In this essay, Dalrymple reflects on Britain’s long accumulation of public debt and argues that what appears disastrous for citizens can be positively advantageous for governments. He also points out some differences between countries that impacts their degree of financial probity:

With regard to democracies that have not run up vast debts, at least not so far, I should say that they are (1) relatively small and (2) relatively homogeneous and egalitarian. It is far easier in those circumstances for politicians to be morally and intellectually honest than in countries with huge, diverse, and divided populations whose citizens’ interests are not even similar, let alone identical.

Read the full essay here.

At Taki Mag, Dalrymple examines the often-misunderstood idea of tolerance and suggests that real tolerance is not moral indifference but a capacity to make judgments without rushing to ban, punish, or ostracize: behavior that we all must guard against.

It is not only the kingdom of God that is within you, but the spirit of persecution. This spirit, which is waiting within most if not all of us to emerge when the circumstances are right, has to be controlled, damped down, by an effort of will and intellect. Law alone will not do it.

Read the full essay here.

Dalrymple has written a very personal piece at New English Review that laments the decline of printed books. He argues that, while other media can convey knowledge, reading deeply remains unmatched in its capacity to nourish the mind and spirit. And he explains his motivation for dedicating his life to reading and writing:

We are made for endeavour of one kind or another, and since the struggle for raw existence is in effect over, we are obliged to find the most meaningful endeavour we can. Instinctively, I feel that the pursuit of knowledge and understanding for its own sake is about as meaningful an endeavour as can be found.

…it is too late for me to change my now ingrained tastes. One of my few regrets on leaving this world will be that I have not read all that I would like to have read. Notwithstanding the decline of reading, and the lowering of academic standards, I still find, when I visit a good bookshop, that there is much, too much, being written that I wish I had time to read. I wish I knew more about marsupials, Barbary pirates, the philosophy of Spinoza, the history of Sicily, Japanese art, and so forth; and if I now know much more than I did when I was born, I shall still die infinitely ignorant.

Read the whole piece here.

At Quadrant, Dalrymple examines the modern idea that health or health care is a human right, a notion he regards as conceptually confused and practically problematic and which nowadays is endlessly inflated.

…we live in a world in which, increasingly, everything that is desirable becomes a human right. It used often to be claimed that healthcare was a human right, mainly because a society in which it was available to everyone is obviously preferable (at least in this respect) to one in which it is not. But we have moved on from there, become yet more generous in our allocation of rights—verbal generosity, after all, costs nothing.

Read the full essay here.

In this essay at Taki Mag, Dalrymple reflects on how easily modern society slips into confusion between truth and fabrication, using the supposed discovery of a new species of porcupine as a starting point.

Most of our knowledge has always derived from authority, of course. Unless we are historians who examine original sources, we depend for our historical knowledge on the authority of a succession of authors; and even original sources may be doubted…. But just because you can’t think of a motive for deceit doesn’t mean that it hasn’t taken place. There are people who like to deceive for its own sake—disinterested deceivers, as it were.

At Taki Mag, Dalrymple reflects on the modern collapse of filial loyalty and the curious cultural hostility toward parents that has become increasingly common in contemporary life. Drawing on Confucian ideas of filial piety, he contrasts earlier moral expectations, where respect for parents was considered a central virtue, with today’s tendency to regard parental relationships primarily through the lens of grievance, resentment, and psychological diagnosis.

I don’t know if there was ever a time when relations between parents and children were perfectly straightforward, without complication or conflict; as, for example, when children were obliged to work from the age of 4 because it was economically necessary for them to do so, as in true peasant societies. But parent-child relations have never seemed so fraught as they do nowadays.

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At The Oldie, Dalrymple analyzes the reasons for recent improvements in “the mor­tal­ity rate in the first year after a heart attack” and concludes the explanation is “mul­ti­factorial”.

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In a piece at The New Criterion, Dalrymple offers a sharp and unsparing critique of The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear, arguing that its attempt to fuse Shakespeare with modern Chinese history collapses under the weight of muddled thinking and stylistic pretension.

The conceit of the book is that King Lear casts some special light on recent Chinese history—or perhaps the other way around. But a combination of bad writing and loose thinking fails to make a case for any such illumination…  The author’s writing suffers from the professional deformation that is, alas, common in the writing of so many academics in the humanities, namely flatulence, pretension, portentousness, and obscurity, leavened by occasional resort to the demotic…

At Taki Mag, Dalrymple takes aim at the posthumous canonisation of Frank Gehry, arguing that the torrent of uncritical praise of his work confuses novelty with merit and egotism with genius.

…he could not possibly have built his buildings from his own resources; he required patrons. His real talent, his real mastery, then, was in finding them. One of the things that he, and other architects of his ilk, succeeded in doing is insinuating the idea into the minds of patrons that they, the architects, were party to an arcane but advanced form of knowledge, appreciation, and understanding that the patrons could demonstrate only by employing them—which if they failed to do would only reveal their ignorance.

Read it here