Paul Valery, the great French poet and philosopher, held that, “It is impossible to think seriously with such words as Classicism, Romanticism, Humanism, Realism, and the other-isms. You can’t get drunk or quench your thirst with the labels on bottles.” Precisely so. Nor can one think seriously with labels such as feminism, liberalism, communism, populism or conservativism. Douglas Murray, writing in the Spectator UK, warns against the ideological lumping which conflates conservative parties with “far-right” policies. The commentariat needs to adopt a nuanced and intellectually robust political lexicon, Murray argues, one capable of delineating the requisite distinctions among parties on the right.
A Spite That Knows No Bounds
Gratingly awful global scold Greta Thunberg’s latest stunt is to turn on her own motherland. Sweden has been very good to her, but the former social-democratic paradise’s mugging by the realities of uncontrolled immigration do not sit well with the keffiyeh-clad rabblerouser. “For years, Sweden took more asylum seekers per capita than any other country in Europe,” writes Fredrik Karrholm in The Spectator. “Now asylum numbers have fallen to their lowest level since 1985.”
