The death this week of a brutal twentieth-century dictator reminds us of how routine his crimes used to appear.
Category: Ideas
Brisbane and Budapest
Self-described lovers of freedom seem to have a weak spot for authoritarians. Compare and contrast Queensland and Hungary.
Victory in the drug war?
The momentum for marijuana legalisation in the United States now seems unstoppable, but the lessons may not generalise to other countries and other issues.
Mr Koch and the Russians
A dispute at a prestigious American think-tank exposes an apparent synergy in foreign policy between libertarianism and Trumpism.
A Parisian anniversary
Marking the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, and wondering if it still carries lessons for today.
Updating freedom and democracy
A new report from Freedom House sounds urgent alarm bells about the decline of democracy.
Liberal history revisited
A further volume of David Kemp's history of Australian liberalism casts more doubt on the Liberal Party's pedigree.
What is self-determination?
Israel/Palestine returns to the headlines, raising questions about the nature of the right to national self-determination, and whether there are principled grounds for according it to some but not others.
A short history of Trumpism
As Joe Biden assumes office, the most important thing for him and his supporters to understand is that Donald Trump did not appear from nowhere. The politics of which he is a symptom has a history and will not go disappear of itself.
Putin’s problems
While American democracy is graphicly displaying some of its shortcomings, its rivals don't have things all their own way either.
The World is Not Enough 