There is a long tradition of historians using knowledge of the past to assess present issues.
Category: Latest News
Welcome to our archive of news stories relevant to the project of fighting fashionable nonsense. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world’s media. On this page, you’ll find links to those stories that have been featured on Butterflies and Wheels during the current year. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.
We’re always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on Butterflies and Wheels. Just send an email here, if you want to point one out to us.
A note about links
Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.
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Afghan Women Risk Their Lives for Justice
Winning an election can be a death sentence.
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Philosophers in Love and Hate
Voltaire loved Emilie du Châtelet, Rousseau hated Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau hated each other.
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Michael Dirda on Rebecca Goldstein on Spinoza
Betraying Spinoza offers a convenient way to start exploring his thought more fully.
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Nick Cohen on the Uses of Truth
Fighting wishful thinking is like fighting the weather, but should be done anyway.
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Ian Buruma on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Rita Verdonk
Support Hirsi Ali but spare a thought also for the nameless people sent back to terrible places.
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Is Hirsi Ali a Domestic or International Issue?
About Dutch neo-cons running out of steam, or a radical liberal being silenced?
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New Jesus Soap for BBC1
Did she really say that to him about us while they were looking for you?
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Baggini on The Simpsons as Philosophy
To speak truthfully and insightfully today needs a sense of the absurdity of human life and endeavour.
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Ben Franklin in Enlightenment London
The Royal Society, Club of Honest Whigs, Monday Club, all at the heart of the movement.
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How Belief in Alien Abduction Happens
Believers are not ‘crazy’ but they are fantasy-prone – and unskeptical.
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Eric Lott and Richard Hofstadter
Lott nails right deviationism, Hofstadter shows one can be a skeptical liberal without becoming a conservative.
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Happy Birthday John Stuart Mill
Anthony Skelton blows out the candles.
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Mill Wrote at the Peak of Victorian Conformism
He was confronted by the dead hand of intellectual homogeny and was appalled by it.
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Scruton on Mill
‘Harm’ doctrine has subverted laws founded in inherited sense of the sacred and prohibited.
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New Statesman Poll of Top Heroes
Mandela, Tatchell, Sen, Dawkins, Chakrabarti – along with some much odder choices.
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John Gray Reviews Martha Nussbaum
The giant shadow of Rawls stands in the way.
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Kenan Malik on Stefan Collini on Intellectuals
Collini’s attempts to dismiss the impact of celebrity culture are less than convincing.
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Verdonk Agrees to Rethink
Public and politicians amazed at the speed with which Verdonk revoked Hirsi Ali’s citizenship.
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McKellen Teases Da Vinci Codeophobes
They should be pleased to find Jesus isn’t a poofter.