The Boundaries of Consent
Czech Senator Daniela Kovářová (who was not yet a senator at the time) warned many years ago against the fanatical campaign against the harassment of women and against the growing…
The Meaning of Decline
The decline of a civilization is, at its core, nothing more than a change in the customs that define everyday life. That may not sound especially alarming at first. But…
Constitutional Illusions
The Czech debate over the Constitutional Court’s decisions follows a curious pattern. A case is brought before the Constitutional Court. The opposition (by which I mean the parties that won…
The Return of Zero-Sum
An observation from the Czech-British anthropologist Ernest Gellner: In societies where production expands rapidly—for example, industrial societies that quickly adopt new innovations, though not only those—people can improve their circumstances…
Approved rebels
In Czech, people commonly speak of “daring” photographs. What they do not mean are photographs of someone balancing over a chasm, feeding a tiger, or posting an anti-immigration message on…
State and AI
Karl Marx argued that when the gap between the relations of production and the means of production becomes too large, society undergoes a fundamental transformation, often through revolution. By that…