Our bibliophile doctor reviews and resoundingly endorses a new book on George Orwell by D.J. Taylor over at Law & Liberty.

His Orwell is a complex man, tormented and conflicted to some degree but also, overall, admirable. The fact that Orwell was not all of a piece and contained contradictions within himself is what lends depth to his work. There may be better books about Orwell than this, but if so I do not know them.

In this week’s Takimag, Dr. Dalrymple comments on the plagiarism case of a run-of-the-mill, mediocre ‘diversity’ commissar at a major American medical university.

I rather fear, however, that Dr. Perry might be both sincere and hardworking; and no busybody is busier than the one who thinks that he or she is engaged in God’s work. A cynical careerist is far preferable, though it is possible that we have created—I almost said built—a culture in which true belief and ruthless careerism are happily conjoined.

In last week’s Takimag, the good doctor weighs the pros and cons of keeping up with current affairs—over which he has no control—and what to have for lunch—over which he has vastly more influence.

For all I know, a terrible epidemic may be raging in some corner of the world, killing multitudes; but why should ignorance not be bliss, where knowledge will make no difference?

In the April issue of The Critic, the critical doctor ridicules yet another poorly written and nonsensical article from the chief ‘literary critic’ of a major British newspaper. How far we have fallen…

It is the kind of adolescent tripe that passes these days for thought: probably the author imbibed it at university. Of course art may be disturbing, controversial and the rest, but that is not its point.

Over at Law & Liberty, the skeptical doctor comments on a review of a new book that attempts to justify placing stringent limitations on “extreme wealth.”

In a sense, of course, we already have equality of opportunity. There are now no laws in any Western country to prevent anyone from pursuing any career merely by virtue of his or her birth or social origins, though increasingly we seem to be entering a semi-Stalinist world in which admission to certain positions or institutions is to be biassed in favour, and therefore also against, cherished or disfavoured social groups.

Over at The Epoch Times, our favorite doctor ridicules the latest leftist gobbledygook coming from one of the major centers of American progressivism.

But the root cause of crime is easy to discern, at least in the sense of uncovering its necessary condition: that is to say, the decision to commit it. In Western jurisprudence, where there is no mens rea (guilty mind) there is no crime.

In his weekly Takimag column, our pet-friendly doctor dwells on the appearance and life of his cleaning lady’s pug before pondering his own good fortune.

In fact, this is the central mystery of human existence: how we become what we are, for no inventory of our genetic inheritance and environmental circumstances quite accounts for it. Where human beings are concerned, there is always an unbridgeable gap between what is to be explained and the explanation offered, and I hope that there always will be: For total knowledge would lead to total power, and total power to total oppression.

Over at Quadrant, Theodore Dalrymple considers criminality, the increasing leniency of most Western justice systems, and the effect of crime on its victims.

Leniency is compassionate, severity cruel: such at any rate is the presumption of the intellectual middle classes, who, perhaps feeling guilty at their own good fortune, often inherited, by comparison with the classes from which criminals are usually drawn, find in making excuses for the latter, and in proposing lenient treatment of them, a way of demonstrating their generosity of spirit.