Readers might have noticed that we’ve made various tweaks and updates to the Skeptical Doctor website recently. We’ve implemented site caching and made numerous styling fixes (including a larger font for mobile devices). We also examined our subscription solution and contact form configuration – and found that both needed some work!

In short, subscribers using our previous solution may not have been informed of new articles for quite some time, and people who contacted us might not have received replies. Both of these issues should now be resolved, but we would ask that previous subscribers now re-subscribe, using the form in our sidebar. You should then receive notifications of new posts and/or comments by email. And if you wish to contact us, please feel free to use our contact form. Despite anti-spam measures, your message should still reach us!

Finally, please feel free to comment below articles posted here. We hope to be able to announce the publication of further books and audiobooks by Dalrymple in due course, and will of course keep on publicising his essays and articles.

An alternative way that you can keep up to date with the site, by the way – and one that has never stopped working – is via our RSS feeds for articles and comments. A service like Feedly can consume these and alert you in its app or on the website.

The City Journal has published one of the stories from Theodore Dalrymple’s book Grief and Other Stories.

Fantasy is all very well, it is better than nothing at all, but it is no substitute for reality. By middle age, Amos had had enough of it and its pretences. Why should he be condemned to a second-rate life just because, through no fault of his own, he had developed a unusual desire that, if fulfilled, would harm no one else? Every man has a right to fulfilment.

Peter Bolton from The Canary wrote to us to let us know about his new piece that criticizes right-wing commentators for hypocrisy on the subject of civil discourse. He says Theodore Dalrymple is the most notable culprit:

In a highly competitive field, the prize for the most glaring peddler of wilful bias may go to the conservative essayist Anthony Daniels, better known by his pen name Theodore Dalrymple… 

Daniels’ writing often focuses on what he sees as the decline in manners, self-respect, decency, and personal responsibility in both public and private life in the UK. And for Daniels, the blame for this decline lies squarely with Britain’s political and intellectual class, along with their purported embrace of popular culture at the expense of high culture. This criticism, however, is seemingly reserved almost exclusively for those who he considers left of center.

It’s a fairly long piece with many examples, as Bolton sees it, of Dalrymple’s hypocrisy. Read it here.

Bolton asked if Dalrymple would like to reply, and I expect him to reply here shortly.

I am sorry that I haven’t posted any new Dalrymple pieces in the last couple of months. I have received several emails questioning whether Dalrymple is even writing any more, and I can assure you that he is writing as much as ever. I have had some challenges in my personal life that have made maintaining the blog difficult, and I feel the need to explain. In late January, my identical twin brother Clint, with whom I built and maintained this blog, passed away suddenly from a seizure disorder that began three years ago. His death has made life difficult for me, and I have not had the heart to continue posting. I plan to start up again soon, perhaps with one “catch up” entry that lists all of the pieces I’ve missed. We were lax enough in keeping up with Dalrymple and posting all of his pieces when it was the two of us, and I’m not sure I can do it alone. Therefore, if anyone would like to assist me in maintaining the blog, I would welcome the help. You can contact me by commenting on this post or by emailing me at webmaster@skepticaldoctor.com.

Clint took great meaning and enjoyment from Dalrymple’s work and worldview, and in helping to promote them. The opportunities we have had to get to know Dalrymple personally have been a real thrill, as have the opportunities to meet and communicate with so many of his readers. I want to thank you all for having helped to make my brother’s life a better one.

Clint Conatser 1971-2018

Rest in Peace

Many of you may know of Dalrymple’s 1989 visit to North Korea as part of a communist British delegation to the World Festival of Youth and Students, as recounted in his book The Wilder Shores of Marx.

Skeptical Doctor reader Yakimi has made a tremendous discovery, finding actual footage of Dalrymple in a YouTube video of the event. See Yakimi’s note – and the link to the video – in his message below:

Off-topic, but I have a discovery to share.

You may recall Theodore Dalrymple’s account of his journey in 1989 to the World Festival of Youth and Students held in North Korea. I was recently rereading that chapter of The Wilder Shores of Marx when I had the idea of seeing whether there existed any footage of him at the event. As luck would have it, YouTube is host to a two-hour film (http://youtube.com/watch?v=z972J4lVttU) documenting the festival. Dalrymple mentioned that the British delegation wore a uniform of “stormtrooper brown”, so I revieiwed the footage keeping an eye out for them.

At 31:39, a figure wearing a brown shirt and strongly resembling Dalrymple as he appears on the book’s dust jacket can be seen, resting his chin on his fist. He appears again at 32:35, holding a camera.

I do believe that to be Dalrymple. What do you think?

(Sadly, the footage of Dalrymple telling the wrestler that he hates sports or that of him being forced to dance were not featured.)

What a great find! H/t Yakimi

A YouTube user named “Expanding Overton” (which I think is a reference to this) has beautifully summarized Dalrymple’s 2007 book In Praise of Prejudice in video form. What a great idea. See videos of other works from the same user here.

We’ve previously posted two articles Dalrymple has written for The Journal of Modern Wisdom, a publication from author and philosopher Ben Irvine devoted to the search for wisdom and the good life. In addition to publishing Dalrymple, Ben has been a friend to this blog for years, and now he has a new book we want to tell you about. Scapegoated Capitalism examines the history of scapegoating generally, shows how it is perhaps inherent in human nature and demonstrates how it reveals itself today in the arguments of anti-capitalists, who blame an obviously beneficial economic system for problems that have other causes:

The scapegoating of individuals is bad enough when the accused share the blame with their accusers. But, in fact, the blaming of capitalists is more sinister still. The policies advocated and implemented by anti-capitalists do not mitigate but rather cause or worsen the problems that capitalism is accused of causing. Capitalism is therefore blamed not so much for everyone’s sins as for sins that belong to its accusers.

Readers like me who reject the accusation of ignorance and hatred often thrown at defenders of the free market will appreciate Irvine’s linkage of capitalism’s critics to the witch-hunters of old, for it is the big-government types who rely most on ignorance, fear and demonization.

Scapegoated Capitalism is available for the Kindle at Amazon.

Just a friendly reminder that we’ll be hosting a happy hour meetup of readers of this blog on Tuesday evening in NYC, starting at 6 pm (or so).

Please note that Dalrymple himself will not be there. I apologize if I gave anyone the impression that he would be.

Email webmaster@skepticaldoctor.com for the details if you’d like to join us.

In response to multiple requests, we are currently working on scheduling one in London, and more information will be coming soon.

We’re looking forward to hosting another happy hour meetup of Dalrymple readers, anyone else who reads our site, and like-minded types on Tuesday evening, December 1st in Manhattan.

We had a great time at our first such event back in July, discussing our favorite writers, swapping stories of being under intellectual siege in Gotham, and conspiring to rid the world of shallowness, rudeness and Madonna (but I repeat myself). This time we will surely solve Europe’s terrorism problem, come up with a plan to defeat Bill de Blasio, and reimpose reasonable standards of etiquette and civilization on Western society.

If you’d like to join us, please email me at webmaster@skepticaldoctor.com for the details.

Among other smart and friendly people, we’ll be joined by writer Robert Wargas, whose September Weekly Standard piece on libertarianism might make for some interesting discussion.