The latest edition of the New Criterion is out (always a happy event around here), and Dalrymple’s contribution (freely available to non-subscribers) is an essay on the attitude of Western intellectuals toward the Soviet Union:
One of the most extraordinary episodes in the intellectual history of the twentieth century—if, indeed, something that lasted half a century or more can properly be called an episode—is the moral and sometimes material support given by much of the western intelligentsia to the Soviet tyranny, a tyranny that made all previous tyrannies seem relaxed, liberal, and almost amateurish by comparison. Men who found the slightest circumscription of their own freedom intolerable raised hosannas to the most systematic and concerted abrogation of personal liberty yet attempted; many were those who strained at gnats to swallow a camel.
Dalrymple’s distrust of abstraction in pursuit of grand theories about human behavior is again on display here.
That’s an interesting article. It makes you think.
As an essay writer, I am fond of interesting articles like the New Criterion which is an essay on the attitude of Western intellectuals toward the Soviet Union. What is interesting is Dalrymple’s notion and pursuit of grand theories about human behavior.
Dalrymple’s distrust of abstraction in pursuit of grand theories about human behavior is quite deep. I have to agree and probable think about it for a while.
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A thesis a year keeps your mind challeged