POSTS BY THEODORE DALRYMPLE
This Can’t Last
How, in assessing the dangers that a society faces, does one avoid the Scylla of an undue alarm and the Charybdis of a paralytic complacency? Is intelligence, knowledge, character, temperament or luck more important in being able to distinguish what …
Jürgen Habermas’ European Dreams
Compared with reading a book by Professor Habermas, going to the dentist is a pleasant experience. He has made his career as a torturer – not of people, but of language. The esteem in which he is widely held is …
Envy and the Undoing of American Mores
One exchange in the second Presidential debate caught my imagination. It was the one in which Mr Romney asked Mr Obama whether he ever thought about his pension, and Mr Obama replied that he did not, but that he was …
“Talibans of Austerity”
A sentence in the French newspaper Le Monde recently caught my eye: Il y aura toujours des talibans de l’austérité, there will always be the Talibans of austerity. It was uttered by the economist Jean Pisani-Ferry in an interview …
Eat the Rich Now, Starve Later
There is one group that is not protected from hate-speech: the rich. Of the rich it is permissible, and in some circles de rigueur, to speak disparagingly or hatefully. This, I imagine, is because it is widely supposed that …
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