As a patriotic Englishman hiding abroad until it seems safe to return to my increasingly authoritarian country, I feel qualified to comment on Theodore Dalrymple's article. Dalrymple, whose work I have long admired, is absolutely correct in his analysis. We British seem to have become a nation devoid of any sense of history, or of irony. That "The Mother of Parliaments" should conspire in the daily destruction of personal freedoms, under the guise of protecting "human rights," is ironic. That so many of my countrymen should fall supine in the face of such a diminution of their freedoms is more than ironic—it is a tragedy.