Society

Ever since social arrangements became complex enough to write into laws, we have regulated the behaviours that have the potential to mess up our common lives. Look at the Book of Deuteronomy. It’s all there: health and safety (diet and hygiene), taxation, bankruptcy, neighbourly envy, sexual conduct… and finance too. The Old Testament is pretty draconian: no lending for interest within the tribe — but as much as you like outside the tribe. Lawmakers understood even then that easy credit, with its potential to exploit gullible optimism and generate bubbles, could rock a society to its core. The 21st century’s first credit crisis is not over, but the acute phase

Shamelessly plundering the idea from Norm, it’s time for an exciting new development here at Debatable Land HQ: Polling! Yes, indeed… And given that this is a Presidential election year in the United States, what better way to begin than by conducting a Presidential poll? We are familiar with polls in which historians rank US Presidents in order of greatness in which the same names – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and so on – always finish at the top. So let’s attempt something a little different. The Debatable Land polling organisation wants you to nominate your choices for the Most Over-Rated and Most Under-Rated Presidents in American history. The rules are

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the pundit seeking heft to support his argument must eventually turn to George Orwell. This is, for sure, often a wise decision since much the most remarkable aspect of Orwell’s writing is how much of it remains vivid and even valid today. But not all of it since Eric Blair was as capable of talking through his hat as the next intellectual. Thus John Quiggin, writing about the Olympic torch’s travels across Australia, cites Orwell’s view that: Even if one didn’t know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce

Mike Crowley highlights Hillary Clinton’s changing style: April, 1993: “We need a new politics of meaning. We need a new ethos of individual responsibility   and caring. We need a new definition of civil society which answers the unanswerable   questions posed by both the market forces and the governmental ones, as to how   we can have a society that fills us up again and makes us feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.”  April, 2008: [E]very speech she gave in Indiana on Friday and Saturday had the same topic sentence. “My campaign is about jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs,” she said, always to thunderous applause.