The Lanchester Review

The excellent Mr. David Lindsay now has a web magazine up and running here at http://lanchesterreview.blogspot.co.uk - not blowing my own antler here, but I do think these essays are indeed very exciting and intellectually stimulating stuff! The first nine-volume issue features essays by:

• David Lindsay, Setting a Tone, Not a Line. Sets out the mission of the Lanchester Review, as bringing together the tendencies of the pre-Marxist British labour movement, Christian socialism, One Nation Toryism, guild socialism and distributism, not in a single unified platform but in a common, broad-ranging critique of Whiggism and its accompanying tendencies of militarism and capitalist exploitation.
• Taym Saleh, Nationhood and the Left. While extending certain hopes for international bonds of solidarity, Mr. Saleh makes the much-needed point that the nation, a polity intended for permanence and for a local expression of the common good, has certain qualities that can and should never be sacrificed upon the altar of internationalism.
• Teddy Corbett, Votes at 16 Is a Preposterous Idea. And Labour should scrap it. Firstly because legal rights do not correspond with biological maturity or with the ability to make responsible decisions in the common interest; and secondly because politicians should care substantively about the welfare of children, not pander to them as though they are a constituency.
• Luke Blaxill, The Problem with Identity Politics and the Left. Notes the disturbing tendency on the modern Left to privilege collective identities based on national origin, gender and sexual orientation over those based on class, and to do so in patronising and destructive ways. Though he is somewhat mistaken about the Swedish Left’s model for criminalising prostitution (which is largely a class issue, posited and defended as such), the overall point he makes is valid and direly needed.
• Yours truly, Remembering the Holy Land. The recapture of Maaloula by the Syrian Army and the return of its Christians is something to be celebrated. But it also needs to be met with the sombre reflection of our own dubious record when it comes to Middle Eastern Christians, and with compassion for the Christians still living in the land of our religion’s birth.
• Richard Cotton, Labour Should Embrace a More Sceptical Approach to the EU. In light of Labour’s history of supporting the rights of as broad a swathe possible of the British people to political empowerment and self-determination, the embrace of the demonstrably un-democratic, un-representative, dis-empowering European Union by certain Labour politicos is more than just slightly incongruous.
• Ian Oakley, A Review of The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The portrait painted of American political life at the end of the long 19^th century, focussing especially on the reforming presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft, sadly bears very little resemblance to American political life today.
• Kevin Meagher, A Referendum: Refounding the Case for Europe. The institutions of the European Union are either effete or unaccountable, and furthermore are hopelessly out-of-touch with the British electorate. As such, if Europe truly is a worthwhile project meant to keep its members stable, prosperous and at peace, the case needs to be put to a referendum before the British people.
• Brian Gould, Bank-Created Credit. The reality that banks alone have the power to create money through fractional reserve lending has some dire consequences for the neoclassical monetary theory. This paper is quite broad-ranging, and covers the limits of current policy-making as well as the attraction of real-estate lending to banks (as low-risk and high-yield, when compared with small business lending).

Please do give it a read, dear readers! I do enjoy the fact that the Review covers such a broad range of topics and interests and provides a deep and eclectic range of post-liberal views.