I have just been working my through a collection of essays by the noted British writer, Theodore Dalrymple, (that is not his real name, from what I can guess), who has spent much of his professional life dealing with muggers, burglars, murderers, drug addicts, the homeless, the variously abused, and other inhabitants of that twilight zone we might generalise as “the underclass”. It is a great book, full of harrowing detail, often illuminated by mordant wit and unintended humour.
Dalrymple could, I think, be fairly characterised as a social conservative. That a Britain full of grammar schools, nuclear families and draconian punishments for infractions of the law is his desired state of affairs cannot be in doubt. He subscribes to the view, unless I have misread him, that the social reforms of the 1960s, while perhaps containing some good elements, were taken as a whole a social catastrophe for the working class. But were they? Do we really want, for example, to a return to when homosexuality was a criminal offence? And has some of the loosening of old social taboos been quite the disaster he claims? I am not so sure.
Some of his targets – such as state welfare and education systems – deserve all the muck he heaps on them. But I have problems with the relentlessly gloomy tone of the publication, and this goes, I think, for a lot of commentary one gets to see from the conservative side of the cultural spectrum these days. Apart from the usual hints that we should go back to some sort of social order resembling the 1950s of myth and memory, there is very little in the way to any positive solutions to the ills on display.
What struck me about Dalrymple’s book is how different he is from our Victorian forbears. As well as setting out the problem, the generation that brought us the gospel of “self improvement” looked at the ugliness around them and said, more or less, that “it doesn’t have to be like this”. And they acted.
And it doesn’t have to be like this. We have seen, in New York for example, a dramatic fall in violent crime, due to a determined effort at proper policing.
And in that, I think, lies the point that the United States, unlike Britain, has not yet given up. If we are to deal with some of the issues Dalrymple mentions, it will not be enough merely to point out the ugliness around us from the elegant citadels of the Daily Telegraph’s editorial offices. We will need to sketch out how we get to a better place. For if we don’t, then Dalrymple will become nothing better than a very articulate bore.
Well put. I think a central tenet to helping oneself is wrapped into helping others. The sense of community and responsibility, (rather than idiot-self and ‘I know me rights’) is the beacon for the way forward. We can’t give up to the smack heads, to the myriad Billy the bungling bureaucrats, or to the low life bottom feeders, be they islamofascists, Stalinists, afrocentric Mugabe fanciers, or just pandemic whatever the weather despondancy.
Theodore Dalrymple is the nom de plume of Dr Anthony Daniels, a Birmingham-based psychiatrist who writes slightly less jaded articles and book reviews under his real name for the Telegraph papers. While I greatly enjoy his writings, I too find his bitterness wearying. He recently announced in a Spectator article that he’s intending to quit Britain and move to France.
This is gratuitous.
I cant see why its every descriptive writers job to be a policy adviser as well. He describes the problem, its up to you to propose the solution. Seems like an efficient pattern of specialization to me.
There’s always been that tone in real conservatism, which is why I’m always careful never to call myself a conservative. In Britain, there seems to be an Ingrams- or Waugh-style nostalgia for the “right” of the traditional Englishman to die amid the comforts (ranging from foxhunting & discreet pederasty to not having to see foreigners) to which he is accustomed. This is a kind of disappointed Toryism. Alternatively, Peter Hitchens & many Daily Mail contributors seem indignant that “the curious voluntary asexuality” (Pountain, “Cool”) & meticulous respect for traditional institutions such as the Monarchy of an older England have been corrupted by wartime GIs (“overpaid, oversexed & over here”) & more recent continental influence. This is a kind of backward-looking Macaulayite Whiggery, though related also to the pre-War Little Englanders. Dalrymple/Daniels seems to span the two tendencies, but to be more intelligent than most of their more consistent advocates.
As somebody who does call himself a conservative, I have been a follower of Theodore Dalrymple’s works, including his book. I do concur with Johnathan in that he doesn’t offer possible solutions and I refuse to believe Britain has a one-way ticket to oblivion.
That said, Johnathan should consider the effect of his works, which is to shock people out of their complacency. It’s impossible to act against a problem if the problem is not widely identified as such. Theodore Dalrymple does the excellent service of simply informing people of the problems of the “underclass.”
Johnathan’s gratuitous “Telegraph’s editorial offices” comment aside, I take issue with his point about homosexuality. The purpose of sodomy laws was to uphold a minimum moral standard in society. The loss of any such standards whatsoever is at the heart of the social problems. The reality is that such laws were rarely enforced anyway. The exceptions merely prove my statement.
Libertarians have the unfortunate tendency of reducing everything to economics. I’m reminded of a book review by the great American social scientist James Q. Wilson. The book was about marriage in the US and the authors proposed some solutions, including tax incentives to encourage marriage, to which Wilson quipped that if the marriage problem in the US can be solved by a tax cut, then obviously the marriage problem in the US is worse than he thought.
Libertarians like Johnathan seem to believe that a free market will function just fine while moral standards are all shot to Hell. The problem about this little fantasy is this: History does not record any such society ever existed.
Like too many liberals, libertarians also seek to construct a society that never existed before.
Is it really a coincidence that an overwhelming majority of socially conservative people all tend to be fiscal conservatives? Is it also a complete coincidence that an overwhelming majority of socially liberal people all tend to be fiscally liberal as well?
Let me suggest a more plausible explanation: People who have the self-discipline to lead morally upright lives are best suited for a free market system which also requires tremendous discipline.
Unlike the welfare system which distorts the Law of Cause and Effect thus producing all kinds of terrible consequences, the free market allowed the Law of Cause and Effect to function at peak efficiency. To survive in that kind of system requires much self-discipline and social conservatives, in leading self-disciplined lives, are best suited for such systems.
On Homosexuality: The problem is that people have sex because it is fun. But sex causes babies and is a great way to spread a disease. Prior to advances in modern medicine, moral taboos against recreational sex seemed sufficient to reduce the damage to society that wide spread epidemics and hoards of un-raised children can wreck on a culture. The fact that the rationale offered for such moral views was “God says” didn’t matter, because violations already packed their own corrective measure.
Modern medicine has changed all that. Camile Paglia once wrote that the thing that really spurred the feminist movement was the Pill. That same Pill also fueled the rise of the gay rights movement, as the older taboos no longer had (or at the very least were PERCIEVED to have no) relavance in modern society.
But the dangers of unwed motherhood are still there, Diseases, well, couple the perceptions created by medical technology with the rise of the gay rights movement, can we really be surprised that something like AIDS would pop up?
[No, all I am doing is pointing out that the perception of success, created by the real success generated by medical technology led to the fact that AIDS spread so rapidly through the gay communities. It ain’ “God’s wrath” or anything like that.]
Morality is important, and sometimes the rules are what keeps you alive, or allows you to be happy, even if you have no idea why you follow the rules. In the modern era, without a line of logical deduction going all the way back to universally agreed upon first principles, too many folks are too willing to abandon morality altogether. Blow it off as religious hookum or part of the mass opiate. Too many folks fail to see the damage caused by throwing the old rules out before understanding why they worked, or putting any new rules in place.
Is it really a coincidence that an overwhelming majority of socially conservative people all tend to be fiscal conservatives? Is it also a complete coincidence that an overwhelming majority of socially liberal people all tend to be fiscally liberal as well?
Do you have any evidence (or even a clearer, more testable formulation) for that sweeping assertion?
Johnathan,
The fifties were unjustly trashed in the sixties. It behoves us now to recognise that fact – and that life is always more fearfully complex than received wisdom might have it. I had a fifties childhood in suburban south London and caught the full flavour of the Pill-fuelled and pill-fuelled, pop-marxist revolution of the following decade. I consider myself to be a fair judge of both.
Really the only problem with fifties British society was widespread sexual ignorance. In the absence of knowledge the people were forearmed, so to speak, by taboo. That’s far from ideal. But there are taboos based, as I say, on ignorance and then there are taboos based on the hard-learned lessons of past generations. The sixties turfed them both out as though they were one and with utter disregard for the consequences. The chief consequence, of course, has been the immeasurable cost in the emotional stability of our children.
As for sexual knowledge, its acquisition has not led to wisdom, which is the heart of freedom. It has led to licence, which is the heart of slavery. I understand Dalrymple’s pessimism, for one cannot return to the past. One must continue down this path until the hard lessons are learned again and incorporated into our social and sexual mores. We are not free yet.
I’ve always suspected that Dalrymple’s target audience is American conservatives looking to scoff at Europe. He has published essentially the same Chicken Little article about England and France in the conservative City Journal.
Your post seems contradictory – as you acknowledge, Dr Dalrymple has spent decades doing far more (or at least doing his best ) for the people he describes, as an NHS doctor. That doesn’t of course place him beyond criticism. But he DID act (the fact he is a practising doctor surely gives his comments even more force?), and perhaps found himself hamstrung or frustrated by government imposed working requirements – that might lead to a jaundiced attitude, I imagine. Also, I think the Ingrams/Waugh comparison made in one of the comments may be inaccurate, as I believe Dalrymple’s father was a poor Jewish immigrant from the East End, who was enabled to get an education through the Grammar schools. And his wife is French, which might account for his retiring to that country.
The World Is Not A Church
Libertarians are trying to construct a society that doesn’t exist. A certain sort of social conservative, on the other hand, sometimes labeled “beautiful losers”, dream of a past that never was.
Morality, for example, never existed in the following form: “a line of logical deduction going all the way back to universally agreed upon first principles.”
This is not to say no morality exists. Real morality is no set of certainties, but hard fought experience. And while some social conservatives will admit as much, they won’t admit to mistakes made in the past, which is also experience–for example, that homosexuality may not be what they think it is.
What do they think it is? As far as I can tell, social conservatives see homosexuals as examples of people who by nature should be heterosexuals, but, driven by sensation into uncontrollable lust, pervert themselves into beasts.
(At this point I might make goat or donkey sounds.)
Yet the “beautiful loser” class of conservative, Dalrymple’s kind, will never allow himself to learn from the sciences what we have learned about homosexuals. Allowing so much would seem to him to be conceding all moral ground whatever.
So he won’t see that homosexuals aren’t essentially heterosexual people transformed by selfishness and desire into some Dantean caricature, but a harmless variation in the usual human pattern; not a band of beasts lusting wildly in the moonlight, dreaming of unspeakable and unnatural acts, but the favorite scapegoats of those fantasists of the past, who dream of a golden age of perfect moral order, everything and everyone in his place: the world as a huge cathedral.
The supposed immorality of homosexuals is not that they are so stunningly promiscuous, but that they are not allowed to be part of the moral code; and if a healthier, smarter class of conservative could but see it, they might recognize that young homosexuals need morality as much as anybody, because liberalism has no language for restraint.
But neither is a homosexual youth likely to change. Oh, yes, we know that we can force changes on people–we’ve known that since Stalin’s show trials. I’d hate to think what might be done to some nice straight boy under the right circumstances. But why can’t conservatives include homosexuals under the moral order? Because in that order, there are no homosexuals.
Still, if it were up to me, I’d teach gay youth elitist principles, not left-wing rubbish. That if they aren’t going to make children, they should be ambitious to achieve. I’d teach them the value of sexual restraint the better to be in control of their lives, not just to cut down on the incidence of disease. And I’d teach that long-term relationships are better than quickies in some alley because the people we care about give us the greatest returns in life, and wonderful memories.
(And I said restraint, not abstinence. The world is not a church.)
But it’s all hopeless. The sort of conservative I mean won’t see these things for the same reason that a priest I knew in school wouldn’t see the proof I wrote on a blackboard after challenging me to do so, for fear of seeing something new.
“Beautiful losers”–a pretty way to put it. There are ways of saying it that are much less kind.
Guy Herbert,
Yes. I can’t speak for Britain, but that is certainly the case in the US. Consider the issue of state budgets. State spending is lowest in conservative states, which also tend to enjoy the lowest taxes. During the state finance crisis of last year, the top 10 states that had the worst deficits were all liberal states. To give a recent example, when the state of Alabama tried to raise taxes, the Christian Coalition came out against it and the proposal was defeated in referendum by 2-1.
It is a matter of record that religious conservatives vote overwhelmingly Republican (It cannot be disputed that they have a fairly sane tax policy. As for spending, they are still better than the Democrats.) and many of the same people are quite disappointed over the president’s profligacy in spending.
Anthony,
At the danger of turning this discussion into one about homosexuality, I would just like to note that there is no scientific concensus on homosexuality. Indeed, there is ample evidence (Link) that it is unnatural.
At least you acknowledge the well-documented promiscuity of homosexuals which by various surveys, have partners up to several times the average. Yet you refuse to derive any lesson from this fact.
If, as I and many others in the link I included above conclude that homosexuality is unnatural, then the possibility of change is not remote at all. Indeed, a thorough exploration of that link will demonstrate that change is indeed possible. The question is a question of will, not some immutable biological fact.
“[H]armless variation in the usual human pattern”? A study of patients in San Francisco hospitals found that about 70% of the ones admitted because of venereal diseases are homosexuals. Do you call venereal diseases “harmless”?
That is not the only example I can cite. Another study concluded that about half of all homosexual men under 18 will eventually contract HIV. Do you call HIV “harmless”?
Why is this the case? The reason is one you’re already aware of. Their promiscuity exposes them to greater risks. (Are you aware of Mr. Andrew Sullivan’s illness? Being consistent with the inherently self-destructive nature of homosexuality, he disregards how he contracted his illness in the first place and insists on advocating a life style which sentenced him as well as many others to death.)
So yes, I am one of those conservatives who believe that the purpose of morality is to save our money, time, not to mention lives. It is precisely because I have a practical view of morality that I am a conservative and I am opposed to homosexuality.
Dalrymple is indeed popular in the US, but it is not for “scoffing” purposes. I read his works as a cautionary tale.
If anyone is interested, you can find many, many of Dalyrimple’s essays posted online at the BrothersJudd blog.
Thanks for the comments. HTY’s comments are bizarre. I don’t know where he gets the idea that he thinks I believe in some sort of world freed of any rules of morality, and in fact if he/she has read this blog for any length of time, will realise that in many ways what an intense interest I have in moral issues.
For what it is worth, I happen to agree with much of what Dalrymple says in his book. One of the most important points he makes is that rules, properly understood, can be liberating for people, a fact which our forebears understood. However, I have a problem with the fact that Dalrymple spends so much time describing the awful lives many folk lead, but he does say much about how to improve it.
The biggest issue Dalrymple confronts is what I once dubbed, while talking to friends, as the “excuses culture”. He brilliantly describes what happens when whole swathes of our society come to believe that nothing that happens in life is their responsibility.
Johnathan,
You may have “intense interest” in moral issues. So did the Weather Underground and al Qaeda.
The question is the positions one takes. Your statement about homosexuality in your post leads me to conclude that you probably take positions that are hardly conventional. I believe people who take unconventional positions are not fundamentally serious about moral issues.
Your “intense interest” aside, I find that your criticism of Dalrymple applies to yourself quite well. Your post didn’t have concrete proposals of how to eliminate that “excuses culture,” either.
Dalrymple thinks that the welfare state contributes to the victimhood culture but he considers that eliminating the welfare state is insufficient to deal with the cultural decay that he witnesses.
In general, pessimism is annoying and tends to never submit a solution because by definition pessimists dont beleive in one. I far prefer to hear positive stuff than negative, encouragement over discouragement. I know there is a place for a candid discussion and criticism of the issues of a current system, but it tends to become drudgery if that is all that is ever done. No one likes to listen to complaints, and most of us optomists who do so only do because we are disciplined enough to hear criticisms.
As for moral affect on society, I certainly do believe that the damage to the family and to many other societal structures has an enormous impact on the success or failure of any socio-economic system. Individual choice is the basis of many conservative views, the problem is that judgementalism is also a trait, and one that needs to be done away with. I do not refer to discrimination, but to judgementalism, and the idea that we have the right to play god and tell people what they should and shouldnt do. It is far too similar to socialist principles.
Morality is a strong key to society, and the throwing out of all taboos and moral no-nos is not necessarily a benefit. Throwing out of government imposed no-nos on the other hand, its quite necessary. The problem with religions are when they are used as an avenue for a few self-righteous people to gain power over others and manipulate them. It is not the morality that is at fault, it is the attitude of the teachers of that morality.
The homosexuality thing, for instance, needs to step out of the emotional state that it is now in. And the corruption of science and research by agendas needs to stop as well. Homosexual activity is indeed a choice, just as heterosexual activity is a choice, and as an individual choice I have no issue with it. As a State sanctioned activity, I have great issue with it. Repealing laws making it illegal is fine and good, making legal marriages (something Im not that big a fan of anyway, the state has no right to tell me when im married, who I can marry, or anything else related to my family) is something else altogether.
The bottom line is, I find no conflict between religion and libertarian thought. In fact, there can be no such conflict since all people have some belief system, and in a loose definition that is synonymous with a religion. I have no interest in a world that is a church, nor one that is a temple, nor one devoid of such institutions, nor one in which we are all supposed to bow at the feet of “science”. Science in its purest form, admits its own innaccuracies and asks no one to bow at its feet. Science as it has been practiced through the ages is often wrought with agenda and the innaccuracies that go along with that. In many cases the science lab is little more than a church with lab equipment, or an anti-church with lab equipment. My interest is in giving freedom to mankind, and taking control [of other men]from those who would wish to have it. As an optomist I think that is an attainable goal, if we simply stop fussing over who’s religion is better.
Dalrymple does at least interact on a daily basis with the ghastly products of the social trends he deplores.
This is something which virtually no leftists or libertarians do.
Consequently his observations are informed, while most others…
HTY, your comments are preposterous. For example, I uphold absolutely the right of consenting adults to arrange their affairs to their liking, regardless of whether that gains the approval of wider “society” and even if I personally disapprove of such actions. That does not mean that those who follow “unconventional” lifestyles, however defined, can expect to be free from non-coercive pressures or criticism.
Hence, for example, I endorse the right of adult males to form homosexual relations with each other to their liking. The defence of consensual agreements free from outside coercive interference is central to what libertarianism is about. If you disagree with that and want to ram your views down people’s views, then you are an enemy of mine, plain and simple.
For libertarians, morality cannot be separated from the notion of people being allowed to exercise free will, at least once they have reached adult maturity (of course with minors it is different). Morality is not some sort of imposed code, but stems from the needs of human beings who need to be able to exercise their conscious judgement.
And btw, exercising judgement is rather what Dalrymple is in favour of. Rightly.
Sorry to have another bite, but I cannot believe the arrogance and stupidity of HTY’s comment thus: “I believe people who take unconventional positions are not fundamentally serious about moral issues”.
If by unconventional he means folk who believe in the right to freedom of adults under the equal rule of law, even if their behaviour might be weird to some then that probably means he regards America’s founding fathers as a bunch of wackos!
I can only add that while my contemporaries are fond of referring to the “mythical” (by which they mean “mythically good”) 1950’s, they are guilty of trading in a yet greater myth. That is, that life before the 1960’s was intolerably and irrationally repressive, and that people were generally cruel, bigoted, and ignorant.
The myth goes on that the hypocritical horror reached its peak in the 1950’s, at which point the dam burst and the baby boomers ushered in a revolution of sweetness and light, freedom and tolerance, sophistication and kindness. (All the unprecedented social pathology that we’re facing now is a vast coincidence in this view, or not as bad as advertised, or basically the same as it ever was.)
The changes of the 1960’s are yet to be fully appreciated or realized, so I won’t comment further except to say that the Boomers’ portrayal of the years of their youth is nothing short of preposterous, and it takes a special kind of foolishness to believe that we just so happen to be the most enlightened human beings ever to walk the face of the earth, and that rampant familial chaos and social degradation is somehow proof of that fact.