Features

The Unnecessary Recession

TIM CONGDON

June 2009

A flawed economic doctrine led Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling to plunge Britain into its worst postwar crisis

Keynes once described the work of Friedrich Hayek as "an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam". Since September 2008 the world economy has been closer to Bedlam than at any time since the end of the Second World War. Turmoil in stock exchanges and commodity markets has been accompanied by almost constant public wrangling between politicians, financial regulators and bankers. Even worse output and employment have been on a drastic downward slide, causing many comparisons to be drawn with the Great Depression of the early 1930s.

Photo: PA Photos

COMMENTS: 1

The Long Shadow of Tiananmen

JONATHAN MIRSKY

June 2009

An eye-witness of the massacre says its malign legacy persists 20 years on

The Tiananmen Square killings of 4 June 1989, 20 years ago, remain the most deadly events in the People's Republic of China since the death of Mao in 1976. Merely mentioning them can lead to arrest and detention. More than a dark shadow, the Tiananmen nightmare still hovers over the country.

Photo: The PLA Moves into Tiananmen, by Robert Croma

COMMENTS: 3

Beyond the Myth of Mandela

SARAH RUDEN

June 2009

As Jacob Zuma takes over as South Africa’s president, the ‘Beloved Country’ needs to break with idolatry

In the December 2008 edition of Harpers magazine, the South African poet in exile Breyten Breytenbach published a 90th-birthday letter to the former President, Nelson Mandela. The letter is replete with despair, grief and anger over the condition of South Africa, and it is full of scenes of misery and violence and reports of official indifference.

COMMENTS: 0

Silence, Please

SUSAN HILL

June 2009

For our children’s sake, we should follow the Trappist monks and just turn off everything, including ourselves, once in a while

There is no such thing as silence," said the composer John Cage, and technically that is true. Even profoundly deaf people have varying degrees of tinnitus and in those places we think of as silent, if we stand still and listen, we hear the white noise resembling the sound of a distant sea in our own ears. Perhaps we should call it something else. However, we know what we mean by "silence" and besides, it is a beautiful word.

COMMENTS: 3

The Golden Age of Conspiracy

NICK COHEN

June 2009

They know who really killed JFK and Diana — many of us believe them. Who are these peddlers of paranoia?

I assume that readers do not believe that the CIA, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex or some other manifestation of the System ordered the murder of JFK. Conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination, once everywhere, are now confined to the diminishing audience for Oliver Stone's movies. I am not sure, however, that you can say, hand on heart, that you have not thought for a fleeting moment that maybe there just might be something in the following propositions:

COMMENTS: 16

For the Sake of Auld Lang Syne?

ALLAN MASSIE

June 2009

Scottish devolution is now a fact of life. But the Union is still in Scotland’s interests, despite the rise of nationalism

Devolution will put Scotland on a motorway to independence with no exits." This warning was delivered by Tam Dalyell (then Labour MP for Linlithgow) during the referendum campaign of 1997. Not everyone agreed with him, though Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), certainly did. That was why he campaigned alongside Labour's Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar. Devolution in his view would serve as a stepping — stone to independence. There were doubters in the SNP, the so-called fundamentalists who saw the offer of devolution as a Labour trap, but Salmond overrode their objections. Yet they had good reason to be sceptical. Labour's devolution proposals were unionist in intention, designed to check the nationalists. The White Paper, Scotland's Parliament, offered devolution to make for "the better governance of Scotland and the United Kingdom".

COMMENTS: 0

In Vino Veritas: I'll Drink to That

ROGER SCRUTON

June 2009

Binge drinking may look like a communal act, but it as an act of solitude, celebrating the self

Concerns over binge drinking — the habit of drinking large quantities of alcohol with the intention of getting drunk, usually in company but without the benefit of conversation of any kind — have brought into focus the great difference that exists between virtuous and vicious drinking. Our puritan legacy, which sees pleasure as the doorway to vice, makes it difficult for many people to understand this difference. If alcohol causes drunkenness, they think, then the sole moral question concerns whether you should drink it at all, and if so how much. The idea that the moral question concerns how you drink it, in what company and in what state of mind, is one that is entirely foreign to their way of understanding the human condition.

COMMENTS: 0

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