EXPEDIENCY: the ideology in which conscience comes as a still, small voice saying somebody may be watching. LIBERAL reformers of the 19th C feared an extended franchise: ‘The masses were then, as now, more conservative than their champions: (Peter Gay in The Cultivation of Hatred). AN ideology is a way of organising reality. ANOTHER driver… read more »
‘NOTHING’, said Henry James, ‘is my last word about anything.’ AUSTRALIANS, it appears from a remark by Anne Chisholm, refer to their Prime Minister as the Lizard of Oz. ARISTOTLE held that virtue mattered more than formal laws. (Stephen Clark) JAMES Ferguson, reviewing a recent history of anarchism, remarks that the first reaction of an… read more »
NIAT: Is it not absolutely true that the earth moves round the sun? ‘There is no privileged position in space. In one sense it is therefore as true to say that the sun moves round the earth, as it is to say that the earth moves round the sun.’ (M. Payne, S&MN Newsletter 51) DEPRESSED… read more »
NEW babies don’t laugh, make war, walk erect, use tools, or make love at all seasons. Does any definition of humanity include them? ABBOT John Chapman: ‘I wish I could join the ‘Solitaries,’ instead of being Superior and having to write books. But I don’t wish what I wish, of course.’ CHILDREN under 17 commit… read more »
SECURING THE BASE Social development renders the earlier ideologies not less but more secure as, with each further advance, the successors who arose in opposition to them undergo division. Expedience became more secure against any threat from Principle with the emergence of Precision. This brought liberalism, drawing into the new movement (which emphasises the rights… read more »
CHRISTMAS cards, Birthday cards, Get Well cards, Mother’s Day cards… IC introduces the GO AWAY! card. Carry a supply, hand them out to bores, pests, and botherers. EDMUND Burke: “the British House of Commons… is… filled with everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in hereditary and acquired opulence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil, naval… read more »
DEFINITION: Editor (n) A person responsible for the contents of a journal, whose job it is to separate the wheat from the chaff and see the chaff gets printed. (Adapted from Elbert Hubbard). OUR headline prize for this issue goes to the anarchist journal Black Flag for ”RED TSARS IN THE SUNSET.” CAPITALISM a killer?… read more »