The victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election was more than a repudiation of the left-liberal social agenda and libertarian economics pursued by President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton since 2008. If the American election is put into the context of Britain’s vote to pull out of the European Union, and next year’s…
BEARING FALSE WITNESS: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History by Rodney Stark Templeton Press, PA Hardcover: 272 pages Price: AUD$55.90 Reviewed by Peter Kelleher Rodney Stark is a sociologist by training and is that rare thing: a person who seeks the truth in earnest and is swayed by the truth when it is found. He is a past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and is now a professor at Baylor University, a Baptist college in Waco, Texas. This highly readable book, in its tone of…
J.K. Rowling established a vast alternate imagined reality with her Harry Potter stories. The focus of those books, and their movie adaptations, was Harry Potter and his ongoing battles with the fearsome Dark Lord Voldemort. But, while those stories count as the centrepiece of that universe, there is much more to its imagined reality. Snippets and glimpses of this are to be found throughout the stories, and in Rowling’s later shorter pieces, but until recently there was nothing substantial. Then came the stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. And now there is the movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where…
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has indicated that his Government remains intent on pursuing its defence of free speech agenda in the Australian Parliament in the face of a concerted but at times absurd campaign by the left to curb it. The highly partisan president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, has been told by the Prime Minister that her term will not be renewed when it expires next year. Gillian Triggs The move has been welcomed across the Coalition as a result of Professor Triggs’ ongoing mishandling of the commission’s briefs. Professor Triggs’ tenure has been plagued…
