In Thomas Paine, the radical Enlightenment belief that all social and political ills were remediable found its most passionate champion. Many people today think of the 18th-century Enlightenment as an exciting season of reason, a black-swan moment when new energies flowed,...
Read MoreEditor’s note: On the occasion of Independence Day, we felt it appropriate to reprint, from our Australian edition, the remarks of University of Sydney political thinker and writer John Keane on why Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America – 180...
Read MoreThe most telling tale in Charles Moore’s winsome biography of Margaret Thatcher spotlights the moment of her greatest political triumph: the military defeat of Argentina in mid-June 1982, after a 74-day war that cost nearly a thousand lives on windswept...
Read MoreDeutsche Bank headquarters, Frankfurt Heike Rehm/flickr The following draft reflection on the subject of banks and democracy has been prepared for presentation at a forthcoming OECD meeting in Paris, in late-May 2013. The text is obviously much too long for any ‘normal’...
Read MoreReaders might like to sample the following birthday toast in honour of the English political writer Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809). It was prepared for a dinner hosted by Graham Allen MP, Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Select...
Read MoreThe spirit and institutions of Greek democracy are dying, but who really cares? Kostas Vaxevanis does. His name merits global attention because during the past year Hot Doc, the weekly magazine he owns and edits, has published a string of gutsy...
Read MoreJavier Cercas, Spain’s most celebrated contemporary writer, was recently in Sydney, where I had the great pleasure of interviewing him before an audience in the University’s Great Hall. For those who may not know his work, Cercas was born in Ibahernando,...
Read MoreVáclav Havel has died aged 75. A poet and playwright, a political writer, dissident and a politician, Havel was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia, and the first President of the Czech Republic founded in 1993. The Conversation spoke with...
Read MoreThe Life & Death of Democracy...
Read MoreAt the Byron Bay Writers Festival, in conversation with Griffith Review Editor Julianne Schultz, Professor John Keane talks us through the rise and fall of democracies and empires, from a primarily historical perspective. Big Ideas (ABC) Original Link here From the very first...
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