Quotes from Douglas Murray

For present-day politicians there are only political points to be made from such statements, and the larger the sin the larger the outrage, the larger the apology and the larger the potential political gain for sorrow expressed. Through such statements political leaders can gain the benefits of magnanimity without the stain of involvement: the person making the apology had done nothing wrong and all the people who could have received the apology are dead.

If there was a genuine chance of diminishing racism, sexism or anti-gay sentiment, who would not wish to seize it with every tool and engine at their disposal? The one overwhelming problem with this attitude is that it sacrifices truth in the pursuit of a political goal.

The Bible had at best become like the work of Ovid or Homer: containing great truth, but not itself true.

Perhaps one reason why people – especially neo-Marxists – are coy about the precise comparisons they are making is that the comparisons they would cite (Venezuela, Cuba, Russia) would reveal the deeper underbelly of their ideology and the true reasons for the negative accounting of the West. But most often the question 'Compared to what?' will elicit only the fact that the utopia with which our society is being compared has not yet come about.

Why should certain feminists feel entirely fine about men who become women only then to either flaunt their perfect breasts, ape the royal family or take up knitting?

The dreams of communism and socialism were the sincerest attempts of their day to come up with and put into practice a theory of everything. The endless writings and pamphlets and evangelism in every country of Europe were one more attempt to dream a meaningful dream, capable of solving everything and addressing the problems of everyone. It was, as T. S. Eliot memorably described it, an effort at 'dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good'.

The further Fascism receded into history and the fewer visible fascists there were on display, the more self-proclaimed anti-fascists needed fascism to retain any semblance of political virtue or purpose. It proved politically useful to describe as fascist people who were not Fascists , just as it proved politically useful to describe as racist people who were not racists.

In all matters, whether to do with money, sex, or anything else, no man feels that the scales are weighted in his favor. And so just as the men of resentment talk about "justice" while meaning "revenge," so it is that something is disguised within their talk of "equality.

Efforts to silence the people who raised their voice – whether through violence, intimidation or the courts – meant that three decades after the Rushdie affair there was almost no one in Europe who would dare write a novel, compose a piece of music or even draw an image that might risk Muslim anger. Indeed, they ran in the other direction. Politicians and almost everybody else went out of their way to show how much they admired Islam.

After all, in the sporting world, being discovered to have taken testosterone is ordinarily grounds to prevent someone from competing – unless, it turns out, the person is taking testosterone to transition to the opposite sex. In which case sensitivity overrides science.

All around us we have the wreckage – metaphorical and real – of all our dreams, our religions, our political ideologies and a thousand other aspirations, all of which in their turn have proved false. And though we have no more illusions or ambitions left, yet we are still here. So what do we do?

Second-wave feminist rhetoric placed blame for the female condition entirely on men, or specifically on "patriarchy" . . . The exclusive focus of feminism was on an external social mechanism that had to be smashed or reformed. It failed to take into account women's intricate connection with nature – that is, with procreation.' Or why, 'in this era of the career woman, there has been a denigration, or devaluing of the role of motherhood.

Their priority has been not to clamp down on the thing to which the public are objecting but, rather, to the objecting public. If anybody wanted a textbook case on how politics goes wrong, here is one.

By 2015 more British Muslims were fighting for Isis than for the British armed forces.

in June 2016, when the UN accused the Ertrean government of committing crimes against humanity, thousands of Eritrean protested outside the UN building in Geneva. The Swiss people had been told, like everyone else in Europe, that here were poeple who had come to Switzerland because they were fleeing a government they could not live under Yet, thousands of them turned out to support that same government when someone in Europe criticized them.

They are an American Delegation who are doing a tour of the region to apologize for the crusades', said Arafat. Then he, and his guest, burst out laughing. They both knew that America had little or no involvement in the wars of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. But Arafat, at any rate, was happy to indulge the affliction of anyone who believed they had and use it to his own political advantage.

If it is assumed that the primary purpose in life is to make as much money as possible, then it is indeed possible that having a child will constitute a 'penalty' for a woman and thereby prevent her from having a larger sum of money in her bank account when she dies. On the other hand, if she chooses to pay that 'penalty' she might be fortunate enough to engage in the most important and fulfilling role that a human being can have.

Such visible failure and a sense of lost moorings can be – for the individual as for society – not only a cause for concern but an exhausting emotional process. Where once there was an overriding explanation (however many troubles that brought), now there is only an overriding uncertainty and question. And we cannot unlearn our knowledge.

The only possible demand at the endpoint of deconstruction is to deconstruct some more. And it seems possible to pull apart and find cause for resentment endlessly. Certainly, that is the hope of the deconstructionists, who now scour the world of art and look for symbols of rape, male dominance, privilege, racism, and much more.10 And of course they find things to occupy their time.

But if the views of some migrant communities on homosexuality were only a couple of generations out of date, the views of portions of those communities on the subject of women were shown to be out of date by many centuries, at least.

There are many attitudes that we all take in our lives, some of which dominate at one point in our lives and recede in another. But a life lived without gratitude is not a life properly lived. It is a life that is lived off-kilter: one in which, incapable of realizing what you have to be thankful for, you are left with nothing but your resentments and can be contented by nothing but revenge.

Consider the example of trans. There was a reason to linger over the difficult and poorly discussed issue of people who are born intersex. It was not for prurience but to make a point. As Eric Weinstein has observed, anyone genuinely interested in addressing the stigmatization and unhappiness felt by people who are in the wrong bodies would have started addressing the question of intersex first.

He suggests that one cure for anyone troubled by homoerotic temptations is that they might consider taking up a healthy pursuit such as 'going to a gym'. Suggesting, perhaps, that Dr Nicolosi has never been to a gym.

Bret Weinstein