Laydown liberalism

Cartoon by Martin Rowson

For Andrew Sullivan religion was at the heart of the Charlie Hebdo killing and that religion was Islam. He wrote:

"But Islam has nothing to do with this. There are just a few loonies who are suffering from false consciousness, and their real motivations are economic or personal or secular or just purely violent. You can believe that, if you want. Or you can pretend to believe it because it might be more pragmatic to do so. Or you can open your eyes. This is not to say that most Muslims support this kind of mass murder – and the global Muslim response was particularly encouraging. But it is to say that it is not a coincidence that so much terror and violence all over the world is currently being committed in the name of Islam. Some core parts of it are, quite simply, incompatible with post-Enlightenment thought and practice. And those parts have all the energy right now.

Bernard Crickly on the Irish question and liberal prudery and squeamishness

Bernard Crick, biographer of Orwell and political advisor in the Northern Ireland Constitutional convention 1974.

Bernard Crick wrote 'In Defence of Politics', published in 1962, and in the chapter 'A Defence of Politics Against Nationalism', he wrote about Ireland:

"British imperialism only once seriously endangered the established domestic political institutions in the way that German imperialism strangled and frustrated the growth of German liberalism."

Re-Imagining the Size and Function of the State

This blog was written after the Newsnight episode broadcast on Friday 7 December 2012 and presented by Emily Maitlis which featured a debate on the size of the state which included author of the Black Swan, Nassim Taleb.

These are fiscally challenging times. Public debt is on such a scale that it’s not just a short term challenge but a multi-generational one. And so with our public finances out of control is there a case to rethink and even reconstruct the purpose, role, size and function of our state? To reconsider what we need from Whitehall and what state provisions we can reasonably do without.