Canter Bridge

I could not carry on with life as I know it without the Economist.

No hype. It’s that good.

This American reviewer became hopelessly addicted to the Economist’s news and analysis during four years in England. The magazine—or ‘newspaper’, as it stubbornly insists on calling itself—is published from London, though as of 2005 the largest national readership is in the United States.

The editorial line is libertarian in the more moderate European sense of the word. The essential values are individual liberty, a modest state, and free market economics.

Don’t let the name fool you. This weekly is far more than an economist’s rag. Its anonymous writing on current events if fabulous, not to mention top-ranked analysis of letters, arts, and the like.

Let me give you a concrete example of how the Economist excels. For years, I have paid close attention to its coverage of Latino and immigration issues in the USA. One might suppose that a British magazine would be at a disadvantage when exploring this complex topic, yet the Economist‘s coverage routinely surpasses that of US newspapers and magazines, perhaps largely because of its disdain for self-suppressing ‘PC’ tactics.

The only area in which I detect broad deficiency in this magazine’s coverage is in the role of religion, particularly in America. The secularist European spectacles its editors wear seem to make it impossible for them to canvass this phenomenon with a view that religion’s continued fervor in advanced Western nations is something other than retrograde and slightly amusing.

I tell my university-age nephews—thankfully, they ask—to anchor their news consumption in one weekly, then to read widely beyond it. The Economist is the very best anchor available to English-reading sailors.