Earlier this month the Library of Law and Liberty posted this lengthy interview with Dalrymple on his latest book. Worth a listen.
Interview on Admirable Evasions
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Category Archives: Interviews
Dalrymple interviewed on The Tom Woods Show
A podcast of libertarian economist Tom Woods interviewing Dalrymple regarding Life At The Bottom was posted here yesterday.
People are still discovering this 14-year-old book and being stunned by its eloquence and insight.
Dalrymple promotes new book on visit to U.S.
Dalrymple has spent the last few days making the rounds in New York and Washington, D.C. promoting his new book, Admirable Evasions: How Modern Psychology Undermines Morality.
He spoke at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. The video is here. The action doesn’t start until the 21:30 mark. (Update: the video has now been edited.)
On Thursday he visited the Wall Street Journal and recorded two short video interviews. In this one he addresses Islamic extremism, and here he discusses his book’s thesis that psychology has been a generally useless attempt to avoid the reality that “the permanent condition of mankind is dissatisfaction”. (H/t Michael G.)
On Thursday evening the New Criterion hosted a launch party in New York City for the book, and your humble correspondents (along with Skeptical Doctor reader Adam) enjoyed seeing the good doctor once again. He spoke for a few minutes, humorously sharing the titles of the psychology-inspired self-help books he noticed in the bookstore of DC’s Union Station.
Other attendees included his old City Journal editor Myron Magnet, Roger Kimball and James Panero.
Killer Emotions Pt. 2
The Uncompromised Truth blog has released the second half of their podcast with Dr. Dalrymple, focusing on his arguments about the destructiveness of sentimentality. Once again it is well worth a listen. Dalrymple joins the conversation at approximately the midpoint.
Killer Emotions
Dalrymple is featured here in the first half of an interview on the podcast “Uncompromised Truth”. I would call this one of the best interviews I have ever heard of him. The American hosts do a great job of getting him talking in a relaxed, conversational manner as they discuss his criticisms of modern sentimentality. There will apparently be a part II soon.
The site includes other items that may also be of interest, such as an interview with Roger Scruton. It is all very well done, and our readers will certainly find many of the hosts’ insights cogent and accurate. Definitely worth a visit.
Prostitution and the Right to Choose
Is prostitution justified? That’s the gist of the questions IAI News asked Dalrymple in this short interview about the supposed oldest profession. I have a feeling the questioner did not like some of the answers, as TD refused to accept some of the premises behind the questions.
Dalrymple interview at The Coffee House Wall
There is a great deal here I’d like to quote. Though it is brief, this is one of the best, most revealing interviews of Dalrymple I’ve seen, and it provides answers to some of the more common, and more central, questions about his beliefs.
To what extent, as an atheist, do you ascribe value to the Judeo-Christian tradition? Is this a necessary foundation of Western civilization?It seems to me obvious that western civilisation is Christian in origin, and those who decry Christianity are in effect decrying western civilisation. I say this as someone who is not myself religious. I believe it is possible for some people to live without religion, but probably not for whole peoples to live without it. To have a sense of transcendent purpose without religion necessitates a political ideology (which is likely to be very bad), or a belief that one is contributing to a culture. Without this, one is living in an eternal present moment, without past and without future.Have we seen a different type of person arise in the West, as Mr. Boot proposes? How else would you explain that the virtues of respect, duty, deference and self-sacrifice seem to have been universally derided if not abandoned?Certainly I am worried about a shallowness in the human personality that, if I may so put it, appears to be deepening. Even such things as the electronic media of communication, for those unfortunate enough to have been brought up with them, seem to hollow out human relations, making them extensive rather than intensive. As to derided ideas such as humility, proper deference and so forth, I think we live in an age of inflamed egotism, and of individualism without individuality. Never has it been more necessary, and at the same time more difficult, to mark yourself out as an individual. The slightest subordination in any circumstances is therefore felt as a wound, because the ego is so fragile, and relies on such props as the brand of trainers you are wearing.
Dalrymple interview in Jersey magazine
Regional magazine Jersey Life has taken note of Dalrymple’s attention to their island and published a review of The Policeman and the Brothel, as well as an interview. They don’t seem to have a website, but you can download the review and interview
Symposium: Why Do Progressives Love Criminals?
Frontpage Magazine editor-in-chief Jamie Glazov has conducted another symposium involving Dalrymple, this one in response to the recent books The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander and Are Prisons Obsolete? by the revolting Angela Davis. Be sure to click to the second page to read all three of Dalrymple’s contributions, among which:
A mixture of sentimentality and intellectual pride distinguishes the attitude of many liberal intellectuals towards crime, which almost never affects them personally. On the one hand there is a reluctance to believe that ordinary people can behave very badly; on the other they believe that it is the function of the intellectual to uncover the underlying ‘reality’ of phenomena (if he is not for that, what is he for?), so that it represents a loss of caste to express the ordinary man in the street’s horror at or revulsion against crime.Thus crime has to become not really crime, but something else altogether more noble, which it takes nobility and intelligence or acuity on the part of the intellectual in turn to recognize. People don’t steal or rob because they want something and think it is the easiest way to get it; they are uttering a protest against injustice. Moral grandiosity and exhibitionism are the occupational hazards of intellectuals.None of this should, of course, be taken to mean that we should not oppose injustice where it really exists.