The Ironist

ISSN 2817-7363

Differing Perspectives

The Art Thief

The Art Thief

The Art Thief by Michael Finkel : A Book Review   This year, 2023, has seen the publication of Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief, a riveting true account of the escapades of Stephane Breitwieser, a native of Alsace, and probably the most prolific art thief in history...

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What can We Believe?

What can We Believe?

The Need For Critical Thinking   Children, quite rightly, expect adults to look out for them. Maybe, when we grow up, we continue to expect others in authority to look after us. Or we WANT to believe they care. The more fools we are. Last night my bank called and...

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About The Ironist

About The Ironist

A Tonic for the Age The Ironist is an open forum to encourage discussion and reflection upon the written word and the world around us to promote critical analysis.  Irony, "the recognition of incongruities" (Cleanth Brooks), is a tool that permits differing...

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Confessions of Zadok the Beast

Confessions of Zadok the Beast

Yes, I do like to vomit upon the carpet under the piano.  Of course it is much harder to clean there than it is to clean vomit off the linoleum in the kitchen.  Why else would I do there – if not to make them get on their hands and knees?  It is obvious that the...

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A Review of Two Books on the Subject of Book Burning

A Review of Two Books on the Subject of Book Burning

Richard Ovenden, Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack, (John Murray, 2021) Kenneth Baker, On the Burning of Books: How Flames Fail to Destroy the Written Word, (Unicorn, 2016) The aim of those vandals who burn books in an open forum is arguably to...

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Supreme Irony

Supreme Irony

It is a supreme irony that the Ontario public school system, at least in its Peel District school board, should fall victim to wokeist activists of the ‘cancel culture’ persuasion, militants unrepresentative of Canadian majority opinion. Recent news reports of a...

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Play

Play

If all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, it makes Jill pretty boring, too. If truth be told, those workaholics Mr. and Mrs. Jack are tedious company, as well. So obsessed has our society become with work, usually paid work, that its antithesis, play, has become...

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Such Trifles

Such Trifles

The Russian writer, dissident, and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1917-2008) was an outspoken critic of communism in what was then called the Soviet Union, and was imprisoned in the Siberian gulag for eight years for critical comments he...

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It was a Golden Age

It was a Golden Age

  We have the great Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “the highest law in the land” we are told. This video clip (above) is almost painful to watch with...

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