Something peculiar happens to people who cherish their liberty when machines effect its abridgement: They cease caring. In London, where almost 8,000 closed-circuit television camerasspy on the population without rest or interruption, the people appear to be wholly unperturbed. Even an advertising campaign for the surveillance campaign with the tagline “Secure beneath the watchful eyes” elicited little complaint in the land of Orwell, outside of advocates professionally obliged to be vexed by such things. But it did not escape everyone. In recent years, “One Nation Under CCTV” has become a popular piece of British protest graffiti… ›› Read on National Review Online

In War and Peace, Tolstoy contends that Great Men have no agency; instead, they are merely slaves to Providence. British philosopher Herbert Spencer liked this idea, but he put it a little differently: “Before he can remake his society, his society must make him.” There is certainly value in this view of the world, but taken ad absurdum it will lead to a rejection of exceptionalism — and even of free will: “His society” may well have led to the content of Shakespeare’s plays, but how to explain his facility for language? ›› Read on National Review Online

The British national anthem, whose musical tune most Americans know best as “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” opens with a request of the heavens: “God save our gracious Queen / Long live our noble Queen.” On this petition God appears to have smiled, for Queen Elizabeth II has been on the British throne for 60 years and counting, and looks set in three years’ time to pass Victoria as the longest-reigning monarch in British history… ›› Read on National Review Online