Author Archives: Steve

Homeless Sanctimony

Forced to watch the BBC news, Dalrymple notices a story on two homeless mothers (unmarried, naturally) and their children, who complain of the living conditions in a homeless shelter:

[W]hat struck me most was that the interviewer did not think to ask (or, if he did, it was rigorously edited out) how the situation in which they found themselves had arisen in the first place. It is possible, though unlikely, that the two young women had contributed absolutely nothing to their own misfortunes by, for example, making unwise decisions. It is possible, though unlikely, that they had no relatives in a position to help them, and that for them the state was the only conceivable source of social solidarity and support. But in any case, these matters did not arise; to have asked such questions would have been to blame the victims.

The Sock Fairy: A Complicated Relationship

Solve the problem, or just continue to complain about it? According to Dalrymple at Taki’s Magazine, finding a solution to life’s problems is often not as satisfying as we might suppose:

…the fact is that there is something profoundly comforting and enjoyable about complaint. It can continue indefinitely, whereas a solution occurs but once and destroys the problem forever. Once one has—as I have—reached a certain age, one does not like change, and solution to a problem means change. And change confronts one with one’s mortality.

Read it here

Redemption, Forgiveness, and the Rule of Law

Arguing for leniency toward criminals, especially those who have confessed and expressed remorse, would seem to serve the cause of compassion. But what if the crimes are as depraved as those of Myra Hindley’s?

What does it mean for someone to say, “I now realize that kidnapping and torturing to death small children is wrong, and I deeply regret having done it”? She was comparatively young at the time of the commission of her acts, no doubt, but she knew perfectly well that they were wrong: their very wrongness, in fact, is what made them attractive to her. And how long after the commission of the acts does the realization of their wrongfulness and the regret at having done them have to be before they are deemed relevant to the question of the length or severity of punishment? Suppose they come instantaneously. Do we therefore say, “Well, that’s all right then, so long as you realize that what you did is wrong and regret having done it, we shall not punish you at all”—because to do so would be pure vengefulness?

Dalrymple at the Library of Law and Liberty

Love rats: Paris’s sentimental struggle with its rodents

We missed this piece from the Spectator in September in which Dalrymple reported on the growing population of rats in Paris. (That is not a metaphor.) An effort by the city to reduce their numbers is actually being met with opposition from some quarters — the usual ones.

Rat catchers have been accused of ‘genocide’ by Parisians: pity the poor rats! They too are sentient creatures, with as much a right to live as we, even if they sometimes give us rat-bite fever and leptospirosis (and pity the poor spirochaete, the causative organism of leptospirosis, which without the rat would be reduced to mice as a reservoir). At the last count, 25,000 people have signed a petition to halt the slaughter.

Fear of rats is socially constructed, don’t you know?

Read it here

What Happened to Memoirs?

Hillary Clinton has a new memoir called What Happened, in which she explains why she thinks she lost the election to Donald Trump. At City Journal, Dalrymple quotes from an acerbic review of the book by a French intellectual. He won’t review it himself, he says, because nothing could induce him to read it.

In fact, no memoir by any modern politician would tempt me to read it, since the main characteristic of such politicians is mediocrity tempered by unbridled ambition and lust for power. Better to reread Macbeth. Hillary Clinton, after all, is Lady Macbeth to Bill Clinton’s Felix Krull, the confidence trickster.

Wards of the Court

At the Library of Law and Liberty:

The rule of law is not at all the same thing as the rule of laws, or the preeminence of law in our lives; indeed, they are almost opposite, insofar as one of the objects of the rule of law is to make the legally permissible and impermissible knowable to the citizen in advance. Where there are so many laws that even highly specialized lawyers have difficulty in keeping up with the provisions in their own area of specialism, the rule of law declines, and litigators rush in where common sense fears to pronounce. This superabundance of laws exists in many places around the world today, and needless to say it flatters the self-esteem of legislators and judges. It makes them the arbiters of our existence. It also makes the rest of us wards of the court.

He goes on to discuss a recent American court ruling that, while ostensibly a defense of doctors’ right to question their patients, seems also to open the door to future litigation due to its bad logic.

The Appeal of Inherited Power

Reacting to Deputy Labor Leader John McDonnell’s recent criticisms of hereditary peerage in the House of Lords, Dalrymple says that, at least in the modern age, he would much rather be represented by an aristocrat than by someone like Mr. McDonnell. Yes, the aristocrat might have been arrogant and out of touch in the past, but compared to the typical modern politician, the aristocrat is a model of humility.

…[He] does not feel that he has to make the world anew, all within his lifetime—or rather within his political lifetime, a period that is even shorter. He knows that the world did not begin with him and will not end with him. As the latest scion of an ancient dynasty going back centuries, he is but the temporary guardian of what he has inherited, which he has a duty to pass on. Moreover, as someone whose privileges are inherited, he knows that his power (such as it is) is fragile in the modern world. He must exercise it with care, discretion, and consideration.

Contrast this with Mr. McDonnell, should he ever reach power. He will mistake the fact that he has come to power by legitimate means for sovereignty. For him, vox populi, vox dei. And since he, or his party, will be the recipient of the most votes, albeit far from those of a majority of the electorate, he will regard himself as entitled to do all that he promised and a great deal besides. The fact that he will be sovereign for only a few years at most will only increase the urgency, one might say the fury, with which he acts: For him, it will be now or never, and it is easy to wreck an economy in a few months.

Read it here

Charlie Gard, hope, hate and us

Dalrymple’s take on the Charlie Gard case differs from those of many of his contemporaries. In a piece for the New York Daily News, he makes several compelling arguments that I had not heard elsewhere: that Charlie’s parents may forever be embittered by their false hope, that those who donated to the family would’ve saved more human life by donating elsewhere and that the angry comments directed by the public toward the doctors who denied Charlie’s parents their attempt at experimental treatment are unique to the modern world of improved communication.

The question, then, is whether, 30 years ago, all the rage expressed by these insults, threats and menaces existed but simply went unexpressed, or whether the ability to express it actually called it into existence. Does our ability now to communicate the first thing that comes into our head alter the nature of the first thing that comes into our head? After all, anger is a habit like any other and, as everyone knows (if he is honest with himself), there is a certain pleasure in being angry.

The Good Doctor

At Taki’s Magazine, Dalrymple writes again about a man who is clearly one of his greatest influences, Dr. Johnson. If you know enough about both men, it is difficult to read this without having the same thoughts about Dalrymple:

He had a peculiar gift for saying things that were both startling and obvious. As he himself put it, we have more often to be reminded than informed. Although his prose style would no doubt strike many people (if they read it) as too formal—we prefer expletives and the demotic now—he says things that are strikingly apposite a quarter of a millennium after he wrote them. On practically every page of his essays, of which he wrote several hundred, scratched out with quill pen rather than merely tapped on keyboard onto a screen, you find things that are as true and pointed today as they were when he wrote them. I doubt that much of what we write will stand the same test in a further quarter millennium; but then it is the illusion of every age that it is having the last word.

Read the piece here