Over at Law & Liberty, our skeptical doctor points to another disturbing and odious trend brought to you by the usual ‘woke’ leftist cadres.

The supposition that by capitalising the word black, but not the word white, some benefit is being conferred on black people is both condescending and demeaning to the supposed beneficiaries. Among other things, it supposes that they are defined purely or largely by how others refer to them in newspapers or other publications. It suggests that they can, and indeed need to, be rescued or saved by the merest gesture of those higher in the social scale than they.

In this week’s Takimag column, our critical doctor celebrates the long overdue downfall of the racialist—possibly racist—unjust, and vile DEI regime.

But the goodness of good intentions tends to disappear when they, the good intentions, are turned into career opportunities by bureaucratic alchemists; and I think that malignity always lay lurking in the minds of those who wanted to right the wrongs of the past. They saw an opportunity and seized it.

The good doctor sounds off on the death of the controversial French politician, Jean-Marie Le Pen, over at The Salisbury Review.

Thank you to Andrew S. for pointing this one out to me.

There are circumstances, perhaps, in which the public celebration of a person’s death might be excusable, in the middle of a desperate war, but otherwise it is wrong, whatever one’s feelings about the deceased.

In last week’s Takimag, Dr. Dalrymple once again fixes his merciless sights on that (in)famous British institution, the National Health Service.

The first was that, before the foundation of the National Health Service, health care hardly existed in the country. This, of course, was nonsense. Indeed, in the report first suggesting the establishment of an NHS, it was acknowledged that the British health care system (if system it deserved to be called, for it was an amalgam of many different institutions) was among the best in Europe—instead of the worst, as it now is.

In this week’s Takimag, our well-read doctor discusses a literary gem from the Soviet era, Stalin’s penchant for Mozart, and the traditional aims of life.

No book more concisely recounts the destruction of the human personality and character by a system of ideological conformity, denunciation both public and private, dismissal from work on grounds of social origins or opinion, and arbitrary arrest.

In his weekly Takimag column, our indignant doctor expresses his dismay at the undeserved privilege of improved health for future generations. The unfairness of it all…

There is no justice in this: Why should people live longer and healthier than I simply because they were born after me? They did nothing to deserve this immense benefit; they simply freeloaded on the ingenuity and hard work of those who came before them.

Over at The Epoch Times, our judicious doctor argues against the inconsistency of America’s lame-duck (with an emphasis on lame) president’s commutation of the death penalty for 37 federal prisoners.

Having said all of this, I must admit that, in my heart, I cannot help but feel that, for some crimes and for some criminals, the only appropriate penalty is death. I suspect that this is the case with many abolitionists, too, although they do not like to admit it, even to themselves.

In the January issue of New English Review, Theodore Dalrymple continues his series on Wales, in which he contemplates burials, cemeteries, churchyards, and shipwrecks.

The French sociological geographer, Jérôme Fourquet, takes the decline of burial in favour of cremation as another sign of the decline—almost the disappearance—of religion in France, or at least of the Christian religion, and there is no reason why it should be any different elsewhere in the western world.

Earlier this month, our prolific doctor wrote a short piece for The Salisbury Review about the British prime minister accepting gifts worth £100,000 from a Lord Alli. Please note that there are a few Dalrymple articles from this prestigious magazine from earlier that were not covered with separate posts on our website. Thank you to our own Gavin for bringing this to my attention.

We would like to wish our readers around the world a healthy, successful, and happy New Year!

Moral philosophy is like metaphysics: those who think that they can dispense with either of them immediately pass judgments that, whether they know it or not, imply them.