Over at Law & Liberty, our reasonable doctor critiques the motivation behind much of the criticism of the imprudent tax cuts proposed by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But in the eyes of most people, the fact that the rich would benefit from the tax cuts more than the poor was enough in itself to condemn them, irrespective of their outcome for their economy as a whole: that is to say, even if they were to increase general prosperity, they would still be undesirable because they would have increased inequality. 

In this week’s Takimag column, the good doctor stumbles upon some old magazines in his library and comes across an instructive piece detailing the tragic socialist experiment of the Chavez regime.

In short, several Western governments have been run by pale versions of the late Hugo Chavez, though thankfully without the six- to nine-hour harangues on television. I doubt that Mr. Biden or Ms. Truss could speak for six to nine minutes unscripted, let alone for six to nine hours, so we still have something to be grateful for. Hell is listening to Ms. Truss for longer than thirty seconds.

In the summer issue of City Journal, the skeptical doctor revisits an infamous postwar British murder case and the subsequent execution.

Now, a civilized society must put a limit to the severity of a sentence that may in practice be imposed—a threshold above which we cannot go. Someone who kills ten people cannot be punished ten times more severely than someone who kills only one, though the crime, in a sense, is considerably worse. But if the threshold for the most severe sentence is set too high, leniency throughout the system is the inevitable consequence.

In the October issue of New English Review, Theodore Dalrymple thinks back to a gypsy fortune teller from his childhood and ponders the best way to measure the probability of premonitions turning out to be true.

I remember three of her predictions for me, and I do not even remember whether she made any others. She said I would be educated, travel a lot and die at the age of eighty-four.

In last week’s Takimag, Dr. Dalrymple weighs in on a recent kerfuffle in Britain centering around an outrageous and irresponsible comment made by an NHS nurse in the heat of the moment.

But feelings can be false also, in the sense that they are indulged in for their own sake because they are pleasurable and self-reinforcing. They then become insincere and are in bad faith. Hatred is one such emotion and is often grossly out of proportion to its supposed object.

Back at The Epoch Times, the prudent doctor points out some obvious problems with President Biden’s announcement to pardon prisoners sentenced for marijuana possession.

Plea bargaining, moreover, is inherently against the rule of law, as is (in my view) parole, at least where there’s an element of administrative discretion as to whether it’s granted or not.

A British Labour MP of Bengali extraction racially insults the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is of Ghanaian descent, and our astute doctor is there to comment on the incident over at The Epoch Times. If only Britain were more diverse…

Now, however, we are plagued by what Stalin, referring to writers, called “engineers of souls” such as DiAngelo: those who will not leave us alone until all our thoughts and feelings are “correct” according to their own conceptions of what is right and proper, thus assuring themselves of a job forever, since our thoughts and feelings are never correct. They underestimate or even deny the possibility of self-control, which is the deepest enemy of the would-be purifiers of our souls.

In this week’s Takimag, a bookseller friend of the skeptical doctor experiences online censorship courtesy of the ghastly Google leviathan.

As is so often the way with impersonal messages emanating from giant and dictatorial bureaucracies, the words used have connotation but no denotation, that is to say no meaning can actually be pinned on them, though they have a penumbra of emotional blackmail: Those who criticize or otherwise annoy us are ill persons, being opposed by definition to the “best user experience.”

Once again over at City Journal, our favorite doctor comments on the British government’s decision to cut taxes instead of dealing with the deeper problems facing the country.

Beyond the correct rate of taxation, however, lie the much deeper problems of the country. For years, regardless of who was in power, government policy has been to import cheap unskilled or semi-skilled labor, while paying large numbers of people to remain economically inactive, in the process placing great strain on housing and public services through overpopulation.