Back at Law & Liberty, our skeptical doctor demolishes the latest book by a popular marxist economist, who is still spouting the same, tired socialist nonsense as his comrades from the red 20th century.

Never once do considerations other than increased equality enter into Professor Piketty’s mind. There would be no privacy in his world, since the transparency of all dealings, incomes, and expenditures would be absolute. His utopia is tyranny in the name of virtue, the only virtue that counts: equality of outcome.

In last week’s Takimag column, the critical doctor explains the indisputable fact that all of us must make judgments during the course of our lives.

Judgment, as Hippocrates said a long time ago with regard to medicine, is uncertain; and yet we must exercise it, for life is judgment. Those who claim not to make judgments are always making a self-congratulatory meta-judgment, as it were: that it is a great and glorious thing, indicative of largeness of heart, not to judge. But judge we must, for we have always to choose between alternatives.

On a recent visit to a British hospital, Dr. Dalrymple was reminded of the cliché in the title of this The Critic article.

Needless to say, this poster did not manufacture itself or put itself on the wall: its appearance there was the product of human labour, albeit of labour at a low intellectual level, that of ambitious mediocrities. The contrast with the surgeon, who was probably subordinate in some way to these people, could not have been more painful. 

In the autumn issue of City Journal, our skeptical doctor recounts the case of the brutal 1949 murder of Samuel Setty in England, as well as the life of the murderer responsible for this contemptible crime.

How do we become what we are? Many have suffered far worse than Hume in childhood, and had none of his advantages, but do not become killers, or even accessories after the fact. There is something ineffably mysterious about the human condition that defies full explanation, though the condition itself dictates that we try to find that explanation.

Back at Law & Liberty, Dr. Dalrymple considers the growing popularity among governments of making Covid vaccinations compulsory, and our favorite doctor takes a firm stand against such ill-conceived measures.

From the editors here at The Skeptical Doctor, we would like to wish all of our readers around the world a Merry Christmas.

In summary, I conclude that there is no reason to make vaccination against Covid compulsory, not even for subgroups of the population. To do so risks provoking civil unrest for no good reason. This conclusion is provisional: I do not exclude the possibility that one day compulsory vaccination might be justified, though I do not expect it ever to be so and think we are far from that situation now. Of course, governments love compulsion for its own sake: it lets the population know who is boss.

Over at Quadrant, the good doctor breaks down his views on delusion, dishonesty, and modern corruption as he thinks back to ol’ Tony Blair.

It is now normal for everyone to proclaim his honesty despite patent acts of dishonesty, even when caught in the act. Thus, genuinely to believe that you are honest while you are nakedly pursuing your own self-interest under the guise of some elevated general principle has become almost the normal state of mankind, at least that part of it that enters the politico-administrative class.

The critical doctor warns of the planned desecration of the interior of the awe-inspiring Notre Dame cathedral at the hands of French bureaucrats and their tasteless accomplices among modernist architects.

All contemporary French public buildings are monstrosities, from the Opéra Bastille and the Ministry of Finance in Paris to the Musée de la Romanité in Nîmes. The more that is spent on them, the worse they get. They almost always desecrate their surroundings, as if their architects wanted to take their revenge on previous ages, as mediocrity revenges itself on genius.

In his weekly Takimag column, the skeptical doctor summarizes a book he picked up in a Parisian bookshop on the Swiss procedure relating to assisted suicide.

At the same time, however, many of us feel a certain unease about the subject. Is not assisted suicide the beginning of a slippery slope or the thin end of a wedge? How long before well-meaning people, full of protocols and good intentions, will be deciding for us that our lives are not worth living?

Our skeptical doctor surveys the latest migrant crisis on the Polish-Belorussian border and—in his typically incisive yet subtle way—calls a spade a spade.

As Oscar Wilde said, sentimentality is the desire to have the luxury of an emotion—in this case, awareness of one’s own generosity—without the willingness to pay for it. It is even better, of course, if you can make someone else pay for it.