On September 19, 2019, at the fourteenth annual Gala for Western Civilization, ISI presented Sir Roger Scruton with the Defender of Western Civilization award. Sir Roger gave these remarks on accepting the award. It is a great honor to be named Defender of Western Civilization for the year 2019 by ISI, an organization with which […]
The Canadian province of Quebec will expand the eligibility criteria for euthanasia to include people with severe and incurable mental illness, says Health Minister Danielle McCann. The guidelines will be drafted by the Quebec college of physicians. Both the minister and the college believe that few people would be affected. “We don’t expect many of these patients […]
Not long ago, the gay rights movement was a small group of people struggling to follow their dispositions within a larger heterosexual culture. Gays and lesbians were underdogs, vastly outnumbered and loosely organized, sometimes subject to discrimination and abuse. Their story was tragic, their suffering dramatized by AIDS and Rock Hudson, Brokeback Mountain and Matthew […]
Climate scientists generally believe that man-made impacts on global climate can only be practically detected in climate records since around 1950, as our CO2 emissions were comparatively very small before then. Figure 1 below shows this very clearly with over 86% of total estimated CO2 emissions since around 1950. Whenever the media report on climate […]
Time is ticking for Europe, as it begins to take its demographic challenge seriously. The European Commission recently appointed Dubravka Šuica from Croatia to the position of Vice-President for Democracy and Demography. Her mission letter outlines her job for the next five years: “ensuring that Europe understands and responds to one of its deepest lying […]
On Tuesday an historic trial commences in Belgium. It will be the first time that doctors have faced criminal charges over euthanasia since it was legalised in 2002. Three of them have been charged with illegal poisoning. If convicted, they face stiff prison sentences. The deceased was a 38-year-old woman, Tine Nys, who died in 2010. Three doctors […]
Social media is causing anxiety amongst teenagers – and that effect is bigger for girls than it is for boys, a leading expert on child psychology has written. Dr. Leonard Sax, a psychologist and leading author on child psychology and learning, says “the bottom line is that the evidence is much stronger than I had […]
“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members” Dear politicians, candidates and political parties, As I sit down to write this, the general election here in Ireland is only 3 weeks away. My reasons for writing this open letter to all of you is two-fold: 1) […]
The election is upon us, and this year’s election will be fought on the three H’s. Housing, Homelessness and Health. The latter is the one which affects each and every one of us, and one which has dominated the headlines for all the wrong reasons into the New Year. Fine Gael came into power ten […]
The 2020 Irish general election will be held on Saturday, 8 February 2020. What is the biggest issue for you in this election? #gript
In the opening passage of his latest book, How to be a Dictator, Dutch historian Frank Dikötter quotes British novelist William Thackeray’s caption of a satirical engraving depicting the Sun King Louis XIV in his unadorned, sickly body. “Thus do barbers and cobblers make the gods that we worship.” Dikötter’s book is the verbal equivalent of […]
The European Commission (the executive branch of the EU) for the next five years has recently taken office under the Presidency of Ursula von der Leyen. The 27 members of the Commission (one from each member state – the departing UK has not named a commissioner) form a cabinet government and together they propose legislation, […]