The enduring lessons of the First World War are how not to fight a war and why not to fight one.
Sep 272023
Ruling
In ’37 Stalin made a hash
Of party loyalists and army brass.
Decimation: One in ten are shot.
What’s the word when one in ten are not?
Sep 192023
No exit, no voice.
Sep 052023
Revolution is for an imagined future, and revolt, on which it depends, for an imagined past.
Aug 172023
In normal times, the party offering the most extreme version of popular ideas natters pointlessly. In revolutionary times, it wins.
Aug 162023
A networked world is a legible world, and a legible world is an unfree world. We all have social credit scores now.
Aug 102023
There can be order without law, but not law without order.
Jul 202023
Every policy I support seems to threaten democracy itself.
Jul 182023
Kings, prime ministers, and presidents are often imbeciles, but regents never are.
Jul 132023
We used to burn old books; the modern refinement is to alter them.
Jul 062023
The letter of the law avails nothing against rulers with contempt for its spirit.