Category Archives: Essays

Debating Biden’s Death Penalty Stance

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.

Aberdaron III

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.

 

Gifts

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.

 

The King and Lidia

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.

Life Before Death

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.

Fly Away

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.

Sports Inequity

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.

Out, Damned Despot!

In his weekly Takimag column, Theodore Dalrymple reflects on the ‘career’ trajectory of the recently deposed, ruthless Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

Assad junior will not be wishing the Syrian people well, but rather all the misery in the world for having shown themselves so disgracefully ungrateful to him. It will serve them right!

Moral Exhibitionism: The Hollow Virtue of Overreaction

Over at The Epoch Times, our favorite doctor has penned another commentary on the excessively emotional, hysterical, and overly dramatic reactions that have accompanied Donald Trump’s victory in last month’s U.S. presidential elections.

If they had been sentenced to death for the following day, they could hardly have been more emotional, or at least more expressive of emotion, but most of that emotion struck me as bogus, or at least not straightforwardly sincere. It bore the same relation to true feeling as hysterical paralysis does to the physical kind.