We are living through a national crisis.  Things are out of control.  Sitting atop the disaster is a man who shouldn't be there.

A new book just out by David Pierre casts fresh light on one of the scourges of modern legal practice.  This is the new curse of guilt by accusation.  Nothing is less likely to eradicate the heinous crimes of child sex abuse that the attacks by the mob on the innocent.

Instead of insulting citizens who wish to protest their government's totalitarian lockdown, senior civil servants in Daniel Andrews' Victoria should just get on with doing their day jobs.

The British are surprised at the submissive reaction of Australians and New Zealanders to our governments' vicious lockdown measures in response to what is, for most, a mild Covid challenge.  This invites the question - are we in the Antipodes any more supine before the power of the Covid State than the Brits are?

The response of governments to the Covid "crisis" has been a revelation.  They have grabbed supreme power and have diminished freedoms and crushed the economy.  How did they get away with it, with such little push-back from we-the-people?  They had six strategies.  Strategies that appear to have worked.

The enemies of freedom are coming for the past.  Exposing the fallacies of their claims, and the poverty of their understanding of history, is an urgent and ongoing task.  But it may not be enough.

Cardinal Pell is a free man, vindicated but not embittered.  A model of forgiveness and compassion.  And truth.  And not done with yet.

Welcome to East Berlin - I mean Melbourne.

Cancel culture is all around.  It crushes rational debate and destroys freedom of thought and speech.  The latest victim is the eminent British historian David Starkey, caught up cruelly in the Black Lives Matter debate.  His cancellation raises important questions for how those who value freedom fight against leftist revolutionary thought and practice.

The re-emergence of Mark Latham has been one of the most interesting developments in recent Australian politics.  Latham's common sense centrism and his push-back against the ruling elites has struck a chord with voters of all stripes.  Populism, perhaps, but also, maybe, a much needed reality check in these troubled and inauthentic times.

The modern culture wars have their genesis in a most unfortunate marriage of convenience between two intellectual and political movements.  The proponents of economic liberty and the cultural marxists who emerged in the 1960s found common cause in radical individualism, in the 1980s.  And we have all suffered since.

Do we inhabit times where it is "no country for old men"?  For old virtues?  For Judea Christian conceptions of good and evil?  Cormack McCarthy's epic novel, and its stunning if gruesome movie adaptation by the Coen Brothers, offer valuable lessons for our crazy and evil postmodern world.

The Covid crisis has thrown up many conundrums, and ideological positions.  The politicisation of death is distressing, so called "Covid death porn".  But there are other dimensions to this, not least the other, less reported Covid porn epidemic.  Returning to real science is critical, as is moral and political perspective.

There is a theory of politics called the "Overton Window".  It explains a lot about modern politics in the age of madness and badness.  It does not explain everything, but it offers fresh insights into the way our modern, diminished politcs function.

The Cancel Jesus Project is well and truly underway.  The killing of the statues proceeds apace.  The attentions of the revolutionaries have already turned to Christian icons.  Killing God is an old project.  We are now witnessing the final phase.

There is a madness to crowds, as writers such as Douglas Murray have observed, with great perception.  To explain the modern world's predicament only as a problem of madness is to miss a big point.  The problem of evil.  Christians understand this.  It is time for the world to catch up.

There is a madness to crowds, as writers such as Douglas Murray have observed, with great perception.  To explain the modern world's predicament only as a problem of madness is to miss a big point.  The problem of evil.  Christians understand this.  It is time for the world to catch up.

Australia's battle of ideas - the culture war - seems lost, to the forces of progressive liberalism.  Those who would fight this battle seem preoccupied with getting the Liberal party into office, and keeping it there.  While the bigger battles go by, without a fight.  Understanding where we are going wrong is the first task in understanding the war we are in.

Chesterton once said that the non believer in God doesn't believe in nothing - he is prone to believe in anything.  Observing the current political madness in the world only confirms Chesterton's wisdom.  Whether it is the mad wokeness of the new revolutionaries, or the crazy hysteria over Covid 19, it seems to be everywhere.  There is a madness to crowds.  Not just in Victoria.

The Covid lockdown has infringed the rights and liberties of ordinary Australians in ridiculous ways while leftists have been able to turn up at protest rallies for this, that and the other.  Spot the tilt to the left, facilitated by the State?  The double standards are palpable.

Australian leaders are fond of making apologies.  Perhaps one is owed to Cardinal Pell following his High Court exoneration.  Among the many public figures who owe such an apology, the Cardinal might well expect one from our Prime Minister.

The Government's decision to double the cost of a universities arts degree is short-sighted, philistine and utilitarian.

First they came for the explorers.  Statues' live matter.  The culture war has ramped up in these Covid times, perhaps unexpectedly.  It behooves those of us with an affection for tradition and freedom to, first, understand the war we are in, and then to comprehend what needs to be done to fight back.

China is in the news.  With Covid and with trade wars, the world has begun to question its embrace of China over these past decades.  With good reason.  A repulsive regime has been granted the keys to the world economy.  On our watch.

The Covid Crisis has thrown up its own set of "tribes", interest groups with different stakes in the way the thing is playing out.  Understanding the ideologies and the interests of the various players helps us all to make sense of the crazy times in which we live