We are sometimes criticized for never, or rarely, disagreeing with Dalrymple. Guilty as charged, but his dislike of shopping for clothing, expressed in this piece in Taki’s Magazine, is one such point of disagreement. (Naturally, I am going to excerpt some other portion of the column.)

I used to ask my patients what they were interested in. It was a question that terrified them. Eventually, after much searching of what psychological and therapeutic charlatans like to call their “inner space,” they delivered themselves, with as much pain and difficulty as that occasioned by the delivery of a breech baby, of a single word (I knew in advance what it would be): shopping.

“Shopping,” I said, “is not an interest. It is a lack of interest.” And they knew what I meant.