by Theodore Dalrymple According to many philosophers, starting with Kant, existence is not a predicate, but whether this is so or not, the first time I have ever seen it praised as something meritorious in itself was in a recent article in the Guardian newspaper, the bellwether of British center-left ...Read More...

The language of liberation disguises ugly truths or absurdities. by Theodore Dalrymple Two items in the British Medical Journal last week caught my eye. The first was an editorial titled “Tackling Female Genital Mutilation in the UK,” and the second was an article titled “Diversifying the ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple The demonstrations that have shaken France over the last two months are testimony to the power and durability of resentment, by far the most sincere and long-lasting of political emotions. It is easy to stimulate and difficult to assuage. Even when justified, it rarely conduces ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Thomas Piketty According to many philosophers, starting with Kant, existence is not a predicate, but whether this is so or not, the first time I have ever seen it praised as something meritorious in itself was in a recent article in the Guardian newspaper, the bellwether ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple For an outsider with no particular emotional involvement, the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, nominated to the United States Supreme Court, were an absorbing gladiatorial soap opera—a well-written soap opera, insofar as it contained so many subplots and suggested ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple One of the most extraordinary consequences of the political ­impasse in Britain over Brexit is the proposal that the voting age should be reduced to six. This extension of the franchise was not proposed by an inmate of an asylum for the crim­in­ally insane but by a professor, ...Read More...

On Britain’s ever-more expansive search for hate crimes by Theodore Dalrymple The Times of London recently informed us that “the number of hate offences recorded by police jumped after the terror attack by Khalid Masood at Westminster in March last year.” The paper continued by noting that ...Read More...

Anger at a tax hike has turned into violence and mayhem. by Theodore Dalrymple Many believe anger to be an emotion that justifies whatever is done in its name. But it is doubtful whether the violent scenes on the Champs Elysées in Paris over the weekend were a manifestation of genuine anger. ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple The political cross-currents of Brexit are now so many, so various and so swirling that the average person, and perhaps the above-average person, no longer knows what to think. He becomes dizzy when he tries to do so, and thus averts his mind from the whole question and ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple A page in the October 11, 2018 print edition of the Guardian newspaper tells us a great deal about the political and cultural state of Britain, and perhaps—since Britain is not unique—of much of the Western world. On the left side of page 7, a story is headed, “Supreme Court ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple From an outsider’s point of view, the two most extraordinary things about the controversy over the interpretation of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test are that it should have been performed in the first place and that anyone should have been interested in ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple This essay is part of a Law and Liberty Symposium on Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism. I first encountered the Moslem world as a callow and ignorant youth half a century ago. I recognised at once that it was very different from the world I had hitherto known, ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple In 1976, as a young doctor, I spent a few months in what was then still Rhodesia, soon to become Zimbabwe. I read up a little on the question of land distribution and came to the utopian (and false) conclusion that a reform in which white-owned commercial farmland was redistributed ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Tort law is supposed to give redress to those who are wronged and on occasion I have known it do precisely that. More often, though, I have seen it exert a deeply corrupting effect on plaintiff, defendant, the legal profession and society in general alike. It encourages ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Just as there is nothing so foolish that some philosopher has not said it, so there is no litigation so outrageous that some court has not entertained it. No lawyer wants to discourage litigation, after all, and it would be against human nature if courts had not developed ...Read More...