Dalrymple has a new essay for the New Zealand Centre for Political Research regarding the appalling cases of parental abuse and neglect that have hit the British news in the last few months. The solution to these problems is simple and obvious: we need to encourage people to take responsibility for their own actions. But such a solution is against the interests of both the state bureaucracy that is funded to tackle such problems and its liberal supporters who desire a world free of social restriction and who declare their own virtue by excusing vice.

Whenever we try to assess the meaning and significance of particularly horrible cases, such as that of Nia Glassie in New Zealand or Baby P in Britain (between which there are several parallels), it is important to bear in mind that there is nothing new under the sun, that some people have always done terrible things to others, that some humans have always behaved with the utmost cruelty, that there has never been a golden age of universal benevolence and good will to all men, and that no social system will entirely eliminate the human capacity for evil.

Nevertheless, there is something peculiarly shocking about cases such as those of Nia Glassie and Baby P…

Read the rest of the essay here