Author Archives: bernardporter2013

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About bernardporter2013

Retired academic, author, historian.

Is Democracy to Blame?

Churchill once described democracy as ‘the worst form of Government except for all those others that have been tried from time to time’; and that’s probably the best that can be said for it. Nowhere has it ever produced the … Continue reading

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Swedish Neo-Fascism

Now back in Stockholm – where the weather is unseasonably mild – to be confronted by a huge spread in today’s Dagens Nyheter about ‘Swedes with central roles in the American extreme Right’. It’s here, but behind a paywall, I … Continue reading

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Neo-Cons and Post-Cons

We mustn’t confuse the present US regime with those of the recent past, and especially with the ‘Neo-Con’ one behind George W Bush. The following article in next month’s The Atlantic magazine by David Frum, a leading conservative commentator and … Continue reading

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Unintended Consequences

Talk about ‘unintended consequences’! Who – apart from me (well, elliptically at any rate: https://bernardjporter.com/2016/08/31/two-cheers-for-the-eu/) – predicted that voting for Brexit would make Britain more reliant on the United States, and consequently less essentially ‘independent’, than if she had remained … Continue reading

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American Pussy

Crude, I realise; but worth a thousand words. (I’m not sure of the source; I got it through Facebook.)

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Trump contra mundum

There’s little more I can add to the flood of commentary that is pouring out these days in criticism of America’s new President. His character flaws are obvious; my only contribution to this discussion is to suggest that they might be … Continue reading

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Kow-towing to Trump

Theresa May’s sycophancy before this appalling, childish, bigoted, proto-fascist clown – at least in public: viz. her speech last night in Philadelphia – demonstrates just how low Brexit has pulled us down. Blair could also be said to have acted … Continue reading

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May and the New Imperialism

At the end of the nineteenth century many far-seeing British imperialists, realizing that the Empire couldn’t survive in its present form for very much longer, placed their hopes in what they called a new ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Empire to succeed it, ruled … Continue reading

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Mob Rule – the Bright Side

What we have just now, both in Britain and the USA, and looming in the rest of Europe, is mob rule; historically always dreaded by the privileged classes, who used the fear of it to impede the progress of democracy. … Continue reading

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Representative Democracy

Of course the Supreme Court was right to insist that Theresa May has to get the backing of Parliament before proceeding to trigger Article 50! I’m surprised that its decision wasn’t unanimous. I must read the three dissenters’ opinions – … Continue reading

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