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George Walford: Protest Begins

August 9, 2014

Witing on recent political events Ernest Gellner [1] traces their beginnings to the Reformation / Counter Reformation in division in Europe. One side moved towards limited and accountable government, high status for commerce and production, a generalized individualism and freedom of thought. The other favoured inherited status, martial honour and political domination. Paul Johnson had… read more »

George Walford: Ideology in the Reviews (56)

August 21, 2014

MICHAEL Gossop reviews Solomon H. Snyder: Brainstorming; The science and politics of opiate research. (Harvard UP) and Ronald K.Siegel: Intoxication; Life in pursuit of artificial paradise (Simon & Schuster). Both authors point out how drug control strategies can do more harm than good. Snyder describes how the American campaign to eradicate the use of opium… read more »

George Walford: Editorial Notes (56)

August 17, 2014

UNITED Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation predicts that population will rise from five billion to eight billion by A.D.2020. IS BORIS GOOD ENOUGH? Under this headline Norman Stone recalls that when the tanks stormed into Moscow they stopped at red traffic lights. Memory adds that when the Parisian Communards wanted to open the bank vaults… read more »

George Walford: The Ideological Pyramid (56)

August 16, 2014

The major ideologies, outlined on the facing page, have developed through history. Each of them provides the conditions which permit the next one to emerge, and each of them has fewer people attached to it than the one before. The diagram below indicates the outcome, the ideological structure of contemporary society, but the model needs… read more »

George Walford: Meet Systematic Ideology (56)

August 8, 2014

(Revision of May 1992) IDEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY announces itself as a journal of systematic ideology (s.i.), but it does not claim final knowledge of this theory; the formulation that looked like the ultimate last month needs alteration now, and the account given here undergoes continuing revision. Si. starts from observation of the limited success achieved alike… read more »

George Walford: Anarchists

September 3, 2012

Anarchists routinely describe their desired society as one in which everybody would be free to act as they choose provided they did not interfere with the freedom of others. The 1945 constitution of Kemalist Turkey agreed: “Every Turk is born free and lives free. He has liberty to do anything which does not harm other… read more »