Guy Rundle reviews Paul Kelly’s new book, The March of Patriots: the literary equivalent of cleaning out the garage on a grey Saturday afternoon.
Articles by Guy Rundle 
Guy Rundle: The long, plodding March of Patriots
Guy Rundle: Levi-Strauss survived to see that he had become an era
Claude Levi-Strauss, the anthropologist and founder of structuralism, has died, age 100. His work Claude Levi-Strauss was so influential that it is impossible to imagine a whole intellectual climate without it.
Guy Rundle: A Costello on each knee, Rudd plays for laughs
What if Rudd’s appointment of Peter Costello to the Future Fund was a little too clever? What does he do if Costello takes the piss: finding safe harbour aboard the ship of state, he refuses to leave, despite continuing to denounce the government by means of messages in bottles?
Guy Rundle: Politicians try to patch up a leaky boat of their own making
The government’s current problems with the Oceanic Viking stem entirely from its being too-clever-by-half – it’s of a piece with Ruddism, the idea that a series of brilliant technical decisions can serve as policy.
Guy Rundle: We don’t need new fast trains, Albo, we need new cities
When it comes to infrastructure, what we need first and foremost are not new rail lines. Not even fast rail lines. What we need are new cities.
The death of Tozer and Keating’s romancing of genius
The death of pianist Geoffrey Tozer raises questions about Paul Keating and the attitudes about art and civilisation that he projected — and continues to project — onto this country.
Guy Rundle: Review: Noel Pearson’s Radical Hope
Noel Pearson’s new essay could have given been a compelling argument for a new education approach. Instead, he indulged himself in a new airing of old obsessions.
Guy Rundle: Asylum at last from the sado-conservatives
It’s a measure of how debased Australian politics became in the Tampa years that we can now be surprised that a government would confront its opponents with the fact that they imprisoned children, and score points from it.
Guy Rundle: The basic right to fight and kick and scream to find refuge
With the 260 Tamil refugees refusing to leave their boat in Western Java and threatening to set fire to it, the asylum-seeker issue is the only game in town.
Guy Rundle: Rudd, Ruddock and the deep, dark currents of fear
Phil Ruddock has popped up to tell us of TEN THOUSAND asylum seeking illegal queue jumpers coming our way. But is he right?
Guy Rundle: You want dangerous ideas? These are dangerous ideas
The topics discussed at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas are either completely safe or totally ridiculous. Here are some thoughts that might really offend some Darlinghurst secular-liberals’ sensibilities.
Guy Rundle: Hitchens not such a lovely little thinker
Guy Rundle recounts Christopher Hitchens’ talk at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, where the crowd had their highly specific appetites and prejudices flattered, and loved every second of it.
Guy Rundle: The return of Friday Drive-Bys!
Q & A is madder than ever … the week of iSnack 2.0 … The Oz continues its cruel attacks on its own staff.
Guy Rundle: Spectator editor flushed out by the green left
Recent events at UK magazine The Spectator tell us a lot about the cynical way in which climate change scepticism is used to sell to the right.
Gordon Brown, dead PM walking
British PM Gordon Brown addressed the Labour Party conference with his party trailing around 19 points in the opinion polls. It wasn’t so much about winning the next election as stopping the bleeding.
Guy Rundle: Rundle: A vision of the future, written by the Left. Part III
Would a transformed post-capitalist economic and social system abolish money, markets and property? Of course not. Will that future be anything like the communism envisaged in the early Marx, or Lenin’s utopian State and Revolution? Emphatically not. But what hopes are there?
Guy Rundle: The past and future of the Left
The ‘Left’ that has emerged as victorious is one whose ambitions are defined and delimited by the political culture of capitalism. So what’s actually left? asks Guy Rundle.
Guy Rundle: The week in news: The Mark Day version
Presenting, the week in news — the Mark Day version, as told by Guy Rundle.
Guy Rundle: The Australian can’t tell its left from right
The thinkers that The Australian chose for its left series weren’t leftists, they were labourists – submitting their intellectual abilities to the pre-ordained goal of selling a stunningly unambitious political programme.
Guy Rundle: Don’t mention the war around Switzer
As the Bradfield preselection hots up, prize candidate Tom Switzer must be getting a little nervous about one thing: will anyone ask him about the war?
Guy Rundle: Why Rudd said the F-word. Twice!
Kevin Rudd’s F-bomb attack caused an outbreak of “uh-maaaah”s from the News Ltd press. But there’s a way the ALP can spin this to their advantage…
Guy Rundle: Rundle: The death of the neo-cons
Though neoconservatives came to most people’s attention during the Dubya era, their imperial purple was undoubtedly the Reagan years. The death of Irving Kristol rules a line across one era of the American intellectual right.
Guy Rundle: Women at war, the mother of political betrayals
The Rudd government’s policy of equality will be fulfilled when a young Australian mother is killed on the front line, and her small children can fold up a flag and put it on her coffin.
