In last week’s Takimag column, Dr. Dalrymple comes across a pathetically farcical article in an English university student magazine about the benefits of crying in public. As if Western culture was not already trending toward the laughably weak, feeble, self-absorbed, overly feminized, and excessively emotional.

A population that hesitates not to cry in public is likely to be also a population of many frauds, of many actors and actresses, and of many liars. More dangerously, it will be a population without the capacity for real self-examination; many will no longer be able to distinguish between minor inconvenience and real tragedy, between slight loss and real grief, not only in others but in themselves. It will be a society in which tears will be not only an argument, but a conclusive one; and the more tears the more conclusive.