Fraters Libertas

Just What The Doctor Ordered

Like many others, I have long admired the writing of Theodore Dalrymple. Up to this point my exposure has, for the most part, been limited to pieces of his that appear in National Review. Life at the Bottom : The Worldview That Makes the Underclass has long been on my "to read" list, but I haven't been able to see my clear to fit it into my schedule (or hoark it from the bookshelf of JB Doubtless).

I was elated to receive a copy of Dalrymple's latest work, Our Culture, What's Left of It : The Mandarins and the Masses in the mail this week. I also a little worried that it might not be able to live up to the lofty expectations that I had for it. This paragraph from the third page of the preface quickly laid those concerns to rest:

This is not to say, of course, that all criticism of social conventions and traditions is destructive or unjustified; surely no society in the world can have existed in which there was not much to criticize. But critics of social institutions and traditions, including writers of imaginative literature, should always be aware that civilization needs conservation as least as much as it needs change, and that immoderate criticism, or criticism from the standpoint of utopian first principles is capable of doing much--indeed devastating--harm. No man is so brilliant that he can work out everything for himself, so that the wisdom of ages has nothing useful to tell him. To imagine otherwise is to indulge in the most egotistical of hubris.

That, in a nutshell, is a one of the better arguments for conservative philosophy as well as an insightful critique of what is wrong with much of the modern left. In one paragraph. In the preface. Yeah, I think this is gonna be a good read.

And so far it most certainly has. The book is a series of essays on a variety of topics relating to cultural decline. One of my favorites so far is on Virginia Woolf. (Interesting note on Woolf: she was comparing people she didn't like in England to Nazis back in 1938. Talk about ahead of her time!) Dalrymple shreds the privileged, pampered yet self-pitying author with laser-like precision and cuts her to her core, which he exposes as nothing but an empty shell. The criticism is both devastating and delicious.

We're hoping to land Mr. Dalrymple as a guest on the Northern Alliance Radio Network in the near future. In the meantime, I look forward to reading the rest of his book. If you enjoy sharp writing from an excellent mind, you should too.