Politics is a rough and tumble business, and yet there seems to be an effort by the commentariat to sanitise American politics to some type of high-level Victorian debating society.

I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.

Missing from much of the public debate is discussion of the simple fact that lurking behind every terroristic act is a specific political antecedent. That does not justify either the perpetrator or his political cause. Nonetheless, the fact is that almost all terrorist activity originates from some political conflict and is sustained by it as well.

Apartheid was baked hard in the mining industry because that's where it originated.

That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.

Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.