03 December 2016
Civilization and inequality
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Sphinx and pyramid at Giza In Egypt’s palmy days, industry, foreign commerce, and successful wars poured untold wealth into the coffers o...
24 September 2016
Poverty and servants in
The Railway Children
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In Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children , when the family becomes worse off and leaves their salubrious house in a London suburb, the life wh...
29 July 2016
Revolutionaries at the BBC
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Bush House in London Paul Kriwaczek’s book In Search of Zarathustra , about the prophet Zoroaster, refers to the overthrow of the Shah of...
17 July 2016
H.G. Wells, Hayek and the ‘rights of man’
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H.G. Wells included a ‘Declaration on the Rights of Man’ in his book The New World Order , published in 1940. This contains, for example, th...
10 July 2016
Merlin and the servant problem
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In C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength , the druid Merlin, having been woken from over a thousand years of suspended animation, is talking to...
10 March 2016
Taxation and freedom
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Herbert Spencer on the idea that tax erodes freedom, from his Principles of Ethics : Money taken from the citizen, not to pay the costs of ...
29 February 2016
Sir Michael Marmot, genetics and health
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Were we to find a chemical in the water, or in food, that was damaging children’s growth and their brains worldwide, and thus their intellec...
10 February 2016
Herbert Spencer: socialism and slavery
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Herbert Spencer’s essay ‘From freedom to bondage’ contains the following reflections on socialism. [Compulsory co-operation], still exempli...
25 January 2016
Oxford and Cecil Rhodes
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Oriel College’s Rhodes Building, with statue of Cecil Rhodes Speaking at the ceremony to swear in Professor Louise Richardson as [Oxford...
15 January 2016
Rudyard Kipling: heredity and exceptionality
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There was a feast by the blazing campfires in front of the lines of picketed elephants, and Little Toomai was the hero of it all. And the ...
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