering from bulimia, revealing that “the stress of political life led him to seek ...

Susanne Winter, a politician for the Freedom Party of Austria, has been charged with incitement and degradation of religious symbols. She pr...

“I have had the misfortune to belong to the revolutionary epoch. . . . Fate has laid upon me in part the duty of restraining, so far as my p...

“There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.” [“Es gibt keine prästabilierte Harmoni...

“The Tiger is now lashing its tail and smashing its way through the harp”, [1] says Seamus Heaney in repugnance at the economism which has ...

When the all-or-nothing mentality is fixed upon exalting one thing above all others, it allows no criticism of the exaltation of that thing ...

It is pleasing in adolescence to be cynical, declaring, say, that love is simply a chemical imbalance. With adulthood comes a greater sobrie...

With all the hopeful remedies, liberal policies, humanistic prescriptions, and so on, that I hear mentioned everyday, I ask myself whether t...

“In sensitive times like these, we need helpful statements” — or lies, as they were called in less sensitive times.

In the view of evolutionary psychology, moral intuitions are simply the result of evolutionary adaptations to group-existence. No group can ...

One could write a book which might send every man who read it mad. It would have to be so persuasive in tone and argument as to strip him of...