The Skeptical Doctor
dedicated to the work of Theodore Dalrymple
The Skeptical Doctor

Save the Planet by Outlawing Lampshades

We'll use less energy and help equalize domestic beauty.

Dalrymple at Pajamas Media

Suicide of the West

The American Conservative magazine has printed an adaptation of Dalrymple's forthcoming book The New Vichy Syndrome in their March 1 issue. I had a chance to read a galley copy of the book a few weeks ago, and this essay is a fine distillation of its arguments (it copies the book at length). We will have much more to say about the book when it is released, but I will note a few things that struck me, apart from Dalrymple's argument itself: the economy of his rhetoric, the breadth and depth of his knowledge and, as always, his easy readability.

Read the essay here

Ye olde antismoking lobby

Dalrymple's latest BMJ column introduces us to Dr. Tobias Venner (1577-1660), an early advocate of "the medicinal value of the waters of Bath, ...brushing the teeth to avoid decay and bad breath, ...bran for the prevention and treatment of constipation" and the dangers of smoking. Subscription required.

Theodore Dalrymple gets a parking ticket

Judging from the last line of this piece at The Social Affairs Unit, I'm guessing he promptly took out his frustrations on whatever was within easy reach. A sign, maybe? His own car? Seriously though, he makes a great point:
...there was something almost indecent in the haste with which I received the ticket, by comparison with what would have happened, say, if my car had been broken into and I had reported it to the police.

Ayn Rand: engineer of souls

Dalrymple is on quite the tear these days, writing one great piece after another, and it's been hard to keep up. The latest is a new essay on Ayn Rand for The New Criterion, and it already seems to be drawing a lot of attention around the web. Conservatives have long had an uneasy relationship with Rand, embracing many of her conclusions but disavowing much of her reasoning and expressing concern for the places to which that reasoning ultimately leads. Dalrymple makes many of those same criticisms and, interestingly enough, also places her "outlook and intellectual style" firmly within the Russian rather than the American tradition — and not Chekhov or Turgenev but "angry literary and social critics, pamphleteers and ideologues". He notes her megalomania, fanaticism and philosophical intolerance are "almost Soviet."

Like so many of Dalrymple's criticisms of various intellectuals, this one is all the more devastating for its fairness. He has obviously thought deeply and objectively about her work, ideas and behavior and does not hesitate to identify her admirable qualities.

A conservative can hardly discuss Rand without mentioning Whitaker Chambers's famous criticism of Atlas Shrugged in National Review in 1957. While perhaps not as historically significant as Chambers' critique, Dalrymple's essay is, to me at least, a clearer and better explanation of her intellectual shortcomings.

Read it here (free of charge)


Update: Dont' miss the discussion raging via the comments to Dalrymple's article and New Criterion editor Roger Kimball's take on it all.

Please Feel My Pain

In the New English Review Dalrymple cites Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and television talk shows, criticizing the culture of sentimentality and emotionalism, in which the professed strength of one's convictions is sufficient proof of sincerity and good will:

The cultural development in question is the systematic over-estimation of the importance not so much of emotion, as of the expression of emotion – one’s own emotion, that is. The manner with which something is said has come to be more important than what is said. Saying nothing, but with sufficient emotional vehemence or appearance of sincerity, has become the mark of the serious man. Our politicians are, in effect, psychobabblers because we are psychobabblers; not the medium, but the emotion, is the message.

The Galbraith Revival

After reading Dalrymple's criticism of John Kenneth Galbraith in this new City Journal piece, I can only (once again) marvel at the ability of eminent intellectuals, such as the famed economist, to build high levels of academic and social respectability on mountains of absurdities. Dalrymple gives us...

...Galbraith on Communism:
He was always disparaging about the danger of Communism—for example, arguing that it posed no real threat to the Third World...The main function of what Galbraith writes is to minimize the horrors of Communism, upon which he has hardly a word. Indeed, strict political control never intrudes much on his consciousness when he is in the Communist world. “I have generally avoided quoting by name my Polish...sources in this account,” he writes. “This is not because I have any great fear of compromising them. Many people...take no small pride in speaking plainly and do so without evident restraint.”
...Galbraith on China:
Time and again, he offers vignettes of the Cultural Revolution like this one: “The workers were rather proud of having confined their fighting to the morning...Sadly some windows did get broken.” Thus Galbraith discusses the greatest episode of deliberate cultural vandalism of modern history, accompanied as it was by human cruelty on a gargantuan scale.
...Galbraith on the free market:
“Having stopped the sale of all new tires,” he writes, “we had now to find some way of selling them again but only to the necessary and needful.”
...Galbraith on Galbraith:
Galbraith’s egotism and condescension toward most of the human race is evident in his admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt—or rather, in the grounds for that admiration...“I turn now to Franklin Roosevelt, the first and in many ways the greatest of those I encountered over a lifetime. And the one, more than incidentally, who accorded me the most responsibility.” I think you would have to have a pretty tough carapace of self-regard not to recognize the absurdity of this, or to have the gall to commit it to print.

Thoughts of Revolution

Writing in National Review, Dalrymple draws some conclusions on a subject of eternal interest. He finds that revolutions, while difficult to evaluate objectively, are usually fueled by a quest for power rather than freedom and have "mainly brought about disaster". He is skeptical even of the potential for an Iranian revolution to install a regime that would promote freedom. His favorite kinds of revolutions are those like Mobutu Sese Seko's in Zaire:
His “revolution” consisted of forbidding neckties and making everyone abandon his European first name in the cause of African authenticity. It otherwise largely left people untouched: It had no choice in the matter, for it was so inefficient that the transport network virtually ceased to exist. Where it did exist, the revolution set up military checkpoints, but these were not much to be feared. I remember going through one in a truck without stopping, sending the soldiers flying in all directions. I asked the driver whether this was not dangerous; would the soldiers not fire at us?

“Oh no, monsieur, they’ve sold all their bullets long ago.”

That’s the kind of African revolution I learned to like (relatively speaking), the bogus one that sells its bullets.
Read it here (purchase required)

Still Open

Writing in the City Journal, Dalrymple cites a new report showing that, in Britain, an ethnic group's economic success is mostly a function of their culture.

A man without gaiety

In the British Medical Journal, Dalrymple describes the life of Albert Isaiah Coffin (1790-1866), American MD and herbalist quack. Subscription required.

Daniel Hannan to interview Theodore Dalrymple

Earlier this week, Monday Books announced that Theodore Dalrymple will be interviewed by Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan in London on February 23 in an event that will be open to the public. Tickets are for sale on the Monday Books website here (scroll down to the bottom of the page) and include a free copy of Dalrymple's Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline. Dalrymple will also take questions from the audience.

Hannan received much attention last year for a face-to-face dressing down of Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the European Parliament. The resulting YouTube video has reached over 2.5 million hits. That's 6,500 hits for each ton of British gold that Brown (as Chancellor of the Exchequer) sold in 1999 when gold was near its record low.

Tickets are limited, so you are encouraged to buy them soon.

All profits from the event will go to the Haiti Disaster Appeal.

Lessons in Health Care from the Edinburgh Zoo

A second essay at Pajamas Media which, like the first, inspires the thought, don't give them any ideas!

I hope this becomes a regular occurrence, because after the termination last year of his column at The Spectator, Dalrymple has stopped writing this kind of short, casual and humorous piece inspired by his daily experiences.

New Dalrymple book: Profeten en Charlatans

Dalrymple has had a new collection of his essays published, this time in Dutch. Amsterdam-based publishing house Nieuw Amsterdam has published "Profeten en Charlatans: Hoe Schrijvers Ons de Wereld Laten Zien" ["Prophets and Charlatans: How Writers Show Us the World"], a collection of Dalrymple's essays of literary criticism chosen and translated by Jabik Veenbaas.Editor Pieter de Bruijn Kops was kind enough to translate a description of the book for our readers:

Profeten en charlatans, Theodore Dalrymple’s 2009 Dutch language book publication for Amsterdam-based publishing house Nieuw Amsterdam, consists of a selection of 28 essays on literary subjects. They were chosen, translated and provided with an introductory essay by Dutch philosopher, author and translator Jabik Veenbaas. This introduction is titled ‘Theodore Dalrymple en het belang van de literatuur’ [‘Theodore Dalrymple and the importance of literature’]. In it, Veenbaas gives a brief and penetrating analysis of Dalrymple’s unique style and approach in writing about writers, books and the meaning of literature.

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A Modest Proposal for Curing Back Pain

Noting a new German study that finds a link between personal indebtedness and low back pain, Dalrymple sees a way to kill two birds with one stone: LOBAPAREDEFOR.

The ailments of the Lambs

This week's installment of Dalrymple's column in the British Medical Journal, on author Charles Lamb, is a fascinating, lively and humorous read. (And what a witty Dalrymplism that is at the end!)

Read the essay (subscription required).