Over at Quadrant, our critical doctor calls out the hypocritical and self-righteous protesters of the annual Australia Day celebration.

Looking recently at a picture of a demonstration against the celebration of Australia Day, I could not help but notice a person of Aboriginal descent dressed in that traditional item of costume, the T-shirt, employing that equally traditional instrument, the megaphone.

Our dubious doctor reflects on the mass protests and rioting in France over the raising of the retirement age by presidential diktat in this week’s Takimag article.

Civilization is a veneer, it is often said, as is the facing of a building. But the facing of a building is what can make the difference between a beautiful and a hideous construction. The cult of authenticity, or truth to materials and underlying structure, that has been assiduously promoted by driveling modern architectural theorists has led to the visual nightmare that is most modern cities. Destruction is always authentic, because it appeals to a kind of joy that is waiting patiently to emerge from every human breast, or at least from many of them.

In the April issue of The Critic, the skeptical doctor critiques a provocatively worded Daily Telegraph headline relating to the appointment of the new UK Netflix content commissar.

The consequence of persuading people that others decide for them is that they are provided in advance with an excuse for their own bad choices, because they come to believe that they make no choices at all.

The good doctor makes his return to the Daily Mail as he lambastes junior doctors at the NHS for going on strike to the detriment of British patients.

Doctors ought not to go on strike. This principle is so fundamental that it should need no discussion.

By striking for four days this week, junior doctors reveal their greed and irresponsibility because they are prepared to put their own interests above those of their patients.

In his Takimag column, Dr. Dalrymple asks some no-nonsense questions on the recent European Union edict to phase out gas-fueled cars by 2035 before tackling the thorny issue of bank failures.

These days, everybody—by which I mean every person who considers himself intelligent and educated—must have an opinion about everything. It would be socially irresponsible, even antisocial, not to be able to opine on each of the thousand burning questions of the day. The natural result is that opinion comes before its own justification, and most intellectual activity consists of finding reasons for what one already thinks. Perhaps it was ever thus.

In the March issue of The Critic, our favorite doctor takes issue with the newest inane British police slogan meant to reassure an increasingly doubtful general public.

We would like to wish all of our readers a happy and blessed Easter.

See it, say it, sorted: what does “sorted” mean in the context of the British police? If the experience of countless millions is anything to go by, it means “sorted” as far as the police are concerned, that is to say an incident is given, often somewhat reluctantly, a crime number. 

Over at The Epoch Times, the good doctor warns us of the latest politically correct, leftist censoring of a deceased writer’s books—this time the Woke commissars have come for Dame Agatha Christie’s oeuvre.

This precludes the absurd, but also sinister, retrospective editing of books such as those that Roald Dahl wrote for children, and now Agatha Christie’s detective stories—all in the name of sensitivity to people’s feelings, but in reality to exercise power and control over the population’s thoughts in the best Stalinist manner.

In the April edition of New English Review, our critical doctor reviews a book on an 18th-century English architect, while considering the uglification of much of modern global culture.

Lack of elegance to the point of ugliness has its own virtues: that is to say, its political virtues, which these days are the only virtues that count. Ugliness is democratic, or at least demotic, because it is so easy to achieve and is within the reach of everyone. Indeed, in a universe in which the second law of thermodynamics reigns, the slide to ugliness is the natural tendency of things, while beauty demands constant maintenance and a perpetual struggle against dissolution. Moreover, ugliness is cheap, but beauty tends to be expensive, or at least time-consuming.

In this week’s Takimag, the grateful doctor reminds himself—and his readers—of the need to occasionally look around and be thankful for the life that he has been given.

It is difficult—impossible would probably be a more accurate way of putting it—to be always counting one’s blessings, however great they might be. Nevertheless, it is important to try to do so at least intermittently, or else one would lose sight of them altogether and give in to self-pity, one of the few emotions that can, and often does, last a lifetime.