Theodore Dalrymple [257 titles]

1. The Galbraith Revival
   The aristocratic economist’s big-government ideas are back in vogue.
   Winter 2010
2. Still Open
   In Britain, an ethnic group’s social mobility depends on its own culture, not government largesse.
   29 January 2010
3. Haiti’s Apocalypse
   This week’s earthquake adds a nightmarish chapter to a tragic history.
   15 January 2010
4. The Architect as Totalitarian
   Le Corbusier’s baleful influence
   Autumn 2009
5. Intrusions
   In Britain, private arrangements are less and less private.
   14 October 2009
6. It’s Only Anti-Social
   In Britain, the seriousness of an offense depends on who the victim is.
   1 October 2009
7. Inflation’s Moral Hazard
   An age of loose money not only destroys savings; it corrodes character.
   Summer 2009
8. Modernists in Medieval Clothing
   Kenan Malik traces Islamic terror to twentieth-century influences.
   16 July 2009
9. A Modern Witch Trial
   Racism: the charge against which there is no defense
   Spring 2009
10. Between Experience and Reflection
    Paul Hollander anatomizes ideology, evil, and human contradiction.
    27 April 2009
11. The Rosenbergs, Always
    Liberals remain soft on Communism.
    9 April 2009
12. The Two Frances
    One a bourgeois paradise; the other, an urban fear zone
    7 April 2009
13. Slip of a Lip
    In Britain, people’s words show their acceptance of everyday violence.
    5 March 2009
14. The Persistence of Ideology
    Grand ideas still drive history.
    Winter 2009
15. When Hooligans Bach Down
    Strike up Johann Sebastian and watch them scatter.
    29 January 2009
16. Riders or Citizens?
    Multinational passengers on a French train hold little in common.
    27 January 2009
17. Reading the Signs
    Gestural politics and disturbing reality at a Paris Metro stop
    6 January 2009
18. No Country for Young Children
    More horrific tales of child abuse from Britain
    4 December 2008
19. The Quivering Upper Lip
    The British character: from self-restraint to self-indulgence
    Autumn 2008
20. Pot, Meet Kettle
    Vulgarity is for rightists, say vulgarians on the left.
    19 November 2008
21. Slouching Toward Fanaticism
    Passionate intensity, but little rationality, in the anti-immunization movement
    14 November 2008
22. Careful What You Wish For
    Two novelists portray the allure—and limitations—of liberation.
    24 October 2008
23. Protect the Burglars of Bromsgrove!
    A British town puts thieves’ safety first.
    20 October 2008
24. Childhood’s End
    Britain, land of bleak houses and low expectations
    Summer 2008
25. Seer of Evil
    Alexander Solzhenitsyn rendered illusion not just stupid, but wicked.
    13 August 2008
26. La Cité, C’est Moi
    Vainglorious French architects set out to destroy Paris.
    22 July 2008
27. Grading on a Curse
    British students get marks for obscenity.
    11 July 2008
28. Europe’s Unhappy Union
    Political elites continue to push unification against their constituents’ wishes.
    18 June 2008
29. An “Essential Quality”
    A French court recognizes virginity—or lack thereof—as grounds for annulment.
    5 June 2008
30. A Confusion of Tongues
    Why Britain struggles to assimilate immigrants
    Spring 2008
31. No Contrition, No Penalty
    Britain barely punishes even the most psychopathic behavior.
    8 April 2008
32. Delusions of Virtue
    We should hope Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia tale was a lie—and not a fantasy.
    3 April 2008
33. Morality and Spitzer
    The governor’s fall is not an argument for de-moralizing social policy.
    14 March 2008
34. The Marriage of Reason and Nightmare
    Novelist J. G. Ballard exposes the fragility of the affluent society.
    Winter 2008
35. Accommodating Islamic Law?
    Archbishop Rowan Williams foolishly rolls out the red carpet for British sharia.
    11 February 2008
36. King’s Dream, His Nightmare
    An American professor rejects nonviolence for blacks.
    22 January 2008
37. Mind Forg’d Manacles
    The Left’s belief in the helplessness of the poor is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    3 January 2008
38. Separation Anxiety
    Divorcees are bad for the environment. Do environmentalists care?
    27 December 2007
39. No Security
    Britain is failing in its most basic duty to its citizens.
    20 November 2007
40. The Problem With Leniency
    France’s early release of Bernard Cantat sends the wrong message.
    6 November 2007
41. What the New Atheists Don’t See
    To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.
    Autumn 2007
42. Crime and Elite Stupidity
    For the French paper of record, criminals are the real victims.
    19 October 2007
43. Cameras, Crooks, and Deterrence
    Constant surveillance seems to have had little effect on Britain’s sky-high crime.
    16 October 2007
44. Islam, the Marxism of Our Time
    Some troubling signs in Europe
    17 September 2007
45. Time Out Londonistan
    A modest proposal, or a radical plot?
    Summer 2007
46. How Societies Commit Suicide
    Scots and Italians surrender to Islam.
    17 August 2007
47. Thanks for the Immunity
    Maurice Hilleman was one of the twentieth century’s unsung heroes.
    20 July 2007
48. Delusions of Honesty
    Tony Blair’s domestic legacy: corruption and the erosion of liberty
    Summer 2007
49. Breaking Away
    An ex-Islamist tells his story.
    19 June 2007
50. Avanti, Dr. Kevorkian!
    There may be an overseas market for the doctor’s services.
    12 June 2007
51. The British Way of Murder
    Surveillance won’t guarantee good behavior.
    9 April 2007
52. Engineering Souls
    The British tolerance police seek to remake language and the family.
    Spring 2007
53. A Drinker of Infinity
    Arthur Koestler’s life and work embodied the existential dilemmas of our age.
    Spring 2007
54. Leveling Britain
    Mediocrity on the march
    22 March 2007
55. Modern Predestination
    The dangerous notion that misconduct is genetic
    6 February 2007
56. The Cost of Frivolity
    Is a national culture of pop, fashion, and gambling enough to resist our enemies?
    1 February 2007
57. Sensitivity Lesson
    You better watch what you say in today’s Britain.
    19 January 2007
58. Global Runaround
    The modern world isn’t always more efficient.
    6 January 2007
59. Dhimming the Light
    Will England’s libraries submit to sharia?
    Winter 2007
60. Rewarding Bad Behavior
    The British lead the way.
    Winter 2007
61. The Real Meaning of Barbarism
    England’s penal system isn’t punitive enough.
    Winter 2007
62. How Not to Do It
    Nothing works in the omnicompetent state.
    Winter 2007
63. The Eternal Present
    Cultural change, not necessarily for the better, shows up even in English rural churchyards.
    Winter 2007
64. Do Iraqis Have Free Will?
    Not according to liberals.
    18 December 2006
65. Fear of the Invisible
    Epidemiologist John Snow made cities safer.
    7 December 2006
66. A Man Out of Time
    A life of poet R. S. Thomas entertains and illumines.
    6 November 2006
67. The Gift of Language
    No, Dr. Pinker, it’s not just from nature.
    Autumn 2006
68. Surreal London
    There are 1,200 stabbings and $1 million houses.
    Autumn 2006
69. Talking Turkey
    The E.U. aspirant needs free-speech lessons.
    Autumn 2006
70. What Makes Doctor Johnson Great?
    His character illuminates every word he wrote.
    Autumn 2006
71. The Avant-Garde of the Apocalypse
    The Dutch and their Muslims
    25 October 2006
72. Are Belgian Women Endangered?
    For now, only if they’re Muslim.
    19 September 2006
73. “Treating” Drug Abuse
    If you can bribe drug abusers to stay off drugs, doesn’t that mean they can quit anytime?
    25 August 2006
74. Vox Populi
    Were Britons unreasonable to refuse to fly with Muslims?
    24 August 2006
75. A Little Social Experiment
    On a London street, “social” housing encourages antisocial egotism.
    10 August 2006
76. Dependency as Independence?
    The teen mum’s confused choice
    3 August 2006
77. Subsidized Stupidity
    Rather than elevate the culture, the BBC degrades it—at public expense.
    21 July 2006
78. Power to the Pedophiles
    The real danger of a Dutch court’s loony decision
    19 July 2006
79. Hobbesian Soccer
    To European louts, Zidane’s head-butt was an honorable act.
    13 July 2006
80. The Terrorists Among Us
    It’s not just Islam, but the tension between Islam and Western modernity, that makes them tick.
    Summer 2006
81. Crime and Indulgence
    In today’s Britain, only the lawful fear the law.
    Summer 2006
82. Real Crime, Fake Justice
    A scathing, politically incorrect book by an ex-probation officer tells some harsh truths.
    Summer 2006
83. All or Nothing
    The quest for a moderate Islam may be futile.
    4 June 2006
84. Fashionable Guerrillas
    For the Left, noble revolutionaries are always in style.
    23 May 2006
85. Growing Up British
    The sordid is all too typical.
    28 April 2006
86. The Murderer Next Door
    The limits of sociobiology
    24 April 2006
87. Greek or Turk?
    Bruce Clark’s exploration of a conflicted history raises profound questions of politics and national identity.
    4 April 2006
88. Anti-Semitism Without Anti-Semites
    Britain’s leading paper omits a key detail about attacks on French Jews.
    Spring 2006
89. It’s This Bad
    Returning briefly to England from France for a speaking engagement, I bought three of the major dailies to catch up on the latest developments in my native land. The impression they gave was of a country in the grip of a thoroughgoing moral frivolity. In a strange inversion of proper priorities, important matters are taken lightly and trivial ones taken seriously.
    Spring 2006
90. Vanishing Decencies
    Strolling with my dog down the road in the village in North Wales where I have been staying for the last month, I passed a small boy aged about six, dressed in a green school uniform, who was walking on the top of a stone wall, his hands outstretched to form airplane wings. His mother was behind him, watching.
    Spring 2006
91. Vive l’Inégalité
    Privileged French students demonstrate to preserve their entitlement.
    17 March 2006
92. Profumo After the Affair
    Remembered for the scandal that bears his name, John Profumo died an honorable man.
    15 March 2006
93. British Freedom and Muslim Discipline
    The real plight of Mrs. Blair’s clients
    13 March 2006
94. Red Ken, the Odious
    The latest controversy surrounding London’s left-wing mayor reflects discredit on British society.
    9 March 2006
95. Why New Vaccines Are Scarce
    Blame the tort lawyers, argues Paul Offit’s important new book.
    6 March 2006
96. Viva Voltaire
    In the cartoon controversy, it’s the French who’ve been courageous, the Americans and British spineless.
    10 February 2006
97. No Beheadings, Please, We’re British.
    Appeasing Muslim extremists means surrendering Western liberties.
    6 February 2006
98. France’s New Serfdom
    Après statism, le déluge?
    30 January 2006
99. Less Liberté Means Less Egalité
    Economic liberty undercuts prejudice—not that the French notice.
    Winter 2006
100. Dangerous History
     In Europe, the past continues to haunt the present.
     Winter 2006
101. The Empty Fanatic
     The Belgian suicide bomber’s embrace of Islamic terror may not be so hard to understand.
     Winter 2006
102. A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece
     When, as a medical student, I emerged from the cinema having watched Stanley Kubrick's controversial film of A Clockwork Orange, I was astonished and horrified to see a group of young men outside dressed up as droogs, the story's adolescent thugs who delighted in what they called 'ultra-violence.'
     Winter 2006
103. Autos-da-fé
     Driving through France as the riots continued, I found myself struck by the atmosphere not so much of crisis as of indifference. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind: life in the countryside and the center of towns and cities went on as if nothing untoward were happening nearby.
     Winter 2006
104. Strange Hero-Worship
     The death of a dissolute soccer star sends England into a frenzy of ersatz grief.
     6 December 2005
105. Drug Quandaries
     Dutch officials don’t know what to do about Holland’s drug culture.
     21 November 2005
106. The Expense of Spirit
     A lesbian’s sperm donor is hoist with his own petard.
     25 October 2005
107. Wrapping Islam in Europe’s Mantle
     An artist asks: Should Europe want Turkey; should Turkey want Europe?
     24 October 2005
108. The Suicide Bombers Among Us
     The 7/7 solution to an insoluble conflict
     Autumn 2005
109. Truth vs. Theory
     There are two William Shakespeares. The first is the man born in Stratford, who never seemed to spell his name the same way twice, who was deeply interested in minor financial transactions and the accumulation of property, and who left his wife his second-best bed; the other is the man who left the world the greatest literary legacy ever known.
     Autumn 2005
110. Law Isn’t Enough
     Recently in London a correspondent of a left-liberal Dutch newspaper interviewed me, a decent, civilized sort--one of us, in short. I am sure that he brought up his children to say please and thank you, probably in several languages.
     Autumn 2005
111. You Must Be Healthy
     For British health officials, liberty doesn’t count.
     20 September 2005
112. Further Feminist Foolishness
     A famous writer sees little difference between British women 50 years ago and Muslim women today.
     29 August 2005
113. Ethical Pornographers?
     Two Norwegians’ perverse campaign to save the rain forests.
     26 August 2005
114. The Triumph of Reason?
     Why bad theories never die
     27 July 2005
115. P*ss Off, Copper
     Why don’t we do it in the road?
     26 July 2005
116. Mixed-up Malaysia
     In this modernizing nation, harsh Islamic laws and loosening mores uneasily coexist.
     21 July 2005
117. Ibsen and His Discontents
     A family, Dr. Johnson once wrote, is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.
     Summer 2005
118. Colbert vs. Smith?
     Britain and France aren't so different when it comes to the role of the state.
     Summer 2005
119. In the Asylum
     The Victorian lunatic asylums of my city were magnificent, from the purely architectural point of view. Municipal pride, manifested by artistic embellishment without utilitarian purpose, shone out from them.
     Summer 2005
120. Flower of Evil?
     The last time I was at Otopeni Airport in Bucharest, I was questioned by the Securitate while they searched my baggage. Ceausescu had only about a month of absolute power to go, but a pall of fear, almost physical in its thickness, still suffocated the country.
     Summer 2005
121. Missing the Point
     Banning sharp kitchen knives won’t cut Britain’s violent crime.
     2 June 2005
122. Thomas Friedman Mismeasures Tony Blair
     The prime minister is a poor model for U.S. Democrats
     3 May 2005
123. Squaring Circles
     The French can still reason their way to falsehood.
     29 April 2005
124. Blair’s Banana Republic?
     A new Labour Party scheme to allow voting by mail is a recipe for corruption.
     19 April 2005
125. High and Low
     Calcutta is the most literary city in India. The Bengalis have long prided themselves on being in the country’s artistic and intellectual vanguard--which explains, perhaps, why West Bengal has a Marxist government and why Calcutta, until recently, has lagged at the rear of the economic transformation of India’s cities.
     Spring 2005
126. The Roads to Serfdom
     People in Britain who lived through World War II do not remember it with anything like the horror one might have expected. In fact, they often remember it as the best time of their lives.
     Spring 2005
127. Welfare-to-Work’s New Thrust
     Germany looks to the oldest profession to get people off the dole.
     3 February 2005
128. Britain’s Sham Unemployment Drop
     The U.K. goes further down the road to serfdom.
     28 January 2005
129. Sham Diversity
     Jamaican homosexuals and the limits of liberal tolerance.
     19 January 2005
130. Trying to Offend
     A little common sense would have eased a conflict between free expression and community sensitivities.
     5 January 2005
131. Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
     A criminologist spins numbers—and ignores the reality of crime.
     Winter 2005
132. The Specters Haunting Dresden
     The foundations of Hitler's bunker were uncovered during the building frenzy in Berlin that followed the reunification of Germany. An anguished debate ensued about what to do with the site, for in Germany both memory and amnesia are dangerous, each with its moral hazards. To mark the bunker's site might turn it into a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, resurgent in the East; not to mark it might be regarded as an attempt to deny the past. In the end, anonymous burial was deemed the better, which is to say the safer, option.
     Winter 2005
133. A Murderess’s Tale
     It is a fiction--a socially necessary one, perhaps, but a fiction nonetheless--that all murderers are created equal. They are not. Though murder is the worst crime, murderers are not necessarily the worst criminals. In fact, contact with many of them has taught me that it is possible to abominate the crime without always abominating the criminal.
     Winter 2005
134. Why Theo Van Gogh Was Murdered
     The filmmaker focused on the shameful abuse of Muslim women by Muslim men in Europe.
     15 November 2004
135. The Sob Factor
     Quiet grief and private dignity are now things of the past.
     11 November 2004
136. Les intellos Speak
     For French elites, George W. Bush’s re-election signals the start of fascism in America.
     10 November 2004
137. Torn Jeans
     The politics of a fashion statement
     Autumn 2004
138. Inclusive Failure
     Seeking equality, England dumbs down its schools, to nobody's benefit.
     Autumn 2004
139. The Frivolity of Evil
     When prisoners are released from prison, they often say that they have paid their debt to society. This is absurd, of course: crime is not a matter of double-entry bookkeeping.
     Autumn 2004
140. The Prince of Poisoners
     I recently traveled to Stafford, one of the many English market towns that used to be beautiful. A few years of bureaucratic town planning, however, have destroyed centuries of harmonious construction. Ceausescu could hardly have done worse.
     Autumn 2004
141. Kafka’s Victory
     Add the EU to the welfare state, and simple problems become insoluble.
     18 October 2004
142. Jihad Chic
     Over the suicide belt, it’s a mixed fashion statement.
     13 September 2004
143. Who Needs Parents?
     Britain’s latest effort to undermine the family
     12 August 2004
144. Leftist of Privilege
     How the press loves a moneyed radical!
     20 July 2004
145. Curing the Soul
     Alcoholism is a vice, not a fate.
     15 July 2004
146. Selective Memory
     For British elites, the distant past excuses the bad behavior of the present.
     6 July 2004
147. Multiculturalism Starts Losing Its Luster
     Multiculturalism rests on the supposition—or better, the dishonest pretense—that all cultures are equal and that no fundamental conflict can arise between the customs, mores, and philosophical outlooks of two different cultures.
     Summer 2004
148. Discontent in Paradise
     If an urban paradise exists, it surely must be San Gimignano, the Tuscan hill town whose medieval stone towers look from a distance like a condottiere’s Manhattan.
     Summer 2004
149. Clinton Psychobabble
     The former president feels his own pain.
     Summer 2004
150. Addicted to Self
     What would illegal drug users give up to fight terror?
     28 June 2004
151. London’s Bonfire of the Vanities
     Much of the Saatchi Collection goes up in smoke.
     28 May 2004
152. When Islam Breaks Down
     What the West can learn from the Muslim youths who throng my city’s prisons.
     Spring 2004
153. Victimhood Equals Heroism
     A competition to erect a new statue says a lot about today’s England.
     Spring 2004
154. Who Killed Childhood?
     There is nothing so absurd, wrote Macaulay in the middle of the nineteenth century, as the spectacle of the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality; but now the spectacle is sinister as well as absurd.
     Spring 2004
155. Lo, the Poor Terrorist
     For some on the Left, purported bigotry against Muslims explains Islamist terror.
     20 January 2004
156. A Right to Trashy TV
     A new proposal threatens to sink British social policy to another new low.
     8 January 2004
157. The Case for Cannibalism
     If everything is permissible between consenting adults, why not?
     5 January 2004
158. A Neglected Genius
     On February 22, 1942, two British nationals committed suicide by an overdose of barbiturates in their house in Petropolis, Brazil.
     Winter 2004
159. Reality Leaves Satire Behind
     Public affairs,' Doctor Johnson once told Boswell, 'vex no man.' As proof, he said that he had never eaten or slept less well because of any political turbulence.
     Winter 2004
160. Sex and the Shakespeare Reader
     Autumn 2003
161. The Multi-Culti Barbarian
     Has multicultural indoctrination made us less sensitive to the mores of different societies?
     9 September 2003
162. The Europe of Yesterday
     The ghosts of the past still haunt the
     European Union.
     6 August 2003
163. The Real World
     . . . without a TV screen
     11 July 2003
164. Smearing Orwell
     Elites now admit communism was bad—but fighting it prematurely was worse.
     Summer 2003
165. What’s Wrong with Twinkling Buttocks?
     A crude culture makes a coarse people, and private refinement cannot long survive public excess. There is a Gresham?s law of culture as well as of money: the bad drives out the good, unless the good is defended.
     Summer 2003
166. Missing the Big Issue
     You can’t rehabilitate prisoners unless you try.
     7 May 2003
167. The Multi-Culti Menu
     Multiculturalism doesn’t discriminate—between right and wrong, true and false, or anything else.
     6 May 2003
168. Swept Away
     According to Lemrick Nelson’s “40-ounce” defense, nobody is ever guilty of anything.
     2 May 2003
169. A Revealing Exchange . . .
     . . . discloses an upside down moral universe.
     2 May 2003
170. Blaming the Victim
     For British psychiatrists, the real victims are those behind bars.
     25 April 2003
171. France’s Headscarf Problem
     How should a western democracy accommodate Islam?
     23 April 2003
172. “There Was Violence Used”
     For today’s liberals, crime is like the weather—it has nothing to do with human agency.
     21 April 2003
173. Less Than Zero Tolerance
     The British approach will give this idea a bad name.
     9 April 2003
174. After Empire
     As soon as I qualified as a doctor, I went to Rhodesia, which was to transform itself into Zimbabwe five years or so later. In the next decade, I worked and traveled a great deal in Africa and couldn’t help but reflect upon such matters as the clash of cultures, the legacy of colonialism, and the practical effects of good intentions unadulterated by any grasp of reality.
     Spring 2003
175. Live and Let Live—for Now
     Cairo changed my thinking about urban poverty and crime. When I first visited more than 20 years ago, I discovered a city in which millions of the poor lived in hard and grossly overcrowded conditions; yet it was possible to walk anywhere, at any time, without fear.
     Spring 2003
176. Not All Cultures Are Equal
     For young British blacks, academic success means facing ridicule from their black peers.
     Spring 2003
177. Treating Burglars
     England’s chief justice seems to think burglary is not a crime but a disease.
     13 March 2003
178. UK Profs Nix Israel
     Their sympathy for Arabs is one more example of compassion as contempt.
     4 February 2003
179. Why Shakespeare Is For All Time
     A decade ago, the psychiatrist Peter Kramer published a book called Listening to Prozac, which claimed that our understanding of neurochemistry was so advanced that we would soon be able to design—and no doubt to vary—our personalities according to our tastes.
     Winter 2003
180. A "Free" Fix?
     Pity the poor dope fiend.
     Winter 2003
181. Prison Porn
     A “human rights” campaign defines deviancy up.
     Winter 2003
182. The People’s Princess
     The latest revelations about Princess Diana reflect poorly on her and on the celebrity cult that surrounds her.
     19 November 2002
183. Goodbye to Prison Discipline
     The meddlesome European Court of Human Rights undermines order in Britain’s prisons.
     12 November 2002
184. The New Inquisitors
     In today’s England, officials demand proper deference to multiculti pieties.
     5 November 2002
185. The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris
     Surrounding the City of Light are threatening Cities of Darkness.
     Autumn 2002
186. The Starving Criminal
     Rarely does the British Journal of Psychiatry produce in the reader anything other than déjà vu at best and ennui at worst; but an article in the July issue was startling in its implications and accordingly won wide publicity.
     Autumn 2002
187. How Not to Encourage Assimilation
     English educators are rebuilding the Tower of Babel.
     13 August 2002
188. Behind the Veil
     An outbreak of militant Islam contained in a British medical school.
     30 July 2002
189. The British Left Goes Anti-Semitic
     Socialism and anti-Semitism are closely related worldviews.
     23 July 2002
190. Crime is Law, Law is Crime
     The disaffected Muslim youth of Lille, France are at war with society.
     18 July 2002
191. Theory vs. Reality? The French Choose Theory
     European elites refuse to see the connection between family breakdown and spiraling crime.
     15 July 2002
192. That’s Mister Hyde to You
     These days, the respectable get no respect—and the disrespectable do.
     11 July 2002
193. Why Havana Had to Die
     Decay, when not carried to excess, has its architectural charms, and ruins are romantic: so romantic, indeed, that eighteenth-century English gentlemen built them in their gardens, as pleasantly melancholic reminders of the transience of earthly existence.
     Summer 2002
194. An Undismal Economist
     Peter Bauer, the distinguished development economist, died peacefully at his home in London, in his 87th year, at the beginning of May. He had just won the Milton Friedman Prize for the advancement of freedom and, though very frail, was planning to go to Washington to receive it in person.
     Summer 2002
195. Theoretical Criminals
     Academic criminologists would rather be mugged than admit that policing caused New York’s crime turnaround.
     Summer 2002
196. Turning Kids Against Parents
     England’s flirtation with children’s rights bodes ill.
     Summer 2002
197. The Rage of Virginia Woolf
     In 1938, the year my mother left Germany for good and never saw her parents again, Virginia Woolf published a book entitled Three Guineas. It was about how women could prevent war.
     Summer 2002
198. A Terrorist Returns
     A distinguished London academic institution rolls out the red carpet for a Palestinian hijacker.
     31 May 2002
199. How PC Boosts Le Pen
     The French demagogue won by addressing reasonable concerns about Arab immigration and French identity that other politicians ducked.
     25 April 2002
200. Nanny Knows Best
     In Britain, the state is infantalizing everybody.
     24 April 2002
201. The Morality of Terror
     . . . assumes that the means justify the end.
     16 April 2002
202. Trivializing the Holocaust II
     Auschwitz Isn’t a Metaphor.
     12 April 2002
203. The Man Who Predicted the Race Riots
     Not since I lived and worked briefly in South Africa under the apartheid regime have I seen a city as racially segregated as Bradford in the north of England.
     Spring 2002
204. The Most Politically Correct Magazine in the World
     . . . weighs in on the causes of war.
     25 February 2002
205. The Economist Sees No Evil
     . . . while crime and disorder lap at its London doorstep.
     20 February 2002
206. Gillray’s Ungloomy Morality
     Those who admire and wish to propagate the bourgeois virtues—prudence, thrift, industry, honesty, moderation, politeness, self-restraint, and so forth—are sometimes haunted by an uncomfortable question: how would the world be if, as is not very likely, everyone were to adopt these virtues as his own?
     Winter 2002
207. ‘Ang ‘em
     Criminals have no illusions about how to fight crime.
     Winter 2002
208. What We Have to Lose
     Our civilization is more precious, and more fragile, than most people suppose.
     Autumn 2001
209. The Dystopian Imagination
     Why did the twentieth century produce so many—and such vivid—dystopias, works of fiction depicting not an ideal future but a future as terrible as could be imagined?
     Autumn 2001
210. Who’s to Blame?
     Some foolishness is not personal but political.
     Autumn 2001
211. How—and How Not—to Love Mankind
     Almost every intellectual claims to have the welfare of humanity, and particularly the welfare of the poor, at heart: but since no mass murder takes place without its perpetrators alleging that they are acting for the good of mankind, philanthropic sentiment can plainly take a multiplicity of forms.
     Summer 2001
212. The Uses of Corruption
     I first went to Italy as a boy in 1960, the year of the Rome Olympics, and it was still recognizably a poor country.
     Summer 2001
213. Puffing Puff Daddy
     Beware of the elites bearing praise.
     Summer 2001
214. A Lost Art
     Recently, a short stroll between two New York art galleries offered a textbook demonstration of the revolution that transformed aesthetic sensibility in the twentieth century.
     Spring 2001
215. And Dying Thus Around Us Every Day
     The trial in January of Marie Therese Kouao and her lover, Carl Manning, for the murder of their eight-year-old ward, Anna Climbie, caused a sensation in England.
     Spring 2001
216. The Dumbest Immigration Policy
     The British attitude to immigration and immigrants has always been grudging, a mixture of xenophobia and socialist zero-sum economics.
     Winter 2001
217. A Perplexed Guide
     On a recent visit to New York, I bought The New York Times Guide to New York City.
     Winter 2001
218. Seeing Is Not Believing
     The first duty of the modern intellectual, wrote George Orwell, is to state the obvious, to puncture the smelly little orthodoxies . . . now contending for our souls.
     Autumn 2000
219. Free at Last
     I grew up in a free country: or so at least I thought.
     Autumn 2000
220. All Sex, All the Time
     If there is one thing of which modern man is utterly convinced, it is that he has reached a state of sexual enlightenment.
     Summer 2000
221. Lost in the Ghetto
     One of the terrible fates that can befall a human being is to be born intelligent or sensitive in an English slum.
     Summer 2000
222. Multiculti Museums—Or Else
     The U.K. will cut funds for museums that don’t draw minority visitors.
     Summer 2000
223. A Coda
     In England these days, right is wrong, and wrong is right.
     Summer 2000
224. How to Read a Society
     In the days--simultaneously not so very long ago and in the ancient past—when communism seemed a permanent feature of the political landscape, I traveled extensively on the other side of the looking glass that divided the world into two opposed camps.
     Spring 2000
225. Benetton’s Evil Ads I: Righteous Consumerism
     A new ad campaign celebrating convicted murderers is the ultimate in radical chic . . .
     Spring 2000
226. Why Brits Love Iron Mike
     Throngs of English fans admire the boxer’s thuggish behavior as authentically black.
     Spring 2000
227. Policeman in Wonderland
     The long march through the institutions--by which radical intellectuals have sought to remake society surreptitiously, without resort to the barricades--has succeeded so completely in Britain that it sometimes seems that a Nietzschean transvaluation of all values has taken place.
     Spring 2000
228. Choosing To Fail
     The children of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent make up a quarter of all British medical students, 12 times their proportion in the general population.
     Winter 2000
229. Ideas That Kill
     'Depend upon it, Sir,' said Dr. Johnson, 'when a man knows he is to be hanged in the morning, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.'
     Winter 2000
230. An F for French Schools
     Adopting every foolish tenet of "progressive" ed, French public schools have become as bad as ours.
     Winter 2000
231. Barbarians on the March
     The Times of London reported on September 29 that British town planners have decided that what jewel-box Georgian and Regency towns such as Bath and Cheltenham need--architecturally speaking--is the shock of the new.
     Autumn 1999
232. How Criminologists Foster Crime
     Last week in the prison I asked a young man why he was there.
     Autumn 1999
233. All Our Pomp of Yesterday
     There is, Adam Smith once said, a deal of ruin in a nation—by which he meant that a country's economic capital and cultural heritage are too vast to squander easily or quickly.
     Summer 1999
234. What is Poverty?
     What do we mean by poverty? Not what Dickens or Blake or Mayhew meant. Today, no one seriously expects to go hungry in England or to live without running water or medical care or even TV.
     Spring 1999
235. Addicted to Addicts
     Mayor Giuliani's suggestion a few months ago that New York's methadone clinics should be closed has predictably drawn howls of rage--or is it fear?
     Winter 1999
236. Tough Love
     Last week, a 17-year-old girl was admitted to my ward with such acute alcohol poisoning that she could scarcely breathe by her own unaided efforts, alcohol being a respiratory depressant.
     Winter 1999
237. Uncouth Chic
     Last June in Paris, a young Englishman walked into a bar frequented by Britons, having agreed to meet his girlfriend there.
     Autumn 1998
238. A Taste for Danger
     When you’ve seen anarchy, you properly value civilization.
     Summer 1998
239. Zero Intolerance
     Look at the fist of a British criminal and chances are you'll find a blue dot tattooed on each knuckle.
     Summer 1998
240. What Causes Crime?
     As I browsed in a bookshop shortly after my arrival in New Zealand on a recent visit, I came upon a volume of national statistics, in which I discovered, to my amazement, that New Zealand's prison population is half as large again, per capita, as Britain's.
     Spring 1998
241. Poetry and Self-Pity
     The English are a nation of poets. I am not speaking now of Keats or of Milton but of millions of my contemporaries.
     Winter 1998
242. Trash, Violence, and Versace: But Is It Art?
     The English are not, on the whole, interested in modern art or indeed art of any description.
     Winter 1998
243. The Goddess of Domestic Tribulations
     I first learned of the death of Princess Diana on Sunday morning at the prison.
     Autumn 1997
244. The Rush from Judgment
     Not long ago I asked a patient of mine how he would describe his own character.
     Summer 1997
245. Don’t Legalize Drugs
     Advocates have almost convinced Americans that legalization will remove most of the evil that drugs inflict on society. Don’t believe them.
     Spring 1997
246. “There’s No Damned Merit in It”
     The British have a curious attitude toward wealth: they desire it for themselves but wish to deny it to others.
     Spring 1997
247. Good-bye, Cruel World
     One of the wards in the hospital in which I work is designated for patients who have poisoned themselves by deliberate overdose.
     Winter 1997
248. Free to Choose
     Last week, a middle-aged man was brought to my hospital in a desperate condition. He had discharged himself from a mental hospital against medical advice three weeks before; arriving home, he had found the prospect of life with his wife no more inviting than that of life in the wards of an asylum.
     Autumn 1996
249. The Heart of a Heartless World
     Opposite my house, in the center of the square, stands a Victorian Gothic church, a building of some grandeur, which soars upward with immense confidence. Its interior is unspoiled, its stained-glass windows magnificent. It is almost always empty.
     Summer 1996
250. A Horror Story
     In the psychotherapeutic worldview to which all good liberals subscribe, there is no evil, only victimhood.
     Spring 1996
251. Festivity, and Menace
     The English, it was observed by an aristocratic Frenchman as long ago as the eighteenth century, take their pleasures sadly.
     Winter 1996
252. It Hurts, Therefore I Am
     The cause of criminality among the white population of England is perfectly obvious to any reasonably observant person, though criminologists have yet to notice it. This cause is the tattooing of the skin.
     Autumn 1995
253. ‘In China, It Is Different’
     Who would have thought there are subversive ironists at work in the United Nations?
     Autumn 1995
254. Do Sties Make Pigs?
     Until quite recently, I had assumed that the extreme ugliness of the city in which I live was attributable to the Luftwaffe.
     Summer 1995
255. Reader, She Married Him—Alas
     When multiculturalists imagine the future, I suspect they have something in mind like the glorious multiplicity of restaurants serving all the cuisines of the world which is now to be found in most large cities.
     Spring 1995
256. We Don't Want No Education
     Education has always been a minority interest in England. The English have generally preferred to keep the bloom of their ignorance intact and on the whole have succeeded remarkably well, despite a century and a quarter of compulsory schooling of their offspring.
     Winter 1995
257. “The Knife Went In”
     It is a mistake to suppose that all men, or at least all Englishmen, want to be free.
     Autumn 1994

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy

Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses

Life At the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass