Sean Welsh

2 months ago | quillette.com | John Lloyd |Sean Welsh |Razib Khan

In Britain, the wisdom of the country’s 2016 decision to leave the EU is still hotly debated. Remainers  that Brexit has had a negative effect on the economy. Brexiteers counter that a growing number of economists believe Brexit has had little or no effect on growth, and that it will take another decade to understand the true costs and benefits of the decision to leave the Union.

2 months ago | quillette.com | Sean Welsh |Razib Khan |David Haskell

Australia Day 1988 was a party. There was also a demo, of course. Protests on Australia Day have been a thing since the first Day of Mourning in 1938. A few thousand protestors gathered around Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, a high vantage point half a kilometre east of the iconic Sydney Opera House, from whence they could boo the First Fleet re-enactment as it sailed past. Worried about indigenous sensitivities, the Labor Government of Bob Hawke had refused to fund it.

Jan 15, 2025 | quillette.com | Marilyn Simon |Sean Welsh |Jeffrey Herf |Susie Linfield

Back in 1979, historian Christopher Lasch warned that a crisis of narcissism was about to consume our culture because self-referential thinking and feeling were being championed as ethical, effective, and equitable. His book The Culture of Narcissism provides an archaeology of how we got to where we are now, 45 years later. Behind the narcissistic impulse, he wrote, lies a desire to soothe emotional frustration and erase cognitive tension.

Jan 15, 2025 | quillette.com | Sean Welsh |Jeffrey Herf |Susie Linfield

The fall of Syria’s Ba’athist regime has been a strategic setback for authoritarian Russia, theocratic Iran, and (most obviously) the Assad dictatorship itself. But the big winner in Syria was not liberal democracy, it was jihadism. Just twelve days after the attack on Aleppo on 27 November, Syria’s mujahideen were already in the capital. Before his triumphant arrival in Damascus, most of the world regarded Abu Mohammed al-Jolani and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) organisation as terrorists.

Jul 4, 2024 | quillette.com | Thomas P. Balázs |Matt Johnson |Greg Koabel |Sean Welsh

In February 1980, aged fifteen, I found myself at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island watching a spectacular performance of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I didn’t even know the band. I had to be talked into going by my friend Richie, who had scalped tickets for $75 each, which was an enormous sum for a teenager at the time.