Mladí důstojníci, s nimiž jsem byl v kontaktu, pocházeli především z metropolí a měst, ne z kibuců, a díky nim jsem pochopil, co jsem měl chápat už dávno: že sen o venkovském socialismu je právě jen s...
If it is to be taken seriously again, the Left must find its voice. There is much to be angry about: growing inequalities of wealth and opportunity; injustices of class and caste; economic exploitatio...
East and West, Asia and Europe, were always walls in the mind at least as much as lines on the earth
But at least their provision was universal, and for good and ill they were regarded as a public responsibility.
Broadly speaking, affairs that were urgently political in Europe aroused only intellectual interest in Britain; while topics of intellectual concern on the Continent were usually confined to academic...
As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism's traditional critics but al...
Sense of shared citizenship. This sentiment was crucial to the formation of modern states and the peaceful societies they governed.
A political class deeply sensitive to its moral and social responsibilities.
Ztráta víry samozřejmě zdaleka není tak atraktivní jako víra; i když odklon od ní může být racionální, ztrácíte tím víc, než získáváte.
Without idealism, politics is reduced to a form of social accounting, the day-to-day administration of men and things. This too is something that a conservative can survive well enough. But for the Le...
When the Red Army finally reached central Europe, its exhausted soldiers encountered another world. The contrast between Russia and the West was always great—Czar Alexander I had long ago regretted al...
Whatever their other differences, French Gaullists, Christian Democrats and Socialists shared a common faith in the activist state, economic planning and large-scale public investment. Much the same w...
Today’s schoolchildren and college students can imagine little else but the search for a lucrative job.
The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike.
The only thing worse than too much government is too little: in failed states, people suffer at least as much violence and injustice as under authoritarian rule, and in addition their trains do not ru...
The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears ‘natural’ today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cu...
The likely consequences of this coming age of uncertainty—when a growing number of people will have good reason to fear job loss and long-term redundancy—will be a return to dependency upon the state.
The idea that it was the state’s business to know what was good for people—while we accept it uncomplainingly in school curriculums and hospital practices—smacked of eugenics and perhaps euthanasia.
Our disability is discursive: we simply do not know how to talk about these things any more. For the last thirty years, when asking ourselves whether we support a policy, a proposal or an initiative,...
Marxismus je sekulární náboženství – to je evidentní. Ale které náboženství vlastně následuje, není vždycky zřejmé. Zahrnuje v sobě velkou část tradiční křesťanské eschatologie: pád člověka, Mesiáše,...