In this week’s Takimag column, the skeptical doctor speaks out against the overrated personal characteristic of ambition, tells of his reliable and wise French gardener, and admonishes Nietzsche for his enthusiastic support of the decline of the Christian faith.

I grant that ambition is sometimes, or often, necessary, but it is a virtue, like bravery, that is not self-standing. To be brave in a bad cause is worse than to be cowardly in the same cause. And it hardly takes much historical knowledge to realize that ambition can be the closest ally of monstrous evil.

In the current issue of The Critic, Dr. Dalrymple recaps the downfall of the (in)famous Dr. Raoult with his much-touted but ultimately bogus COVID treatment.

Hubris is followed by nemesis, however, and boastfulness provokes enmity, even (or perhaps especially) when its contentions are justified or partly justified. It was his claim to have found a simple, cheap and effective cure to Covid-19 that made him a media star and turned his head.

In his weekly Takimag column, the curious doctor recounts to his loyal readers the wonders of nature that he regularly observes from his library on his French estate.

The cicadas were kicking up their usual racket, and I thought of La Fontaine’s fable. In it, the cicada has spent the whole summer singing, but when the north wind begins to bite has nothing left to eat. She asks her neighbor, the ant, for food, which she, the ant, has spent the summer accumulating for wintertime. “You sang all the summer, though,” replies the ant. “Very well, now you can dance.”

 

Over at The Epoch Times, the judicious doctor calls into question the recent admonition of one of the policemen involved in the Floyd case by a Minnesota judge for not showing the necessary level of remorse.

As revenge is a dish best eaten cold, so remorse is an emotion that should bring no tangible reward—such as a reduced prison sentence. Indeed, in conditions in which expressions of remorse are rewarded, not to express remorse could be taken as a sign of truthfulness and probity.

Over at Takimag, our favorite doctor informs his faithful readers of his dislike of the pug dog breed, a recent repetitive liberal house guest, and the eternal question of nature versus nurture.

This is what G.K. Chesterton meant when he said that, after Christianity, the Christian virtues would not be lost, they would run mad. With the death of God, people would replace Him in the forgiveness stakes, and in their universal but grandiose benevolence they would go round ostentatiously forgiving everyone—for what they did to others, of course.

In the August issue of New English Review, our intrepid doctor reminisces about his visit long ago to Malawi as he reviews an excellent book on its formerly long-reigning dictator, Dr. Banda.

He was an amalgam that would now be thought impossible, that did not because it could not exist. Our official multiculturalism and post-colonialism have stunted our ability, and even our willingness, to try to understand and put ourselves in the place of such a person as Dr Banda. He was an anti-colonialist and African nationalist with a genuine admiration for the culture and achievements of the colonising countries—in this case, of course, Britain.

In this week’s Takimag, the good doctor considers what it takes to be a good person, a world without hypocrisy, and our mediocre ruling elite. A delightful article to get the weekend off to a strong start.

But with the spread of the idea that goodness consists entirely of having the right ideas about the abstract questions of the day, presented in such few slogans that even the meanest of intelligences can grasp or memorize them, together with the seemingly obvious principle that the good should inherit the earth, the scene is set for a kind of prolonged coup d’état by the mediocre. And when it comes to the current crop of politicians in the Western world, many of them seem to have mediocrity inscribed on their faces.

Returning to the revamped online version of the Salisbury Review, Dr. Dalrymple summarizes the litany of avoidable missteps and misguided changes in the British health care system since the 1980s.

The behaviour of the junior doctors, reminiscent of the unionised car-workers in the 1960s and 70s who did so much to destroy the British car industry by pursuing ruinous pay claims, has severely damaged their prestige in the eyes of the public. They are no longer special; they are no different from any other group that thinks it can hold the public and the government to ransom.