INVENIRE

The days of laissez-faire politicians are over. This news is disappointing to many, including myself; will we be forced to abandon tried and tested economic truths for the hope of a single vote in the North? Alas, the problems we find in democracies . The causes of this are twofold: although the collapse of the Soviet Union was a great victory for the capitalist right, it also manifested itself as a problem for the Right. The Right no longer had a great ideological enemy, it could no longer talk about the threat of a communist imperial regime occupying the West; they could no longer defend capitalism by talking about the failures of communism. In 1975, President Reagan spoke of communism as "a disease" and most are familiar with his 1983 Evil Empire Speech. Moreover, the fall of the Soviet Union also manifested itself as an opener for debate concerning economic policy. As increasingly more people grew up without a communist state being a world superpower, increasingly, people...

Those who answer affirmatively to the question would reason that those who have become privileged and prosperous under a system have a greater incentive to conserve the rules that protect their position. This position stems from the wider idea that ideologies are born for specific groups; it would similarly say that socialism is for the working class, that corporatism is for businessmen, that feminism is for women and so forth. This diminishes the intellectual case for conservatism; if conservatism is merely a defence for the privileged and prosperous, there is no rational defence for it. In order to answer the question, I will first define conservatism, and then see whether this definition would have it to be a defence of the privileged and prosperous. Conservatism, in the words of Heywood, is “defined by the desire to conserve, reflected in a resistance to, or at least a suspicion of change.” [1] This would explain why conservatives are more likely to be religious than their lef...

Democracy, usually in its representative form, is something of a sacred cow in Western societies. One of the primary arguments made by Brexiteers following the European Union referendum in 2016 is that leaving the EU is simply respecting democracy; respecting the will of the people, and fundamentally, the people themselves. Advocates for lowering the voting age to 16 argue that this will expand and strengthen democracy. But why do we hold it so sacredly? It doesn't guarantee better debate, or better decision-making. I will argue that democracy reduces the standard of democratic debate, ultimately reducing the possibility of good ideas being shared in the political arena. It is incredibly contradictory for us to both value the rigorous debate of political ideologies while also valuing democracy. The two are mutually exclusive. During election campaigns, politicians often compete (compete, not converse) in live, televised debates. Following the debate, we often hear complaints that...

Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party have defeated Labour in a convincing victory in the early hours of this morning, forcing Corbyn to announce future plans for resignation. The Labour Party lost a number of votes in leave-voting constituencies, due to their ambiguous stance on Brexit, in addition to Jeremy Corbyn's general unlikability. We will examine how devastating Corbyn might have been, had he won the election. The Conservatives have kept one of their campaign promises: Corbyn neutral by Christmas. In the tradition of all great socialists, Corbyn and the Labour Party have framed their economic policy as "social justice", attempting to appear somewhat moral. Nevertheless, Labour's policies, founded upon greed and economic ignorance, would hurt businesses severely. A strong example of this is their plan to give company profits to workers. Of course, they argue that they are giving workers "a share of the profits they help create". This statement, a...

Aristocracy has become a dirty word; I would argue rightly so, given its association with the landed gentry, unearned seats in government and regressive social hierarchies, such as pre-revolutionary France and  pre-Reform Act Britain . However, in its first usage, it referred to its literal definition; rule by the excellent. In theory, it refers to rule by an individual, or group of individuals, chosen for their excellence. All states are at some point aristocracies; the best of a people are chosen to be military and political leaders in times of crisis.  In The Republic, Plato describes rule by a philosopher-king, chosen for his wisdom and logical thinking. He defends the concept of vesting so much power in one person with his famous Ship of State analogy. The leader of the state is represented by the captain of the ship. Plato describes the current captain as being "a little deaf and having a little infirmity in sight". Consequently, the men on the ship begin to quarrel a...

One of the major drawbacks of democratic countries is that they are susceptible to the potential ignorance of the people. There are two antidotes to this, one of which has long been ignored. The parliamentary system, in which the electorate chooses representatives, is the first. This, to some extent, eliminates ignorance, as less-informed candidates are less likely to be elected to hold office. The second antidote, an antidote that has been ignored, is cultural literacy. The term was first coined by American educator E.D. Hirsch, and it describes the cultural and historical knowledge required to function as a citizen of a particular country. Hirsch has correctly identified that Western curricula place too little emphasis on the learning of facts, and rather that they inaccurately assume that children will naturally acquire knowledge as they increase in their critical thinking skills. Hirsch first devised this concept in the early 1990s as a college lecturer in Richmond, Virginia. He ...

We hear it all the time: our tax system is unfair. It is, supposedly, stacked against the working classes; it's engineered to benefit the rich and hurt the poor. I ardently disagree with this notion and I believe that those who believe that the richest individuals do not contribute enough are either unaware of the facts, or are more dishonest and therefore choose to ignore them. The majority of us agree that equality of outcome is not a good idea. A student who had invested a great deal of time and effort into preparing for an exam would be rightly annoyed if, after the exam, the marks were equally distributed. Similarly, individuals in a family of four would not each eat the same amount of food in the spirit of equality; food would be distributed in accordance to need. We also, almost unanimously, agree that proportion is just. This is evident in the way we respond to tragedies. We express frustration and anger over news that, due to bad weather, farmer's harvest has failed...