A recent study on heart attack prevention strategies reached the opposite of the expected conclusion. Dalrymple comments on the danger of assumptions in medical testing at Pajamas Media:

There are few phrases more dangerous in medicine than “It stands to reason,” because what stands to reason may in fact not be a good idea, however brilliant it may once have seemed. This is because reality is always more complex than our theories about it; grey is theory, said Goethe, but green i[s] the tree of life.

Perhaps the greatest single intellectual advance in the medicine of the last century was the realization that “it stands to reason” is no reason at all; everything must be studied in the light of experience. There was a good example of this necessity in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, which studied the effect of giving patients doses of aspirin or clonidine before and after undergoing non-cardiac surgery.

America has lately been experiencing a wave of hate by the left toward holders of Christian and traditional beliefs, with legions of stories of intimidation campaigns, campus shout-downs, calls to imprison those who question the concept of man-made global warming, and the like. At the Library of Law and Liberty, Dalrymple takes aim at one aspect of this movement: the pro-gay marriage puritans…

…a spirit of puritanism of opinion is abroad. This puritanism is not puritanical in the old sense. On the contrary, it is inclined to attach itself to libertinism. But it wants to send to Coventry all those who think that the removal of restraints on conduct is not necessarily a good thing. It brands them as ipso facto bigots (as, of course, some but not all of them will be), and is prepared to punish them, so far as is possible, for holding the wrong opinions.

Thus are created what one might call microclimates of totalitarianism in which people live in fear: fear of losing their jobs, fear of social ostracism for having said or even thought the wrong thing.

This is a problem that is neither of the government’s making nor susceptible to solution by government. (Indeed, government action can only exacerbate it.) The problem lies in the human heart—in its lust for power and thirst for domination, in its pride in its own goodness.

A trip to Paris fills Dalrymple with national pride, of a sort:

The English now choose ugliness as a matter of ideology….This would bode ill for us were it not that other nations are in the process of following suit. Behind me in the queue to board the plane was a plump young woman squeezed into unsuitable clothes so hideous I thought she must be English. This impression was strengthened by the metallic-mauve coloured pins that she had had inserted into her upper lip on both sides of her mouth. Despite this stupidity, however, she was French, not English. My heart swelled with patriotic pride at our cultural influence.

Britain is awash in “work” that is in reality merely unproductive, or anti-productive, activity. We’re all aware of the meddling bureaucrat who delights in gumming up the works, but the worst kind is the true believer who doesn’t see the pointlessness of his efforts. Dalrymple says they are legion:

More to be feared even than the secret sadist, however, is the person who genuinely believes in the intrinsic value and even indispensability of his absurd task. He is as dangerous as any true believer. In my hospital, I saw many such people, scurrying like the White Rabbit in Alice from one meeting to another—meetings which medical staff were required to attend, thus diverting them from the main purpose of having medical staff in the first place. A friend of mine who had waited all day for a minor but potentially life-preserving operation was told at the last minute that his operation had been postponed because the surgeon had been called to attend a meeting. Only a credible threat by my friend of dire consequences for the hospital if the operation were not performed as planned diverted the surgeon from his pseudo- to his real work.

This piece in Dalrymple’s Salisbury Review blog, on the forced resignation of Mozilla’s CEO, offers a concise take on the left’s position on gay marriage and, I think, much else:

Henry Ford once said that you could have any colour car you liked so long as it was black. Among social liberals in America, you can have any opinion you like so long as it is theirs.

…

Freedom is slavery, diversity is uniformity and tolerance is conformity.

In City Journal Dalrymple addresses the Lancet’s call for publicly-funded bariatric surgery as a response to the increasing levels of obesity in Britain (as in so many other Western countries). In listing the reasons why personal responsibility in such matters is so often ignored, I think his third item hits on something often seen in discussions of this and similar issues:

Third, and most important, is the false and sentimental belief that, in taxing people with even partial responsibility for their downfall, you must thereby be withdrawing all sympathy from them. To tell a drug addict, for example, that he is not ill but rather is behaving foolishly or badly, is on this view to deny him understanding or assistance. This does not in the least follow, however; though the type of understanding and assistance you will give him will be different from what you would give if you regarded him as solely a victim—say, a dweller of a coastal area devastated by a tsunami.

Dalrymple writes in Pajamas Media about the controversy over several governments’ overstocking of a nearly useless anti-flu drug.

An observation, strange although common in Britain, was recently heard in news reports of a murder: the perpetrator was a talented footballer…

Also in mitigation, his counsel said, ‘He was a talented footballer. He had obtained an FA1 coaching certificate…’ Apparently, indeed, he had some kind of position at Arsenal FC.

Now how, unless football had some intrinsic, and perhaps even causative, connection to violent crime, could the fact that Kojo-Smith was a talented footballer have any bearing whatever on the case? Does the possession of footballing talent mean that someone is ipso facto less able to exercise judgment and self-control, and more likely to carry a knife and stick it in someone’s chest?

Dalrymple was recently annoyed by a letter with the leading question, “Do you care about the health of our planet?”

Frankly, the answer is that I don’t. Planets, unlike dogs, are not the kind of thing I can feel affection or concern for. My bank account occupies my mind more than the health of the planet. I am not even sure that planets can be healthy or unhealthy, any more than they can be witty or self-effacing. To call a planet healthy is to make what philosophers used to call a category mistake. This is not to say that I wish the earth any harm; on the contrary. Indeed, in a multiple-choice examination, I might even tick the box for wishing the world well rather than ill, at least if I had any reason for wanting to pass.

But of course that’s not in keeping with the zeitgeist:

…the expression of high-flown sentiment is now taken by many as the major part or even the whole of virtue. The most virtuous person is he who expresses the most all-encompassing benevolence at the highest level of abstraction. I felt like writing back to the editor of the Lancet (only he wouldn’t read it) that I disagreed with his discriminatory planetism: that I cared only for the health of the universe…

Yes, they can be. But it’s really a demand problem:

[W]hat, if anything, is to be done about the 150,000,000 Americans who feel they need to take supplements, either to grow muscular or to live forever? Where do their desires and superstitions come from? That dietary supplements are good for you is now as firmly ingrained in modern consciousness as that certain miracle-working icons could save you from various diseases was among elements of the Russian peasantry in the days of the Tsar and devastating epidemics. It seems that in the modern world everyone is skeptical except of what he should be.