In the April issue of New English Review, our demanding doctor pens a mildly favorable review of a book by Philip Pilkington that critiques liberalism.
If you don’t want outer constraint, you must be prepared for inner restraint; but for inner restraint not to be experienced as a straitjacket, there must be some moral philosophy to justify it. As Edmund Burke put it, without such restraint, appetites serve to forge chains.
In this week’s Takimag column, the skeptical doctor speaks out against the never-ending and utterly futile attempt of progressive activists to perfect every possible political, economic, and social arrangement.
The great majority of mankind is not capable of this, however, and there is probably a larger number of people than ever before who believe that in reform is to be found human perfection and the whole purpose of existence—because not to believe it would upset their worldview.
Over at The Epoch Times, our incredulous doctor lampoons the empty, liberal moral preening gesture of turning in Tesla cars because of the company’s CEO’s connection to the Trump Administration, while he also condemns the vicious vandalism that has become popular among nasty, disgruntled leftists.
One of the characteristics of our age is both the intensity and the shallowness with which people hold their opinions and likewise experience their emotions. They are inclined to believe that the more vehemently they express themselves, the more strongly and sincerely they believe or deeply they feel, when the opposite is often nearer the truth.
In the winter edition of City Journal, our dubious doctor reviews Boris Johnson’s subpar memoir, which he purchased surreptitiously lest someone spot him with this unpopular book.
Boris writes breezily, and often with a near-adolescent facetiousness that either amuses or irritates. His intellectual seriousness, as against his evident intellectual capacity, has always divided observers—whether, deep in his soufflé of lightheartedness, there lies a suet pudding of gravitas trying to get out. Is his apparent frivolity a mask covering a deep, sincerely held, political philosophy?
Our favorite doctor covers the negative and often preposterous reactions to the new black leader of Britain’s Conservative Party over at City Journal.
This notion echoes Marxist epistemology and moral psychology, where intellectual allegiance is determined not by economic class but by race. To be truly black, one must think and act in a prescribed manner; authentic blackness entails ideological uniformity.
Back at Takimag, our grateful doctor reflects on his fortunate life while recollecting meetings with survivors of World War II POW camps.
Of late, I have thought of what I should like my epitaph to be: perhaps “He was not a nuisance.”
In his latest Epoch Times piece, our upstanding doctor lambastes an Oscar-winning film that attempts to glamorize the ‘oldest profession in the world.’
Censoriousness can easily translate into cruelty, which is no doubt why some people (in medical journals, for example) insist on renaming prostitution as “sex-work” and prostitutes as “sex-workers.” No one has yet done the same for pimps, however; they have not yet become “sex-work managers” in the mealy-mouths of those who employ the new euphemisms.
In his latest Takimag column, our nostalgic doctor reminisces about his youthful days as an English football fan after reading an article on the great Lionel Messi.
No doubt it is a sign of my gradual change of species from human being to dinosaur that I think it was a more civilized world (at least in some respects) then than it is now, one in which our scale of values was better, but I am glad to think that even now Lionel Messi shares it, even if The Washington Post does not.
Over at The Oldie, Dr. Dalrymple considers the danger posed by elderly drivers after reading a dubious Canadian study.
There is undoubtedly a tendency in modern society not to lift restrictions when they cease to be necessary, either because the risk has disappeared or because it never really existed in the first place.