The Skeptical Doctor

When Aid is No Way to Aid a Country

Steve — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:40:00 GMT

Dalrymple has a short piece at Front Page magazine about the harm caused by foreign aid to Africa. He argues that aid promotes the same perverse incentives as Western mineral extraction in Africa: control of the government becomes all-important, and national poverty becomes advantageous.

Northern Rock is wrong to subsidize Newcastle United

Clinton — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:30:00 GMT

In a new blog entry at the Social Affairs Unit, Dalrymple argues against the sponsoring of the Newcastle United football (aka, soccer) team by Northern Rock bank, which has been bailed out by taxpayers, and in the process exposes some sloppy thinking.

The expert witness, or God’s locum

Clinton — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:32:00 GMT

Dalrymple's latest column in the British Medical Journal (subscription required) introduces us to Sir Bernard Spilsbury (1877-1947), "the model of scientific infallibility" who might have nevertheless "sent many innocent — or at any rate doubtfully guilty — people to the gallows".

A Particular Welcome

Clinton — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:15:00 GMT

Read Dalrymple's latest contribution to The Social Affairs Unit to see how many problems he can find in these two lines from a Planned Parenthood job ad:

Applications are particularly welcome from candidates openly living with AIDS/HIV. IPPF is committed to equal opportunities and cultural diversity.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Clinton — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:51:00 GMT

For the second time in three months, Dalrymple takes to the pages of National Review and finds meaning and truth in an extraordinarily popular and entertaining work of fiction that is being turned into a movie. This time it's Lewis Carroll's Alice books, about which he says...

No writer ever combined such charming and instantly memorable nonsense with such matter for serious reflection, as well as such inexhaustible fodder for scholars and Ph.D. students, and it is very unlikely that any will ever do so again.

...and in which he finds many themes on which he has himself written, such as the abuse of language in the service of political correctness...

...humbler tillers of the intellectual countryside, such as journalists, will recognize Humpty Dumpty’s statement that the question of language boils down to who is to be master only too well in the activities of politically correct sub-editors, who change Mankind for Humankind, and chairman for chair or chairperson (though never hangman for hang or hangperson).

...and the ethical question of how to live...

It is obvious that Alice is a good, well-mannered, kindly little girl who, in her dreams and behind the looking-glass, enters a world in which everything is bizarre and arbitrary, as well as highly amusing. Goodness for Carroll consisted not of keeping moralistically to rules, or for that matter of breaking them, but of careful thought guiding a benevolent disposition applied to particular situations. Goodness was neither rule-bound nor without rules, but somewhere in between.

And as with the New York Daily News article posted by Steve below, this piece also contains a sentence that should probably be added to our quotes page: "How easy it is to confuse, how difficult to elucidate!"

Note: Registration is required to access the piece online, or you may of course buy the issue on your local newsstand.

Sun, sea, sensation, servants

Steve — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:09:00 GMT

Dalrymple has written again of Dubai, this time for the New Criterion, and his recent visit there raised several profound issues: on "modern man's need for sensational diversion", on the modern mentality that both worships nature and wishes to conquer it, and on the potential of investors and consumers once again to suspend disbelief Dubai's financial fantasies.

Read the essay here (purchase required)

Brooklyn babies need to learn their place: Milk bottles and beer bottles do not mix

Steve — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:07:00 GMT

The New York Daily News isn't a regular forum for Dalrymple's essays, but he had one there today, and its argument can be summed up in a line that I think deserves to be added to our Quotes page: "There is a time and a place for everything, and it isn't necessarily here and now."

Read it here

The Daniel Hannan Interview

Steve — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:37:00 GMT

On February 23 in London, MEP Daniel Hannan interviewed Theodore Dalrymple in a public event sponsored by Monday Books, the publisher of Dalrymple's two latest works, Not With a Bang But a Whimper and Second Opinion. Topics included the nature of British poverty, the National Health Service, myths of opiate addiction and the growing nomenklatura that rules Britain.

Listen here

Thanks to Dan Collins of Monday Books for recording the event and sending it to us.

Public robbery and the NHS

Steve — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:38:00 GMT

As usual, Dalrymple discusses an obscure literary figure (William Cobbett, 1763-1835) in this week's BMJ column, but he also issues some criticisms of the NHS -- unusual for his BMJ pieces.

Read it here (purchase required)

The Cover-Up Over Jon Venables is a Cowardly Disgrace

Steve — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:20:00 GMT

Dalrymple in The Daily Express...

IN KEEPING with its habitual contempt for the British public the Government is refusing to give any reasons for the recall to prison of Jon Venables, one of the killers of James Bulger.

It is only natural, therefore, that the public should suspect that the case will turn out to be yet another example of official bungling and defiance of common sense.

Continue reading...

Dalrymple on Talk Radio Europe

Steve — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:25:00 GMT

Theodore Dalrymple will be interviewed by Maurice Boland on Talk Radio Europe on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 12:15pm Central European Time (that's GMT +1). They will apparently discuss the potential parole of mass murderer Peter Sutcliffe aka the Yorkshire Ripper. Information on the show and a "Listen Now" link is located here.

Knight of the white elephant

Clinton — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:29:00 GMT

After last month criticizing the venerated Ayn Rand in the pages of the New Criterion, Dalrymple this month defends the man widely considered the worst poet in the English language, William McGonagall.

Not on literary grounds, it must be said. I admit to being ignorant of McGonagall until now, but I did actually laugh out loud in a coffeehouse today upon reading the Tay Bridge Disaster - and you will, too.

Dalrymple cautions:

Yet even as I laughed, a still, small voice — very small, and very still for the present — caused me a faint unease, the veil’d melancholy that always enters the very temple of delight....William McGonagall was a ridiculous and yet, in many ways, an admirable figure, worthy of our sympathy, compassion, and respect rather than of our disdain. If invincible delusion had not inured him to the cruel insults and practical jokes of his contemporaries, his life would have been truly tragic. But then again, were it not for that invincible delusion—that he was a theatrical and poetic genius unprecedented since the time of Shakespeare—his life would have passed in the utmost anonymity.

I find it hard to think of McGonagall as anything other than a figure of fun, but I can't imagine disliking the man.

The Ayn Rand follies

Clinton — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:54:00 GMT

This month's New Criterion carries a lengthy article on the anger generated by Dalrymple's critique of Ayn Rand in last month's edition:

As of this writing it has attracted 242 responses—and what responses they are! There are a handful of dispassionate comments, admiring or critical as the case may be, but the vast majority are wildly, hysterically vituperative.

There follows a list of reader comments proving the accuracy of this statement, and a discussion of Rand's Objectivist philosophy:

No doubt much of what we do, we do from motives of self-interest. But we might also do things for the sake of flag and country; for the love of a good woman; for the love of God; to discover a new country; to benefit a friend; to harm an enemy; to make a fortune; to spend a fortune.

Pryce-Jones on The New Vichy Syndrome

Clinton — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:03:00 GMT

The eminent David Pryce-Jones has a brief review of Dalrymple's next book "The New Vichy Syndrome" on his blog at National Review Online, saying at one point:

There's no one quite like him. He's been a doctor and worked in prisons, really coming to grips with the lower depths. Although he reports terrible things, and sometimes has a little gleam of I-told-you-so when reporting something even more terrible than what's gone before, he refuses to abandon his humane instincts and a belief that it's worth fighting for civilization even if the cause looks lost.

Pryce-Jones has written about Dalrymple before, stating in a 2006 review of "Our Culture, What's Left Of It" that "I have no hesitation mentioning [Dalrymple and Orwell] in the same breath." I've always thought it interesting - heartening, I suppose - to hear this praise from a 70-something, Eton-educated member of British aristocracy, directed at the son of immigrants of humble circumstances.

Thank You For Not Expressing Yourself

Steve — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:27:00 GMT

In this month's essay for the New English Review, Dalrymple mourns the loss of civility made possible by the internet:

...it seems to me at least possible that easy access to public self-expression tends to make people more bad-tempered and ill-mannered than they would otherwise have been. It releases people from inhibitions, and allows them to breach psychological barriers. Even wit suffers, for it is far easier to insult than to think of a really damaging, but amusing, witticism.

Read it here

The Ripper should not be allowed anywhere near parole

Steve — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:16:00 GMT

Dalrymple writes in the Times against the possibility of parole (now being considered) for Peter Sutcliffe, also known as the Yorkshire Ripper, who murdered 13 women while supposedly suffering from schizophrenia, of which he has now supposedly been cured:

The very fact that Sutcliffe wants to apply for parole speaks powerfully against him. If he had any real feeling for the enormity of what he did, even if he was not quite himself when he did it, he would be content, indeed eager, to stay in prison for the rest of his life.

The draw of dusty tomes

Steve — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:56:00 GMT

In last week's BMJ column (we're a bit behind), Dalrymple outlines the medical history of a disease from which he himself suffers: bibliomania.

Read it here (purchase required)

"Dalrymple is the William Hogarth of our age"

Clinton — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:07:00 GMT

Ed West of the Telegraph apparently attended last night's interview of Dalrymple by British MEP Daniel Hannan (organized by Monday Books), and today he writes:

Theodore Dalrymple is the William Hogarth of our age, capturing, more than any other writer, this era of intellectual cowardice and state-created poverty.

West asks why "as an intellectual he is easily ignored by the intelligentsia" and "he’s never been asked by the BBC to talk about his experiences as a prison doctor", and suggests: "probably because he would not recommend what they wanted to hear – 'more resources'."

He continues:

...just as the adjective “Hogarthian” conjures up images of gin-soaked hags and foundlings dying in the gutter, I’ve heard “Dalrymplean” used to describe both the squalor of the modern criminal classes, and the attitude – the endless excuses which criminals, having had any concept of responsibility taken away from them by the welfare system, give to excuse their wrongdoings.

...just as the Tate in 2007 held a Hogarth exhibition, which showed us the squalor of Georgian London, maybe art galleries in centuries to come will put on Dalrymple exhibitions, with examples of his work besides a realistic model of a 21st century council estate destroyed by the benefits system.

I encourage those of our readers who attended last night's event to chime in with comments. We intend to post an audio recording of the interview soon.

Update: Also see Daniel Hannan's comments here, where he says:

It’s striking that many of those who are the most relentlessly upbeat about the perfectibility of man – those who, in T S Eliot’s phrase, “dream of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good” – are in person sour and humourless. Theodore Dalrymple, by contrast, is gloomy in theory, but sunny in practice.

The Man Who Was Thursday Msigwa

Steve — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:09:00 GMT

As admirers of the writing and intellect of Dr. Anthony Daniels aka Theodore Dalrymple, we pride ourselves on our knowledge of the man's work. So imagine our surprise, to say nothing of the blow to our egos, when we discovered a book, written by him over twenty years ago, that was formerly completely unknown to us. In 1989, Daniels published a satire called Filosofa's Republic under the name Thursday Msigwa, described on the book jacket as "the pen-name of who says in a letter to the publisher that 'biographical details interfere with the proper estimate of an author's work,' and added that disclosure was in any case impolitic for him in his present country of residence." Yes, that is a blank where the name "Anthony Daniels" should be. At the time of the book's publication, Daniels was still covering African politics for the Spectator under another pseudonym, Edward Theberton, and all of this mystery was necessitated by Daniels' criticisms, both in this book and in the Spectator, of African political leaders who did not receive criticism warmly.

The "filosofa" in question here is "His Excellency The Brother-President of The United Democratic Human Mutualist Republic of Ngombia Filosofa Dr. Cicero B. Nyayaya", clearly a satire on Julius Nyerere, the President of Tanzania during much of the time that Daniels lived there and who referred to himself as mwalimu or teacher. Where Nyerere had his Arusha Declaration, Nyayaya has his Harisha Declaration. Like Nyerere, Filosofa implements a rigid political structure designed to provide control at the most granular level possible. He calls it "The Law of Eights", and it requires that "every eighth household should be represented [meaning, monitored] by a Party member", eight of whom report to a higher-ranking Party member, and so on. Also like Nyerere, Filosofa promotes a political theory ("Human Mutualism") that, while claiming to be "neither communist nor anticommunist, but simply the expression in the African context of the highest ideals of Man", nevertheless embraces all the hallmarks of communism: collectivized farming, forced equality and one-party rule.

If the internal contradictions inherent in Filosofa's ridiculously long title haven't already betrayed any claim of devotion to equality, then surely the nature of his political hierarchy does so. But while Filosofa's politics might suggest menace and hardship, what actually results is irrelevance and futility. Daniels divides the book into chapters that begin with one of Filosofa's maxims and end with a vignette from daily life in fictional Ngombia (based on Daniels' own experiences in Tanzania) that shows that maxim to be completely ineffectual against the tide of local culture. Filosofa's promises of justice are juxtaposed with scenes of backroom judicial corruption, and his calls for "a new kind of Man" are shown to be helpless against normal human vice. But Daniels isn't criticising communism alone. He also demonstrates the inability of religious missionaries (both African and European) to change people's behavior, and he therefore seems to suggest that foreign ideas of all kinds find it hard to take root in African soil.

His argument is serious, but his heart is light. Daniels clearly has great fondness for the people he met in Africa and enjoys telling these stories. Although this is officially a work of fictional storytelling (his only one), it reads much like his travel books, and to an avid reader of his work, Anthony Daniels the sincere travel writer sometimes seems to poke through the satire. This complicates the work's already complex provenance. The story is told in the first-person by a narrator who is a white, English accountant, but Daniels chose an African pseudonym. The book jacket says "Thursday Msigwa... [writes] through the eyes of a white visitor to Ngombia", so is Anthony Daniels writing as an African who is writing a fictional satire as a white Englishman?

It doesn't matter. The characters are too likeable, the stories too charming and the point made too well for the reader to care.

Ill feelings

Steve — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:08:00 GMT

This week's BMJ column discusses the family of John Middleton Murry (1888-1957), whose collective history illustrates "how the distress caused by a disease can persist for half a century".

Read it here (purchase required)