Our favorite doctor calls into question how far (post)modern man’s freedom extends when considering the growing imbalance of power between him and various authorities.

It is not that the instructions in the letter are inherently wrong or absurd. There are reasons for them all. It is the peremptory and unapologetic tone of the letter that leads its recipient to conclude that he is a worm and the council is a blackbird out for its sustenance. The obligations flow from the citizen to the authorities and none in the other direction, and there is something almost gleeful in the way the citizen—servant—is informed of this.

Over at Law & Liberty, the nostalgic doctor reflects on some of the—mostly negative social and cultural—changes that England went through during Queen Elizabeth II’s reign.

It is for their own lost virtues, exemplified by the Queen, that the people mourn, not least their distinctive understated humour and irony, now replaced almost entirely by crudity.

Our monarchical doctor remembers Queen Elizabeth II fondly while worrying about her successor over at City Journal. Requiescat in pace.

In doing so, they forget that, in practice, people are infinitely more likely to be oppressed by their elected representatives than by their constitutional monarch, and indeed are increasingly oppressed by them every day of their lives. Like many intellectuals, they prefer to fight shadows rather than substantive beings: it is easier and more gratifying.

In his Takimag column last week, Dr. Dalrymple comments on a surprisingly reasonable book about COVID-19, muses on the attractiveness of conspiracy theories, and predicts a future of generalized paranoia for all of us.

How many of us would be willing to admit our mistakes with such frankness, even to ourselves? Not many, perhaps because we are so unwilling to admit the unpredictability of the world. We want it to be fully comprehensible, and thereby foreseeable, especially by us. In addition, we are often more attached to our view of the world than to the world itself. Giving up a worldview is more difficult than giving up a bad habit.

In this week’s Takimag column, Theodore Dalrymple explores various forms of snobbery and emphasizes the need—in fact, our duty—to pass judgment in order to uphold the good, the true, and the beautiful in our world.

The trouble is that snobbery toward the unambitious overvalues ambition as a human characteristic, and thereby helps to usher in the regime of ambitious mediocrities, or even sub-mediocrities, under which we now live. There is nothing wrong with mediocrity, it is indeed very necessary; but it is harmful when allied with ambition.

In the September edition of New English Review, the good doctor muses on his pedantic interests while attempting to catalogue his vast library in his French countryside villa.

I suspect that we are fast approaching a state of society in which pedantry will be the best defence against the prevailing moral and philosophical (not to say physical) ugliness. Find a corner of the world about which nobody cares, and immerse yourself pedantically in it. That will be the way to survive until you reach the bourne from which no traveller returns.

In last week’s Takimag, the skeptical doctor takes on the new breed of untalented, useless, leftist commissars here to shepherd us along—whether we like it or not—to their progressive utopia, while they accumulate more wealth, power, and influence at our expense.

The corruption of which I speak has a financial aspect, but only indirectly. It is principally moral and intellectual in nature. It is the means by which an apparatchik class and its nomenklatura of mediocrities achieve prominence and even control in society. I confess that I do not see a ready means of reversing the trend.

Over at The Epoch Times, our favorite doctor expounds on the modern welfare state and the enthusiastic bureaucrats intent on expanding “free” services in order to increase their power and influence over the very people they are busy pretending to help.

The fact that there is a spectrum of need, from total to none, gives bureaucracies of welfare the pretext or excuse for expanding them ad infinitum, thus expanding also the requirement for further compulsory donations from the rest of the population. An incompetent population is the joy of bureaucrats.

In his Law & Liberty column, the dubious doctor ponders the role of psychology in accounting for people’s criminal behavior in light of the July 8 assassination of the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe.

Where human behaviour is concerned, except in very few and limited cases, there is always a gap—which I believe to be metaphysical—between the explanandum and the explanans. For this reason, I believe the role of psychology is very limited in the legal context, and that the presumption of responsibility for actions is both necessary and realistic. Mitigation (which may be very strong indeed) must not be confused with exculpation.