The astounded doctor points to yet another blatant example of the corruption of science due to the infiltration of the quasi-official, progressive, Marxist-tinged leftist ideology of the day.

The underlying implication of the article is that science is tainted by its historical, economic, and sociological origins and that there’s no such thing as disinterested inquiry into truth, that is to say, curiosity or love of truth about the world for its own sake, and that everything is, at base, political. The authors project their own obsessions onto the world.

In this week’s Takimag column, the good doctor attempts to analyze the possible motivations of the recent Monterey Park, CA shooter, and concedes the futility of such a psychological exercise.

In everyday life, we often ascribe motives to people that they do not ascribe to themselves. We say that the real reasons that they do what they do are very different from the reasons that they themselves give for their conduct, and we do not necessarily assume that the difference between the reasons that we and they ascribe are because they are lying. On the contrary, we think that we know their reasons better than they know them themselves. To that extent, we are all psychoanalysts.

Over at Law & Liberty, Dr. Dalrymple once gain admonishes the untruthful and dangerous propagators of the radical, disordered trans ideology.

Pity and compassion, formerly Christian virtues, are the virtues that run wild in the modern social liberal’s mind. Indeed, one might almost say that he has become addicted to them, for they are what give meaning and purpose to his life. He is ever on the lookout for new worlds not to conquer, but to pity.

In his Takimag column, the philosophical doctor gazes at the stars from his country chateau in France and considers the consequences on his perception of his own significance.

On the other hand, not being able to look up at the stars, thereby being made aware of how tiny we are, might conduce to self-importance and small-mindedness. Our own affairs then grow in significance and occupy the totality of our minds. We lose the habit, and therefore the ability, to judge the size of our concerns with anything else. We have no sense of the order of things, especially if, at the same time, we do not study history; and minor inconveniences then become for us tragedies of the first magnitude. Thus we become egotistical, self-obsessed, ill-tempered, self-absorbed, and trivial-minded.

Over at The Epoch Times, our disbelieving doctor cites an absurd Canadian survey to illustrate the danger of the modern Western intellectual ideologue.

The sad fact is that, as George Orwell once remarked, it’s necessary to have a higher level of education than average to believe in a certain type of absurdity. This is even more the case today when so much of our education seems to fall into two stages: indoctrination by others followed by auto-indoctrination.

In last week’s Takimag, the skeptical doctor considers whether it is worse to be justly or unjustly accused after a heated parking argument in his neighborhood.

It is much easier, and more fun, to denounce bad behavior than to behave well. Denunciation brings its pleasures, among which is the discomfiture, or worse, of the person or persons denounced. We love to imagine the squirming of someone under the lash, or as a consequence of our words. And all this in the name of righteousness! A double delight.

In the February issue of New Criterion, our favorite doctor has the unenviable task of reviewing a book written by a committed Venezuelan Marxist on the literary style of Karl Marx.

In his short book Marx’s Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and Marxist Ludovico Silva, who died in 1988 before the socialist experiment in his country got underway and reduced it to its current misery, examines Marx’s writings from the literary point of view and judges them superlative in every way.

In the February issue of New English Review, our mournful doctor reflects on the passing of former colleagues, and one particularly exemplary former boss back in his Rhodesian days.

Events has also taught us another lesson, a potentially dangerous one for a consumer society that requires for its functioning the constant renewal of desire: namely that a great deal of what we covet, desire or think necessary for our happiness is of very marginal or no importance at all to our well-being. But this, too, is a lesson that is likely to be soon forgotten: for if we had truly understood it, we should not have needed to be taught it in the first place.

Over at Quadrant, Theodore Dalrymple considers the great cultural accomplishments of European civilization against the backdrop of recent obnoxious acts of green radicals and SJW extremists.

Suppose that mankind had always applied its efforts strictly according to the most pressing needs of the time, that is to say according to the values of the contemporary equivalents of those who stick themselves to the walls of art galleries, what of value would it ever have bequeathed to subsequent generations?