Monthly Archives: December 2008

Global Warning

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Dalrymple makes an interesting new diagnosis in his latest Global Warning column at the Spectator.


Reading an account by the historian John Waller of the Dancing Plague in Alsace in 1518 recently, I could not help but notice the interesting but perhaps incomplete parallels with our own time.

Economic conditions in Strasbourg were dire in 1518 when a woman called Frau Troffea started dancing in public and continued for days on end until she was exhausted and had damaged her feet severely. Several hundred people soon joined her; the madness was collective.

Read the rest here

Nothing to be sad about

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Theodore Dalrymple’s new update to his column at the British Medical Journal discusses the accuracy with which Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths depicts life in a dosshouse.

Read the column here

$4 purchase required or $82 for one-year unlimited access to the entire website. His essays older than one year are free. See his BMJ links on the left of this page.

Harold Pinter 1930-2008

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The news that British playwright Harold Pinter has died on Christmas Eve brought to mind one of my favorite Dalrymple essays: “Reticence or Insincerity, Rattigan or Pinter” from the November 2000 issue of The New Criterion. As the title implies, Dalrymple associated Pinter with insincerity, and in speeches like this one he used Pinter as an example of the modern triumph of sentimentality over inconvenient truth (although he conceded that Pinter was “a very talented man with a great poetic gift”).

Perhaps we shouldn’t speak ill of the recently departed, but Pinter was celebrated not only as the clever entertainer he undoubtedly was but also as an important, liberal public intellectual (now a de facto requirement of all Nobel laureates in literature), and we will surely have to bear more hosannahs in his name in the coming days. As such, is it really bad form to take this opportunity to remind people of his rather shameless dishonesty?

Reticence or Insincerity, Rattigan or Pinter
The New Criterion; November 2000

$3 purchase required for the essay. You can also purchase an online subscription to the entire New Criterion website (which includes over 70 Anthony Daniels/Theodore Dalrymple essays) for only $38. Better yet, purchase a print subscription to the magazine for only a little more and get the online access for free.

Symposium: Remembering the Dissident

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Theodore Dalrymple has participated in another of Jamie Glazov’s online symposiums at FrontPageMagazine.com, this time regarding the legacy of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Glazov assembled an impressive lineup, with Dalrymple being joined by Natan Sharansky, Richard Pipes, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa and others.

Read the symposium here

In August, Dalrymple wrote this in City Journal on the death of Solzhenitsyn.

Global warning

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Dalrymple has an update to his Global Warning column wherein he visits the supermarket:


…I looked down at my own purchases: a pot of organic yogurt and the Guardian newspaper. What diagnosis would the person behind me make, if he were diagnostically inclined? Would he not jump rapidly to conclusions about my way of life and my opinions, especially as I was wearing corduroy trousers, conclusions that would nevertheless have been erroneous?

He might have been saved from error by observing the book I had with me…

Read the full column

June 2005 Speech: Our Culture, What’s Left of It

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On June 2, 2005, Theodore Dalrymple spoke at the Harvard Club in New York to celebrate the release of Our Culture, What’s Left Of It, published by Ivan R. Dee. The book is a collection of essays Dalrymple wrote for City Journal magazine, which sponsored the event. He was introduced by City Journal editor-in-chief Myron Magnet. The speech is in five parts, all of which are available via the SkepticalDoctor channel on YouTube. Part 1 is below.

In the speech, Dalrymple discusses the tendency of intellectuals to “ignore the obvious”, because they are enthralled by a theory and don’t feel the need to observe and contemplate the real world.


Education of a certain kind can actually impede, rather than enhance, understanding of the world. It is not to be thought that all education is good and leads either to enlightenment or realism.

 


A new interview by Bernard Chapin

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The writer Bernard Chapin has just posted an excellent interview with Theodore Dalrymple at PajamasMedia. Chapin has interviewed Dalrymple on at least two other occasions: in 2005 and earlier this year, both of which are available on our Speeches & Interviews page. These interviews could never be long enough for my taste, but this new one still manages to cover many interesting topics, one of which particularly caught my eye:


BC: What is the doctrine of “social inclusion” and how has it corrupted modern education?

Dr. Dalrymple: Trying to understand the concept of social inclusion is like trying to catch a cloud with a butterfly net. Roughly speaking, it means or implies that the bad outcomes for certain social groups are the result of acts of exclusion by other, more privileged groups. The excluded then suffer from poor self-esteem, which can be boosted by telling them that they are doing very well, irrespective of what they actually do. In order to compensate for their alleged exclusion, they are included by not holding them to the standards of the rest of society. Of course, this keeps them exactly where they are; if you were a Marxist, you would think that the British and American public education systems were conspiracies by the bourgeoisie to keep the poor poor.

Read the full interview

False Icons

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Dalrymple has a new essay at Standpoint Online reviewing Fidel & Che: A Revolutionary Friendship by Simon Reid-Henry. (Hat tip: Dave Lull)


There is no stronger proof of the power of marketing to overcome reality than the posthumous reputation of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. At a time when the death penalty was increasingly regarded as a barbarous relic of a bygone age, an enthusiastic mass-executioner – after only the most summary of trials – came to represent youthful rebellion. His puerile economic theories self-evidently entailed the most absolute form of tyranny, yet Guevara came to represent the free spirit itself – complete with wind through the hair – for the flower-power generation and all its progeny.

Read the full essay