In his Takimag column, the good doctor gets a haircut at a cash-only barbershop, goes in search of change for a 50 euro note, winds up in a bookstore, and ends up reading a polemic against Islamism. Just another morning out and about for our intrepid doctor.

I cannot say that I look forward greatly to the time when every purchase we make is traceable by them, which is to say the authorities, who will make use of the information in any way they please. Among other things, they will be able to compare our expenditure with our income, and since they think that all money really belongs to them, and any left to us is by their grace and favor, they will be able to tighten their control over us.

Over at The Epoch Times, the dubious doctor highlights the devious motivation(s) behind the Scottish nationalist leader’s support for a radical, contradictory, and absurd gender bill, which is opposed by the majority of her countrymen.

Therefore, she tries to square the ideological circle by means of the transgender issue. By making it easier for youngsters to change gender, she’s proclaiming her credentials as a progressive, though what progressives think they’re progressing to always remains unexplained. Perhaps Gomorrah.

In this week’s Takimag column, the pessimistic doctor picks up a magazine filled with articles on Lebanon and comes to the stunning conclusion that our once glorious, but slowly fading Western world is on the road to Lebanonization.

No analogies are exact, but Western societies seem to be fracturing into various confessional communities each of which, like the Maronites, Druzes, Shiites, Sunni, and others, claims its share of the politico-economic spoils. They struggle like worms or grubs in the tins in which anglers keep their bait, while an unchanging elite preside, or at least glide, godlike, over the whole. In the meantime, public administration deteriorates, infrastructure rots, and inflation rockets.

In last week’s Takimag, the philosophical doctor ponders the purpose-seeking nature of man, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, and the appeal of conspiracy theories—all stemming from misplacing his credit card.

Yet such is the nature of the human mind that even the firmest believer in the meaninglessness of existence finds purpose difficult to eliminate from his thoughts. If you read books by strict Darwinists, for example, you will frequently find locutions such as “Evolution did this” or “Evolution decreed that,” as if Evolution were a being with a mind and purpose of its own. The question remains, of course, whether we impose purpose on the world (by which I mean all that exists) because of our psychological makeup or whether purpose is genuinely immanent in the world. I incline to the former view, but I would not go to the stake for it.

Theodore Dalrymple pays his respects to the famed journalist and historian, Paul Johnson, who passed away two days ago. Requiescat in pace.

It is customary to say of remarkable men that we shall not see their like again. Whatever may be the case with other remarkable men, this is likely to be true of Paul Johnson. It is unlikely that anyone will tackle so huge a range of subjects again with such knowledge and verve.

Over at The Epoch Times, Dr. Dalrymple reviews the case of a retracted paper from an academic journal of psychology dealing with the effects of abortion on women.

We live in an age of suspicion to a degree that I don’t remember from my youth—though I admit that my memory is fallible, and I may be mistaken in this. Perhaps we are no more suspicious of the motives of those with whom we disagree than ever we were, and we always thought that those who disagreed with us were not merely wrong, but evil.

Our astute doctor kicks off A.D. 2023 with a Takimag article pointing out the recent antics of the absurd, politically-correct Stanford language police. Apparently, the woke ideologues rarely ever sleep nowadays.

Stanford University has published, to much-deserved derision, a kind of index of prohibited words, that is to say words that could possibly cause anyone, even animals, distress. Of course, if you treat people as eggshells, eggshells is what they will become, especially if they derive some kind of benefit, financial or other, from their fragility.