Author Archives: bernardporter2013

Excellent article here, from yesterday’s Guardian, but by an American-born Dagens Nyheter correspondent, Martin Gelin (https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gelin). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/12/sweden-risbergska-orebro-gun-massacre. – (If it doesn’t come up, try the Guardian website.) They’re thinking of tightening their gun laws here in Sweden. The shooter in … Continue reading →

The hero of the Ayn Rand novel I’m struggling with presently, Atlas Shrugged (see https://bernardjporter.com/2025/01/30/ayn-rand/), is a railroad magnate. The hero of the one I abandoned a few years ago, The Fountainhead, was a builder. Déjà vu? The two men … Continue reading →

Apparently if you’re an immigrant it costs thousands of pounds and a mountain of paperwork to acquire British citizenship these days. – Just for purposes of comparison: when I got my (dual) Swedish citizenship five years ago it cost me … Continue reading →

Eleven dead, at an adult education centre, including the shooter, a 35-ish white man with no previous criminal record, but a history of school failure, unemployment and solitariness. Thank God he wasn’t a Muslim. (As many of his victims were.) … Continue reading →

It used to be dismissed as hyperbole. Now the idea of the USA’s being – or shortly becoming – a ‘Fascist’ power is being taken seriously. Obviously Trump is not gassing Jews, or anyone else, yet. But neither did Hitler … Continue reading →

Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophical novels’ are supposed to have had a great influence on the American Right, with their glorification of free enterprise and heroic male industrialists. With America now being ruled (once again) by a millionaire property developer, supported by … Continue reading →

Interesting historical piece by a conservative Canadian/American. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/opinion/trump-mckinley-populism.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Prince Harry’s utter vindication this morning in his High Court case against the Murdoch press (https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/prince-harry-v-murdoch-lawyers-due-back-court-after-last-gasp-deal-talks-2025-01-22/) is a rare ray of light in today’s on-going war between Good and Evil. I’ve not much time for the British royal family, least … Continue reading →

How many self-styled ‘democracies’ allow their elected leaders to pardon convicted criminals by ‘executive action’, without reference to the ‘due process’ that applies to the rest of their people? (I’m referring of course to the roughly 1600 Capitol rioters whom … Continue reading →

Recent studies in both Britain and Sweden have shown that over 20% of ‘young adults’ (18-40) would ‘prefer a dictatorship to democracy’. (For Britain, see https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/12/one-in-five-britons-aged-18-45-prefer-unelected-leaders-to-democracy-poll-finds; for Sweden, https://www.icenews.is/2011/06/15/young-swedes-pick-dictatorship-over-democracy/.) Today’s US Presidential inauguration, however, seems to suggest that you can … Continue reading →