The Dorchester Review
Sir John A. Was Born on January 10 — But Where?
By Robert Watt IN JANUARY Canadians and many elsewhere will mark the bicentennial of the birth, in Glasgow, of Sir John A. Macdonald, a leading architect of Confederation. Parliament has designated January 11th as the national day to commemorate Sir John's birthday. Yet the registration of his birth in the Old Parish Registers for Glasgow reads beneath the heading "Glasgow, January 1815.-" "McDonald Hugh McDonald Agent & Helen Shaw: a Son John Alexander born 10th, Witn [Witnesses] Donald & James McDonald." The original parish record proving Jan. 10 is the correct date. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Registrar General for...
Renewing the Western Alliance
Jürgen Rüttgers Jürgen Rüttgers is the former Prime Minister of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the former Federal Minister of Education, Science, Research and Technology in the Government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl. This essay is adapted from his “Remarks on the Future of the Western Alliance” given during visits to Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard University in February and March. FROM THE SPRING / SUMMER 2014 issue of THE DORCHESTER REVIEW THE UNITED STATES REMAINS the last global superpower in the aftermath of the Cold War. It has the strongest army and the strongest technological base, but the...
Parliament Is Not Broken
Not all reform proposals are as worthy as those of Michael Chong MP. John Pepall’s book, Against Reform, is a sparkling, nay stinging, defence of Parliamentary institutions as they have evolved historically against the schemes of projectors that makes short, nay minuscule, work of virtually every proposal for parliamentary reform, showing how they will throw the organic system out of whack. It is not itself a historical work and it stands solidly on its own as a contemporary polemic. But it stands solidly because, like its subject, it rests on deep foundations. The essence of Pepall’s argument is that every...
The Dutch Army in Afghanistan
Uruzgan: Nederlandse Militairen op Missie, 2005-2010. Christ Klep. Amsterdam: Boom, 2011. Tell a Canadian that the Netherlands was one of the countries contributing combat forces to the allied effort in Afghanistan and you are likely to be met with surprise. Tell someone in the Netherlands the same thing about Canada and you very well will get the same response. And if you are in the United States ... well, lots of Americans will find it news that anyone else except themselves and the Afghans, and maybe the British, have fought and died in significant numbers in the struggle against the...
“The Holocaust & Muslim Opinion”
from "Notes & Topics" The Dorchester Review Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2012) Holocaust-denial in Muslim lands is spoon-fed to children, the murder of six million depicted from school age as a mere contrivance to justify Israel’s existence. The best-known denier is Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told a Teheran audience in 2009 (one of many occasions), “It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim.” In Egypt the former head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, referred to “the myth of the Holocaust” (BBC, 23 Dec. 2005). Palestinian school curricula, according to David Bedein of the...