Irish Gall

Are the Irish racist? Do they eat potatoes, bacon, and cabbage every day, play the fiddle, and reject all change, as a controversial new school textbook put out by their government claims? I bloody hope so. As a Brit newly settled in Ireland, I was kind of banking on it. I howled with laughter at Steven Tucker’s deliriously entertaining piece about Ireland facing a possible loss of its identity as the woke get to work on it, but also I have a lot riding on the serious point he makes. Writing from my home in West Cork, having rearranged my entire life to move here, I can say that I, for ...

Emmanuel Macron

The Mind of Macron

The inclination to analyze politicians’ conduct by means of psychiatric diagnosis is growing. This is unsurprising in view of what was once called psychiatric imperialism: the ...

Town Hall, Malaga

The Spanish Inquisition

Over in Spain around this time of year, during Holy Month, a specially chosen prisoner is picked out for sudden early release by the ever-generous Spanish State and let back out ...

Brussels Shows Budapest Who’s Boss

During the 2004–07 waves of expansion, the European Union (EU) welcomed ten countries of the former Soviet bloc along with Cyprus and Malta. “Old Europe” sought to rebuild ...

Are the French Toast?

Quelle surprise was caused in France recently when Charles de Gaulle’s grandson, Pierre, suddenly announced his intention to apply for citizenship in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. ...

2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

Kiss of Death

As this piece is going up on 9/11, I thought I’d better do something about Islam. But first, as Monty Python (almost) used to say, for something completely different: Like Hot ...

Paris, City of Riots

The 1942 movie Casablanca is the cinematic version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which a Victorian woman reportedly disliked because she found it “full of clichés.” It ought not ...

Swede Talk

When the telling of jokes was still part of European culture, racial and ethnic traits were often a key ingredient, and comedians thrived on national stereotypes. A perfect ...

Buddy, Can You Simulate a Dime?

The unelected gauleiters of the European Union must look back a decade with wistful fondness to a halcyon time when their only real headache was the Greek economy. Now, with ...

Lights Out

One London evening in 1914, just after Great Britain had declared war on Germany, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey was in his parliamentary office talking to a ...

Holland

This Land Is (Not) Your Land

“Buy land,” Mark Twain advised. “They’re not making it anymore.” Perhaps Bill Gates has been reading the American author, as he recently became the largest private owner ...

Giorgia Meloni

The Rise of Meloni

Italian politics in recent years make ancient Rome look like Belgium. By all means catch up on the details of Italy’s current political infighting, if you have a spare day or ...

Emmanuel Macron

The French Center Holds — In a World Coming Apart

"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." So wrote William Butler Yeats in the wake of the Great War of 1914-1918 that had ravaged the Christian civilization he had known. In ...

Can Poland Be Poland — and Stay in the EU?

"Let Poland be Poland!" That was the call of American conservatives, four decades ago, when the Solidarity movement of labor leader Lech Walesa arose in the port city of Gdansk ...


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