Liberalism

I am going to have to boil this down as crudely as I can, because it’s a complex subject with a simple message, but the Pope is attempting to make it as hard as possible to say, and thus attend, the Old Rite Mass. This is the form of Mass most Catholics went to before the 1970s. It was replaced with a New Rite and the Old was driven more-or-less underground. In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI decided that priests who wanted to say the Old should be allowed to. Francis has rescinded that: now you must get the bishop’s permission and things will be weighed heavily in favour of the bishop

In the House of Lords this week, Baroness Jenny Jones of the Green party said she thought that a way to combat violence against women was to institute a six o’clock curfew on all men. She added, strangely, that ‘discrimination of all kinds would be lessened’ by such a move. Mark Drakeford took that sentiment a step further when he said he’d ‘consider all measures’ when asked if would implement a curfew on men — a sentiment he has now, thankfully, rowed back on. Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking Jones was suggesting something patently ridiculous in order to demonstrate that it always seems to be women who have to

Certain parts of academia seem to wish to turn the study of classics away from a historical, language- and evidence-based discipline whose focus is understanding the ancient world on its own terms, in favour of preaching to students about the evils of ancient imperialism, slavery, racism, sexism, privilege, all keenly advocated by anyone who has ever taught it. There should be added to that list of shame the ancients’ hopelessly misguided views about what it meant to be ‘liberal’. Latin lîber meant ‘free’, and lîberalis meant ‘relating to the free, worthy of the free’; also ‘gentlemanly, ladylike’, by extension ‘magnanimous, obliging’ and so ‘munificent, generous’. Another crucial mark of the

An editorial in the Guardian on Friday suggests that this year may be a good one for liberal Christians, and gives them a little pat on the back.  Liberalism thinks itself the wiser, cooler sibling of religion The suggestion is based on four things: the churches have shown their social relevance during the pandemic; the incoming American president is a liberal Catholic; in his latest book Pope Francis has called for a ‘new humanism’; the leader of the Orthodox Church, Bartholomew I, has spoken in favour of social justice. It also notes that illiberal Christianity is going strong, citing Poland’s illiberalism on abortion, and Trump’s recent support from evangelicals, but it opts

In 2010, Jeff Bewkes, then CEO of Time Warner, was asked if he thought Netflix had any chance of taking over Hollywood. His sarcastic answer deserves to go down as one of the all-time dumb predictions. Bewkes (like the dude who wrote the internal Western Union memo that said telephones were a waste of time) was not taking Netflix seriously: ‘Is the Albanian army going to take over the world?’ A decade later, Netflix is not Albania. It’s imperial Spain during el Siglo de Oro. Massive, relentlessly mercantile and ruthlessly acquisitive, Netflix has rippled over the world to become one of the largest media businesses ever known. Count the hundreds

Who runs a newspaper – and especially a great liberal newspaper – in a digital age when liberalism often seems to be in retreat, menaced by its enemies internal and external? In the not-too-recent past, the question would be easily answered: the editor, supported by his (for in the past it was usually ‘his’) senior journalists ran the paper. Things are more complicated now. At least they appear more complicated at the Guardian and at the New York Times. At both papers, each the proud inheritors of certain liberal traditions, one may no longer say with confidence that editorial control of the paper resides with the editorial staff. This evening,

It was a luminous late August sunset, and we were in France, dining outdoors with some friends who have a magical, charming place in the countryside there. We were discussing audiobooks of the kind you could listen to on a long car journey and I mentioned how Julian, my partner, and I had enjoyed my Times colleague David Aaronovitch’s memoir of childhood and youth, Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists. If you haven’t read it, do. David’s family were hardline members of the British Communist party. He was brought up to believe that ‘God Save the Queen’ was an anthem of imperialist oppression, and the revolution, hopefully peaceful, was

It has become fashionable in recent years to talk of the death of liberalism. But as crowds high on the octane of generational self-righteousness rampage through major cities, the evidence mounts. The growing intolerance of freedom of thought, the inability to talk across divides, the way that most of the British establishment, police included, feels the need to pledge fealty to the cause — as though all terrified of ending up on the wrong side — points to a crisis of more than confidence. It is evidence of an underlying morbidity. Each day the cultural revolution is picking up a pace, with the iconoclasts who attacked the Cenotaph and the

I remember the moon landing very well. I was nine years old. I can remember too my sense of outrage and disillusion. ‘This is a blatant violation of the moon’s dignity and sovereignty,’ I told my parents, as the astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong attempted to secure the US flag to the lunar surface. ‘An act of imperialistic, Zionist barbarism and a statement of intent from the American government that it intends to export its white supremacy throughout the known galaxy. You will note that no people of colour were chosen as astronauts, nor women, nor people with fibromyalgia.’ A day or two later, when I had been let

The nastiest person on Twitter has quit Twitter. Because I’m so generous I shan’t mention his name. All I’ll say is he that he co-wrote one of the 1990s’ warmest, funniest, daffiest sitcoms — which is possibly what made his attack-dog vitriol so especially hurtful. It was like being stabbed with a fork by Gyles Brandreth, kneed in the groin by your vicar, given the middle finger by the Queen. What, you kept wondering, could possess someone you were predisposed to admire to make them behave like such a dreadful heel? Because social media makes monsters of us, unfortunately. Some people, at any rate. We discussed this at the weekend

I have worked in advertising for 28 years. In that time I have seen many briefs for communication campaigns, but none contained the line ‘It is important to insult the target audience, or at least treat them with barely disguised disdain.’ So I wonder whether the referendum result might have gone the other way had Remain supporters refrained from using social media in the days before the vote. Impossible to enforce, of course. The problem with the self-righteous is that they are so eager to virtue-signal to each other that they will go on doing it even when it is completely counterproductive. One American expert has written a blog post

More bad publicity for the Islamic State’s ‘Kafir Tiny Tots and Babycare Service’. A burka-clad madwoman wandering through the streets of Moscow swinging a decapitated toddler’s head while shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ is just the kind of image the company wished to dispel. You begin to doubt its vetting procedures for potential nannies, and also whether or not it has a valid Investors In People certificate. The less than conscientious nanny was from Samarkand in Uzbekistan (which last had a half-decent government in about 1990). ‘I want your death,’ she screamed at the Muscovites, waving the poor child’s head about. The madwoman is now in prison and already, I daresay, the