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Anthony Malcolm Daniels, who generally uses the pen name Theodore Dalrymple is an English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist. He worked in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries as well as in the East End of London. Before his retirement in 2005, he worked in City Hospital, Birmingham and Winson Green Prison in inner-city Birmingham, England. He is the author of a number of books, including Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass; Our Culture, What's Left of It; and Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality. In this episode we will be discussing existentialism,...

Half a century ago (although it now seems to me but yesterday), there was a lively public debate as to whether representations of violence on television and in the cinema conduced to, or even caused, real violence in society. There was at the time great public concern over a rising tide of violent crime that some criminologists insisted, in the lordly fashion that academics sometimes adopt towards the general population, was unfounded. There were two main schools of thought on the question of the effect of televisual and cinematographic violence: those who thought that such representations of violence acted in...

In 1960, the sociologist Daniel Bell published The End of Ideology, in which he argued that ideology—understood in the sense of a coherent, single-minded philosophical outlook or system of abstractions intended as much as a lever to change society as a description to explain it—was dead, at least in the West, and in the United States in particular. A combination of democracy and mass prosperity had “solved” the political question that had agitated humanity since the time of Plato. There were to be no more grand and transformative, if woefully erroneous, ideas; all that remained was public administration, with, at...

It is one of the evils of evil tyrannies that they seek to implicate everyone in their system, by means of spying, the granting of privileges, etc. But it is not only tyrannies that do this: modern bureaucracies, even in liberal democratic states, do this also. For example, in the British state hospital system (and no modern state does entirely without public hospitals), doctors undergo a compulsory annual appraisal by a colleague, decreed and designed by the administration, without any evidence that it improves performance in any way whatever. Its purpose is not to improve performance; it purpose is to...

Dr. Theodore Dalrymple (aka Anthony Daniels) is a retired English psychiatrist who spent most of his career working on the grounds of an urban prison, an experience that he chronicled in a regular, haunting column for the London Spectator. He recently retired to France but continues to write voluminously for outlets such as the Daily Telegraph, the New Criterion, and the City Journal. He is the Dietrich Weismann fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author, most recently, of the slender, devastatingly argued volume In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas (Encounter Books). BC: Dr. Dalrymple, would you say...

Theodore Dalrymple: How Societies Commit Suicide - Scots and Italians surrender to Islam. 17 August 2007 In an effort to ensure that no Muslim doctors ever again try to bomb Glasgow Airport, bureaucrats at Glasgow’s public hospitals have decreed that henceforth no staff may eat lunch at their desks or in their offices during the holy month of Ramadan, so that fasting Muslims shall not be offended by the sight or smell of their food. Vending machines will also disappear from the premises during that period. Apparently the bureaucrats believe that the would-be bombers were demanding sandwich-free offices in Glasgow...

It is the best of faiths, it is the worst of faiths. It is the faith of tolerance, it is the faith of hate. Opinions of Islam in the world could hardly be more diverse or more opposed. However many times one hears it said that Islam is not a unitary phenomenon - that the Sufis are as different from the Salafists as chalk is from cheese - almost everyone, after pronouncing this caveat, proceeds to speak or to write as if Islam were a unitary phenomenon. This is the great achievement of the Islamists: they have turned the nastiest...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a contributing editor to City Journal and the author of his new collection of essays Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses. FP: Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, welcome to Frontpage Magazine. It is a pleasure to have you with us. Dalrymple: Thank you very much for having invited me. FP: It's hard to know where to start Dr. Dalrymple, as your essays evoke so many profound themes. I guess we can begin with your observations on the root causes of many of our social ills. You discuss how in...

What if stupidity isn’t about intelligence at all, but about surrendering the will to think? In this chilling and timely video essay, we explore Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity — a terrifying insight into how smart, well-meaning people can become blind instruments of destruction. Drawing on Bonhoeffer’s life, the psychology of conformity, Milgram’s obedience experiments, social media echo chambers, and the rise of AI-driven misinformation, we reveal why stupidity isn't a lack of intellect — it's a surrender of critical thought. 👉 Why do intelligent people support dangerous ideas? 👉 How does groupthink override personal judgment? 👉 What does it...

Boston Celtics’ Catholic coach leaves reporters speechless with simple answer about Christian faith I wonder how many of those have been Christian coaches, Boston Celtics’ Joe Mazzulla said when asked if he took ;pride; in the fact that the head coaches of both teams in this year’s NBA Finals are black. BOSTON (LifeSiteNews) — The head coach of the National Basketball Association’s Boston Celtics again left reporters speechless after his team took a 2-0 lead against the Dallas Mavericks in this year’s NBA Finals. Joe Mazzulla, 35, has been at the helm of the historic Celtics franchise since mid-season last...

Priest battles ‘hate crime’ charges for criticizing IslamA Spanish priest is facing up to three years in prison on “hate crime” charges for his heated words about Islam.Last month, Father Custodio Ballester and two other individuals received a summons from a provincial court in Spain to answer charges of an alleged “hate crime” for criticizing Islamic extremism. If convicted, Ballester could be forced to pay a fine of more than $1,600 and serve up to three years in prison. The charges date back to 2020, when the Court Prosecutor’s Office in Catalonia accused Ballester of a “hate crime” based on...

At 3:30 p.m. Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass participated in a press conference to discuss the blaze that has crippled the downtown commute for hundreds of thousands of Angelenos. Newsom began the press conference by describing the fire as being set with “malice intent,” saying the fire burned within the fence line and appeared to be an act of arson. Newsom had previously said that the area was being leased by a company that the state knew well and was involved in active litigation with, adding that the lease had recently expired. “The structural...

Nextdoor: one big ‘Karen’ clambake of angry menopausal harpies.. Social media giant Nextdoor, which I refer to as one big “Karen” clambake of angry menopausal harpies, announced it will lay off 25% of its staff in a financial report posted Tuesday. Cue the violins… millions of people won’t care at all – or will celebrate. The most toxic of all of the social media organizations, Nextdoor is the hyperlocal “neighborhood” website which claims, “it’s where communities come together to greet newcomers, exchange recommendations, and read the latest local news. Where neighbors support local businesses and get updates from public agencies....

Many leading Republicans and conservatives want someone other than Donald Trump to run for President in 2024. But this judgment requires an assessment of Trump’s vices and virtues in the context of our current political and cultural circumstances, as well as an assessment of other prospective Republican presidential candidates. Tom Klingenstein, Chairman of the Claremont Institute, explains Trump's Virtues.

Gettysburg is a small Pennsylvania town with a small school district, a small seminary, and a small college surrounded by apple orchards. It is best known for the most important battle of the American Civil War and the location of Abraham Lincoln's most famous speech. ... Decline It is hard to say exactly when or how, but this community, which was built around a seminary, a Bible college, and then a battle, slowly turned secular. ...While the ghost industry was on the rise and the Christmas nativity was in decline, the seminary was in a nosedive. The Gettysburg Seminary, built...

The FBI is vetting the manifesto of mass murderer Audrey Hale, and that’s a problem. On Monday, March 27, Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old woman who thought she was a man, shot her way into the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. There Hale gunned down Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Mike Hill, 61, William Kinney, 9, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, nine-year-old daughter of Chad Scruggs, who is senior pastor at the Covenant Presbyterian Church, on the same site as the Covenant School. Hale, reportedly a former student, specifically targeted the place. The shooter used an AR-15–style rifle, a...

On Thursday, VA announced an updated version of its 1959 mission statement: “To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise to care for those who have served in our nation’s military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors.” The new mission statement is inclusive of all those who have served in our nation’s military—including women Veterans—as well as Veteran families, caregivers, and survivors. VA currently serves more than 600,000 women Veterans, the fastest growing cohort of Veterans. VA also serves more than 50,000 Veteran caregivers, more than 600,000 Veteran survivors, and millions of Veterans who did not serve in combat.

April 13, 1953 was a red letter the day in popular culture. It was when Ian Fleming’s debut novel, Casino Royale, was published, and the world was introduced to James Bond. The success of Casino Royale in the U.K. paved the way for subsequent works by Fleming, featuring Bond. In 1961, President Kennedy named 'From Russia With Love' as one of his top ten favorite books in Life magazine. This endorsement made the book a bestseller in the U.S. Some say it was Kennedy's way of linking himself to Bond and projecting himself as a Bond-like heroic leader taking on...

Britain’s elite cultural institutions – the BBC, universities, the national trust – are dominated by the woke. Since smart people tend to get ahead in life, you might assume the woke would have higher intelligence. Not so, according to a new study. Louise Drieghe and colleagues surveyed 300 North Americans adults using the platform Mechanical Turk. To measure participants’ cognitive ability, they administered the Ammons Quick Test, which involves correctly assigning words to pictures. Previous studies have shown that people’s scores on the test correlate strongly with their scores on more comprehensive IQ tests, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence...

Before turning against the U.S. military to command the Confederate army, Robert E. Lee served as the superintendent of West Point, the hallowed military academy that produced patriots like Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower.But in the coming days, the storied academy will take down a portrait of Lee dressed in his Confederate uniform from its library, where it has been hanging since the 1950s and place it in storage. It will also remove the stone bust of the Civil War's top southern general at Reconciliation Plaza. And Lee’s quote about honor will be stripped from the academy’s...