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.
Over at Australia’s Quadrant, our dubious doctor lampoons the shameful theatrics of a leftist Australian senator obnoxiously expressing her ‘aboriginal’ opposition—while dressed in animal fur—to King Charles’ visit.
And just as any port will do in a storm, so any supposed oppressor will do once the desire for martyrisation by oppression takes over a person’s mind. And since life is indeed full of little inconveniences, it is not difficult to find a scapegoat supposedly responsible for them all.
In the January issue of New Criterion, our bookish doctor considers the ruminations of famous condemned men on life, death, and freedom.
More than one writer has been condemned to death and lived to tell the tale, most famously, perhaps, Dostoevsky. He was before the firing squad, his eyes blindfolded, when he learned of his reprieve. Apparently, the tsar, Nicholas I, had never intended to have him shot: he wanted, first, to give all potential rebels and dissenters a fright, and, second, to appear generously merciful.
In last week’s Takimag, the good doctor penned a piece on battling flies with the latest ‘eco-friendly’ flypaper in his French country house.
We would like to wish all of our readers and fans of Theodore Dalrymple a peaceful, joyous, and blessed Christmas.
Naturally, I am not in favor of companies behaving immorally, for example by unmercifully exploiting people or by carelessly polluting the area round their own factories, but I wish we could sometimes have a rest from the epidemic of high-mindedness that afflicts our times and which, by reaction, introduces wicked thoughts into our minds.
In the current issue of The Critic, the skeptical doctor mercilessly criticizes some new trendy nonsense from academia—this time about mankind’s prehistory and ‘unfairness’ in modern sports.
There is no greater power than that over people’s minds, and the exertion of power is a pleasure; indeed the proper (and inevitable) goal of existence, according to some philosophers. The purpose of propaganda is not to spread truth, but to violate individual autonomy.