RUMINATIONS: FROM THE STYLE OF MENZIES, EVATT AND WHITLAM TO THAT OF ALBANESE AND DOROTHY HEWETT – NICHOLAS HASLUCK

Have Australians lost the ability to savour their history and culture? Its eccentric personalities, its battles of interests and its political and cultural leaders and their legacies. Nicholas Hasluck has spent a lifetime in the law, politics and the arts. As a former judge of the Western Australian supreme court, the author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction and son of esteemed MP Sir Paul Hasluck, Nicholas Hasluck has seen many of Australia’s leading figures up close and personal. To celebrate his new book Ruminations, Nicholas Hasluck addressed The Sydney Institute on Monday 24 August 2026

RUMINATIONS: FROM THE STYLE OF MENZIES, EVATT AND WHITLAM TO THAT OF ALBANESE AND DOROTHY HEWETT 

NICHOLAS HASLUCK

My latest book, Ruminations, presents a collection of pieces about politics, law and literature, including acute appraisals of people I met or wrote about along the way. My survey of current affairs and changing styles in the use of language – a theme underlying my talk this evening – can sometimes lead to surprising diversions.

Many years ago, I was involved in a case that turned on the wording of a contract for the sale of a small business. During one of the adjournments at trial, counsel for the real estate agent I will call “Smith” must have told his client that he was about to be crossexamined by Hasluck, a published writer. This was of interest to Smith, for he himself had just burst into print with a manual of practical tips for real estate agents, complete with ready reckoner tables for the fixing of percentage-based commissions.

We are all familiar with the witness who seeks to disarm the crossexaminer with a winning smile and a display of charm. Thus, when the moment came for the compiler of the ready reckoner tables to face the crossexaminer – a published writer who had spent much of his adult life wrestling with the mysteries of narrative and style – Smith, with the aplomb of a poetaster at a literary soiree, prefaced his reply to my first question as follows: “Well, Mr Hasluck, as one creative writer to another, I would say this ….”

The word “creative” in the context of a real estate agent’s ready reckoner commission tables should probably have encouraged me to cross-examine with fervour, but in fact I was discombobulated by his reply. I was immediately reminded that words can be used and arguments presented to courts or political forums in various and often unexpected ways.

Let me add in passing that, as to courts, unexpected usages of language can make it difficult to work out whether your case is being dealt with by a top judge or a novice, because there are said to be two ways of becoming a “top judge”. One way is to study hard for a first-class degree at law school, join a good firm or set of chambers, win some big cases, be appointed to the bench, then burn the midnight oil for several years while writing some memorable judgements. The other and far easier way is to become a minor magistrate and be caught in a brothel – thus securing the inevitable headline: Top judge in A-List Brothel Horror.

But even apocryphal anecdotes of this kind remind us that the vagaries of human nature are diverse, and can lead to disagreements. If so, in politics, law and literature, whatever is said about the matter can be strengthened or prejudiced by the speaker’s style. I will draw upon ruminations in my book in exploring changing styles of debate, especially as to issues affected by political correctness and the so-called culture wars. There is an uneasy feeling in many quarters, as evidenced, for example, by the result of the Voice referendum, that there is a lack of clarity in what is being thought and said in debate. Is our country losing its way?

The section in my book called “Politics” includes a review of Anne Henderson’s recent book Menzies versus Evatt: The Great Rivalry of Australian Politics. The two rivals, both born in 1894, talented barristers in the 1920s, went on to become leaders of their respective parties in the federal parliament, Robert Menzies as a leader of the Liberal Party he founded and as a long-serving Prime Minister in the post-war era, Evatt on the Labor side as a Leader of the Opposition. In the course of my review, I said this:

Evatt was intellectually gifted but somewhat obsessive in pursuing his objectives and often blind to the sensitivities of those around him. This is reflected in his approach to the three issues for which he is principally remembered – the bank nationalisation controversy, the attempted ban of the communist party in the early years of the Cold War and the Petrov affair.

On all of these occasions, Evatt’s style as an advocate was said to be rambling and tedious. In the Petrov case, where he persisted in the fantasy that documents had been concocted to defame him, his line of attack was so vexatious that the Commissioners felt obliged to remove him from the proceedings…. Evatt’s crowning calamity as an advocate was said to have occurred during the Petrov affair when he tabled a letter in the House of Representatives from Molotov, the Russian Foreign Minister, purporting to corroborate Evatt’s claim that the documents he complained of were indeed a concoction. This was greeted with a roar laughter on both sides of the House … Evatt’s reliance on the Molotov letter was the moment Evatt “ruined himself as a political force”, a blow struck by his own hand.

In parliament and other forums, Menzies had a different style. He was clear in exposition, cogent in marshalling the facts supporting his case, always giving weight to accuracy and relevance. He was skilled in listening carefully to opposing arguments. When developing his own line of argument, he looked firstly to what was right before turning to the best means of persuading the crowd, including commentators attuned to the Westminster system of government. His style reflected basic values such as the rule of law and freedom of speech. He respected institutions designed to control the exercise of power, such as parliament, the public service, the judiciary and voluntary, community-based organisations.

According to Menzies, the essence of a good speech is that the speaker should have something to say which he is resolved to convey to his listeners in the simplest and most persuasive language. The art of politics is to provide persuasion and inspiration, to secure acceptance of your ideas, to create a firm and understanding public opinion which will see that your ideas are translated into action. Menzies spoke well because he thought clearly, he knew what he wanted to say, and said it in his own words.

There are various articles in my book that invite the reader to contrast a style of this kind with Evatt’s questionable style and the style of other leaders. In a piece called The Whitlam Dismissal Revisited I refer to some of the interviews I conducted while writing a novel about the downfall of the government in question, including conversations with Whitlam himself. I drew also upon my own knowledge of the Vice-regal premises and procedures at Yarralumla.

Whitlam’s skill as an inspirational speaker was generally acknowledged. He had won support for the Labor Party’s manifesto at two elections, but there were reservations by some of those I interviewed as to whether he had listened with sufficient care as the budget supply crisis deepened. Did he prepare for what might happen or should be done if the Governor-General took a sudden step to resolve the crisis? In my book I said this:

On 11 November 1975, in the course of a short meeting in his office at Government House, Sir John Kerr, having ascertained that Whitlam still couldn’t secure passage of the supply bills, dismissed the Prime Minister. Next, the Governor-General commissioned Fraser to form a caretaker government on the understanding that the incoming Prime Minister could obtain supply. Fraser managed to achieve this, largely because Labor senators were left in the dark as to what had happened at Government House. Unaware that Whitlam had just been sacked, they voted, yet again, in favour of passing the supply bills, although it was now contrary to their political interests to do so. Fraser was then able to advise Sir John Kerr to dissolve both Houses of Parliament on the basis that a general election would be held in December.

I referred also to my interview with a well-known senior public servant, John Nethercote. I asked him what would have happened if Fraser had been unable to get the supply bills through the Senate.

Nethercote said that Sir David Smith [the Official Secretary at Government House] had responded to this very question at the launch of his autobiography, Head of State, a few years ago by saying: “We would have been stuffed.” That is, those at Government House had no Plan B. In that event, Nethercote surmised, Fraser would probably have persuaded the Governor-General to leave things as they were, on the basis that a double dissolution election was to be called to resolve the deadlock and, in the meantime, supply could be provided pursuant to emergency powers (arguably of a kind exercised in 1915-16 when expenditure was authorised without specific parliamentary approval).

My novel, Dismissal, was a means of exploring possibilities concerning the affair. Fraser was able to obtain supply, it seemed, because Whitlam, after being sacked went straight to the PM’s Lodge for lunch. Then, with the aid of staffers and his leadership group, he began drafting a censure motion to be put to the House of Representatives. He was unaware that Fraser had been commissioned as Prime Minister by Kerr and was now contriving to have the supply bills validated by the Senate.

In today’s mobile phone era, the Labor senators would not have been left in the dark as to what was afoot. The sense of being outflanked by contrivance probably added to the acute mood of anger and moral outrage expressed by Whitlam on the front steps of Parliament House later in the day when the full story became known. The mood on the Labor side, it seems, both then and thereafter, was fortified not only by the presence of contrivance but also by an awareness that the fate of a government under the Westminster system is usually determined by numbers in the lower House, not the Senate.

Whitlam’s unforgettable condemnation of the Governor-General and the new Prime Minister – described as “Kerr’s cur” – may arguably be a significant moment in the style of debate, a moment leading many years later to political correctness and the spread of political orthodoxies in current times, many of which seem to be based on a feeling of moral superiority, as in virtue-signalling: a feeling that we, the decent people, who would never stoop to contrivance, are saying and doing what is right,

It is difficult, of course, to substantiate a speculative thought of this kind. However, for the sake of an enjoyable discussion, a form of talk which is often spiced by conjecture and related ruminations, let me test this thought by turning to a piece in my book called The Referendum Puzzle as an indication of current tendencies. I began by saying this:

The Voice was a will-o’-the-wisp. It was hard to grasp what one was being asked to vote for. The Uluru Statement from the Heart introduced the new arrival briefly as a First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the Constitution. Later, with a hint of modesty, it was presented to society at large as a Voice to Parliament. Then, after another makeover, it appeared on the ballot paper in an even bolder form as a body that could make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government about First Nations matters. The irresistible Voice now seemed poised to charm the entire structure of government, accompanied by well-mannered murmurs of approval from social elites.

From there, I went on to more specific matters mentioned by the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, as to which he seemed to be trimming his sails to the wind, not saying what he truly thought, sounding evasive or lacking clarity of thought:

The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, sought to allay fears by suggesting that the Voice was a “modest proposal”, just a matter of good manners. It was simply an advisory body. It wouldn’t be able veto legislation, so it couldn’t be described as a third chamber of parliament. In the course of the campaign, however, he assured Aboriginal leaders that the Voice was more than a symbolic gesture. It would be a source of real power. He noted also that it would be a brave government indeed that disregarded advice from the Voice.

His assurances to Aboriginal leaders suggested, contrary to his earlier blandishments directed to the general public, that the proposed Voice, if not exactly a third chamber of parliament, would almost certainly be viewed in the political arena as an influential parliamentary entity of some kind. With public opinion behind it, the Voice would probably be capable of blocking or stalling whatever it didn’t like and forging links to international agencies. In all sorts of ways, the electorate was left in the dark as to what might happen if the Yes case succeeded.

Did all of this, contradictory thoughts resembling contrivance, seem confusing to ordinary people? In the end, the Voice proposal failed because it was supported by only 39 per cent of the electorate and, apart from the ACT, by none of the states or territories. A clear majority of voters concluded apparently that the Voice proposal was divisive because it sought to give Indigenous citizens a special privilege based on race that would not be available to other groups or citizens, contrary to basic principles underlying the Westminster system of government and the democratic ideal of equality.

I went on to make some general observations:

Combative rhetoric before and after the Voice referendum, in which opposing arguments were often simply ignored or derided as misinformation, demonstrated the need for care in debate about important issues and the danger of influential orthodoxies.

In George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, he outlined the way in which societies can slide downhill due to corruptions of language, as in the commandment approved by the powers-that-be in the final pages of the novel: “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”. While pondering the way in which “truth” can be reshaped by descriptive ingenuity, it is worth keeping in mind also some remarks forming part of Orwell’s introduction to the novel: At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this or that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.

Business leaders, academics and lawyers are generally well-accustomed to persuasive arguments being put on both sides of significant issues. In the course of the Voice campaign, however, subject to very few exceptions, major companies, universities, Bar Associations, Law Societies and other significant bodies made it clear that in their opinion a Yes vote was the compassionate way to go, the right thing to do, the decent thing, irrespective of parliamentary traditions reflecting the ideal of equality between all citizens.

Within groups accustomed to both spirited debate and dispassionate analysis, and where it turned out in the end that 61 per cent of the electorate as a whole opposed the change, this troubling conformity of opinion seemed insidious, as if, in an Orwellian mood, within the senior ranks of the business, academic and legal elites, there was a prevailing orthodoxy that to vote against the proposed change simply wasn’t the “done thing”.

This meant that a good many ordinary people felt obliged to keep their mouths shut, for it seemed that doubts about the Yes case could lead to unwanted accusations of racism. The topic became undiscussable in various quarters, or discussable only in whispers. Will disquieting orthodoxies of this kind reappear if a truth-telling Commission is set up in Australia?

Works of fiction such as my novel Dismissal can be used to ruminate about various contested matters in the public arena. These days, however, one has to keep in mind that activists on the left are not only close to completing their long march through a number of institutions, especially universities and the ABC, but also through literary festivals, as emerges from the recent shut down of Adelaide Writers Week. A piece in my book called Saving Dorothy Hewett recalls my own slightly bizarre but nonetheless salutary experience at an Adelaide gabfest.

I was invited to say a few words at the opening not as a well-regarded scribe with predictably radical views but, rather, because at that time I was Chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council which had provided some funding for the event. Dorothy Hewett had been invited to make the main speech. As it happened, we were friends from many years back via our membership of the Fellowship of Writers in Perth. The bohemian Dorothy was always far to my left on the political spectrum, but when we first met, in an earlier era of Australian life, differences of opinion didn’t get in the way of friendship. I acted for her when a poem she wrote was said to have defamed her first husband. In Ruminations, I say this in a diary entry concerning her speech:

A group of us wait for the keynote speaker The audience in the East Tent begins to expand, spilling over into the surrounding areas and up the grassy banks of the nearby escarpment. A car pulls up and liberates two massive passengers: Dorothy and her husband, Merv Lilley. A big, burly man, Merv eases Dorothy into her wheelchair, but then discovers that one of the wheels has a flat tire. We edge it towards the low wooden stage, as Dorothy mutters and curses. We leave it to Merv to angle the chair and its elderly passenger towards the trestle table loaded with microphones.

A few seconds later, I notice from a corner of my eye that Dorothy’s wheelchair is rolling backwards and is about to topple off the stage. My God! Panic! Merv has forgotten to put on the wheel brake! I’m the first to reach her, as one wheel goes over the edge. Sweating, I manage to hold her there on the brink of disaster until others arrive. What a narrow escape! Dorothy is so huge that a split-second later and I wouldn’t have been able to avert the catastrophe. Rattled by this, I take my seat beside the others for the opening ceremony. This could be the high point of my term as Chair of the Literature Board – saving the life of one of Australia’s leading writers.

Seated benignly in her wheelchair (now fully braked, I trust) Dorothy leans towards the nearest microphone She goes on to say that the last time she opened Writers’ Week it was so hot that she had to pour a jug of water over herself, a libation she might well have to repeat today. She launches into an attack on publishing houses and craven governments. Fewer books will be published by emerging writers, she declares, as local companies are swallowed up by multinationals and the new tax, the GST, forces bookshops out of business. The moneyed philistinism of our so-called leaders leaves her aghast, she adds. The crowd applauds rapturously.

A few days later I was designated to sit on a panel with the Melbourne academic, Inga Clendinnen, and the gifted German lawyer/writer Bernhard Schlink, the author of a best-selling novel about the holocaust. Questions were put to the panel. Whether governmental policies and various deprivations in this country amounted to genocide? Whether the so-called stolen generation resembled what the Nazis did to the Jews in Europe? Inga Clendinnen said no to this. I mentioned Kruger’s case in which the High Court held the Northern Territory Ordinance was there to benefit Aboriginal people, not to exterminate them. Action under it couldn’t be regarded as genocidal.

Notwithstanding my timely act in saving a revered radical heroine, Dorothy Hewett, from toppling off the stage, the well-known radical activist Bob Ellis staggered up to a microphone at the back of the tent. To the great delight of those around him, he began abusing me: a rambling diatribe embellished with his wild depictions of children snatched from the breasts of lactating mothers to be caged in barbed-wire detention camps, and so on. Bernhard Schlink was bemused by all this. Understandably, the sensible German author couldn’t quite grasp how providing neglected children with accommodation and educational opportunities could be equated to putting people in gas ovens. The morally superior tone of Ellis and others in the tent convinced me that progressive orthodoxies and strident rhetoric were now deeply entrenched in public debate.

Curiously, as shown in my review of Douglas Brown’s biography of Amelia Shankelton, a supervisor at Retta Dixon Home in Darwin, an important judgment by the Federal Court was handed down shortly after the Adelaide event. The Court dismissed a claim for damages made by the two plaintiffs of part-Aboriginal descent involved in the landmark Cubillo/Gunner case. There was much to support a finding that when the orphaned Lorna Cubillo was removed from a desolate site at Phillip Creek and brought to Darwin, she was not harmed but rescued. When Amelia Shankelton died a group described as “the boys and girls of Retta Dixon Home” published a tribute to her in the local paper: “You loved the first to the last. You never forgot our birthday or Christmas gifts. But the greatest gift of all was the love you gave to each of us.” If it comes to truth-telling, considerable weight should be given not only to what was said at Uluru but also to this small but equally memorable statement from the heart.

While serving as Chair of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for a number of years, as described in my piece Exploring the Commonwealth, I was interviewed by the editor of a literary magazine in Sri Lanka about my novel The Country Without Music. Throughout the interview, still outwardly stoic, but inwardly disturbed by what I felt after the abusive rhetoric I had experienced in Adelaide, I mentioned an acute observation made by the Australian writer, David Foster. Satire, he said, is a literary form portraying a society in decline by a man who has felt it in his own personality.

I went on to mention the historical fact that the French came close to establishing a penal colony in the south west corner of my home state, Western Australia. My novel suggested that they did so by occupying islands off the coast of a continent supposedly named Grande Terre, islands inhabited eventually by Europeans, the descendants of indentured labour from India and the indigenous Ilois. The controversies and viewpoints of the characters in my work of fiction became a way of talking about national identity, minority grievances and self-determination policies, all of which had now become an increasingly contentious feature of the Australian scene.

I added this:

For a lawyer and a writer like myself, interested in politics and social transformation, one of the major problems in contemporary literature is to find a genre or a style which gives a freedom to bear witness to what is happening which will not be immediately and dogmatically pre-judged or condemned by representatives of all the current orthodoxies or preconceptions that are likely to confuse the picture. One solution is to create an entirely fictional realm with the result that the characters are not restricted by prevailing attitudes or entrenched opinions about the so-called facts of history.

Put shortly, as evidenced by a lack of clarity in talk about the Voice referendum and in my disturbing personal experience in Adelaide, much was happening in Australian society that was worthy of a satirist’s attention. Unfortunately, however, like much else, the art of satire in this country is in decline, as demonstrated by some recent incidents.

Examples. A would-be female satirist in a pith helmet and safari suit was invited to the Prime Minister’s Lodge with cameras and a multitude of TV viewers in tow, not to have lunch and help the PM draft a censure motion but, rather, for what turned out to be a tasteless game of hypotheticals in which, fortified by a tot of whisky, Anthony Albanese was eventually persuaded to reveal which of various local beauties he would be inclined to shag if the chance arose. Was the TV audience meant to puke or giggle?

A few weeks later, the ABC published an even worse would-be satire, a stomach-churning effusion about the mining magnate Gine Rinehardt. One would have expected the ABC management, like any ordinary person, as a matter of simple human decency, not to have approved and to have quickly apologised for regurgitating this chunk of vulgarity, devoid of any artistic merit. But no. An apology was only voiced by management after first seeking to excuse themselves by publishing the report of the ABC Ombudsman, an exculpatory report embellished with jargon echoing current orthodoxies and the ABC’s questionable code of standards. Did anyone at the ABC actually believe that what it did was right?

This unsavoury incident was followed by revelations that the National Association of the Visual Arts (NAVA) has published a code favouring “equity” over merit in the adjudication of awards, a code urging “unconscious bias” and “microaggression” training for decision-makers, warning against “privilege”, such as “whiteness”, not being deaf or disabled, speaking English as a first language, or identifying as heterosexual. NAVA says that its events and meetings should involve as many Acknowledgements of Country as the participants want to give. The absurdities reflected in this so-called code can possibly be written off as groupthink influenced by current orthodoxies. To think of it as being inspired by the style of would-be satirists akin to those I have just described would be unbearable. Would-be satirists lacking any feeling within their own personalities that something is amiss are incapable of recognising and satirising causes of social decline because they themselves, bereft of talent, could be serving as contributors to the downwards spiral.

Against this background, readers should not be surprised to find that in the end my book includes this passage:

Debate in contemporary times can finish up as a mass of verbiage swelled by “input” from activists and public relations gurus. Confected outrage, affectations of deep concern, half-truths, shallow rhetoric – these are ever-present. Leaders of the yes case in the voice referendum were inclined to call any argument against them “misinformation”. The fashionable word “truth-telling” can be a cosmetic used by activists not just to reconfigure but to embellish truth. Even experts dither as to the meaning of well-known words such as “woman” or “woke” or “inclusion” (all too often used to justify exclusion). Is our grip on reality gradually disappearing into an Orwellian wilderness of smoke and mirrors, a realm in which meaning is constantly masked by ambiguity and political agendas?

Nor should it be thought surprising, as I draw things to a close this evening, if I pause to point out that there is always a degree of hypocrisy involved when people with a political axe to grind purport to speak with an air of moral superiority. The tension between two important elements of a mature legal system – the arguable character of law and the need for certainty – means that in certain cases acts of persuasion call not only for a mastery of legal rules but also for a grasp of underlying social values and assumptions as to matters such as truth, tolerance, fair play, genuine decency and a touch of common sense. If truth is a value, it is because it is true, not because it is propped up by public opinion or tactical descriptions.

Sadly, as a consequence perhaps of too much tangled thought and speech in recent years, plus politicians dodging the questions put to them, would-be satirists contributing to the quagmire they should be exposing, ordinary people being shamed into silence by pervasive orthodoxies, an incessant flow of apologies for careless talk, one fears that the legal system and even the judiciary may be led astray.

There have been recent cases in Australia in which courts have been urged, expressly or by suggestive conduct, to follow a lead supposedly provided by prominent voices in the media, cases in which a clamour of moral outrage in the wake of sexual allegations is followed by a search for guilty parties, or even scapegoats. The prosecution of Cardinal Pell and his eventual acquittal by the High Court is a deeply disturbing example. At various stages within the realm of formal law enforcement, as finally shown by the High Court ruling, reasoning was distorted by rhetoric. In cases of this sort, in which outrage, investigations of one kind or another, and related legal proceedings, are jumbled up in the public mind, advocates and judicial officers will have to use greater than usual care in setting out their views.

But now, with a view to closing on a ruminative and thus more agreeable note, let me remind you that my book also contains various appraisals of interesting people I met or wrote about along the way.

In October 1976, for example, while in England, I made my way to Golders Green in north London to call on Sir Charles Tennyson, a grandson of the famous poet laureate in Victorian times, Alfred Tennyson. In the course of editing letters written by a member of the Tennyson family, my mother had been corresponding at some length with Sir Charles and had urged me to call on him. Born in 1879, he was brought up in two households – in the home of his grandfather, the famous poet, on the Isle of Wight, and in that of his stepfather in London, Augustine Birrell, a well-known essayist and lawyer. In due course, Charles became a barrister.

He was now 97 years of age. Sitting upright in a chair by the window, a rug across his knees, he greeted me with a friendly smile. We spoke for an hour or so about his life and times, and about the law. Like Menzies, he was of the view that a knowledge of the law teaches one to think clearly and to express oneself lucidly, both orally and in writing. It gives one the power of picking up a case quickly, however complex it may be, and to put what one has to say in the form which will best appeal to one’s audience. The law also gives one a wide view of humanity and its operations, whether in society, commerce, industry or administration, and within limits, a living view of history, however confusing in its mass of details.

As we parted, I could scarcely believe that in a small way I had tapped into Victorian and Edwardian times, as though they were still happening, and had finished up chatting about some leading personalities of the era such as Augustine Birrell, the famous cricketer W.G. Grace and the poet Alfred Tennyson himself, as though they were still alive. And all of this in a companionable tone from a fascinating storyteller in his 97^th year. As the poet laureate said in Ulysses, in some of his best remembered lines: “Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are.”

While writing this paper, I kept in mind my brief encounter with Sir Charles Tennyson. He left me with not only a succinct description of the qualities involved in legal reasoning, but with a memorable insight reflected in his grandfather’s words – at the end of the day, we are what we are and should say so when we speak.

If this means, as in my case, that one is inclined to ruminate about both law and literature, or even more widely, odd as this might seem to most dedicated lawyers, and indeed, in a different way, odd to writers dedicated entirely to their craft, or odder still to political activists, so be it. Ruminations are what they are, a way of thinking about this or that, an indirect approach to the development of opinions and eventually to the formation of firm conclusions.