Anthony (A.M.) Daniels (born 1949) is a British writer and retired physician (prison doctor and psychiatrist), who generally uses the pen name Theodore Dalrymple. He has also used the pen name Edward Theberton[1] and two other pen names.[2] Before his retirement in 2005 he worked as a doctor and psychiatrist in a hospital and nearby prison in a slum area in Birmingham. His philosophical position is "compassionate conservative".[3] He is a critic of liberal thinking and utopian thinking in general.
Life
Daniels has revealed in his writing that his father was a Communist businessman, while his Jewish mother was born in Germany and came to the United Kingdom as a refugee from the Nazi regime.[4] In 2005 he retired from England to move (with his wife) to France, where he plans to continue writing. His columns frequently appear in The Spectator as well as in City Journal, a magazine published by the Manhattan Institute.
He has worked in Zimbabwe (when known as Rhodesia), Tanzania, South Africa, Kiribati, the east end of London and central Birmingham (UK), amongst other places.
Regarding his pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, Daniels says he "chose a name that sounded suitably dyspeptic, that of a gouty old man looking out of the window of his London club, port in hand, lamenting the degenerating state of the world."[2]
Writing
Daniels has written extensively on culture, art, politics, education and medicine drawing upon his experience as a doctor and psychiatrist in Zimbabwe and Tanzania, and more recently at a prison and a public hospital in Birmingham, in central England. He has travelled in many countries in Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere.
In his commentary, Daniels frequently argues that the so-called "progressive" views prevalent within Western intellectual circles minimize the responsibility of individuals for their own actions and undermine traditional mores, contributing to the formation within rich countries of an underclass afflicted by endemic violence, criminality, sexually transmitted diseases, welfare dependency, and drug abuse.
He contends that the middle class abandonment of traditional cultural and behavioural aspirations has, by example, fostered routine incivility and ignorance among the poor. Occasionally accused of being a pessimist and misanthrope, his defenders praise his persistently conservative philosophy, which they describe as being anti-ideological, sceptical, rational and empiricist.
Themes
Daniels' writing has some recurring themes.[5]
- The cause of much contemporary misery in Western countries - criminality, domestic violence, drug addiction, aggressive youths, hooliganism, broken families - is the nihilistic, decadent and/or self-destructive behaviour of people who do not know how to live. Both the smoothing over of this behaviour, and the medicalization of the problems that emerge as a corollary of this behaviour, are forms of indifference. Someone has to tell those people, patiently and with understanding for the particulars of the case, that they have to live differently.[6]
- Poverty does not explain aggressive, criminal and self-destructive behaviour. In an African slum you will find among the very poor, living in dreadful circumstances, dignity and decency in abundance, which are painfully lacking in an average English suburb, although its inhabitants are much wealthier.[7]
- An attitude characterized by 'gratefulness' and 'obligations towards others' has been replaced, with awful consequences, by an awareness of rights, a sense of entitlement. The result is resentment as, naturally, those rights are violated by parents, authorities, bureaucracies and others in general.[8]
- Technocratic or bureaucratic solutions to the problems of mankind produce disasters in cases where the nature of man is the root cause of those problems.
- One of the things that makes Islam attractive to young westernized Muslim men, is the opportunity it gives them to dominate women.[9]
- It is a myth (its name is: cold turkey) that withdrawal symptoms of an opiate addiction (i.e. heroin) are virtually unbearable. It is hardly worse than flu.[10]
- Criminality is much more often the cause of drug addiction than its consequence.
- The ideology of the welfare state is used to diminish personal responsibility. Erosion of personal responsibility makes people dependant on institutions and favours the existence of a threatening and vulnerable underclass.
- Moral relativism can easily be a trick of an egotistical mind to silence the voice of conscience.[11]
- Multiculturalism and cultural relativism are at odds with common sense and statistical evidence.[12]
- The decline of civilised behaviour, such as: self-restraint, modesty, zeal, humility, irony, detachment, is a disaster for social and personal life.[13]
- The root cause of our contemporary cultural poverty is intellectual dishonesty. First, the intellectuals have destroyed the foundation of culture, and second, they refuse to acknowledge it by resorting to the caves of political correctness.
- Beyond and above all other nations in the world, Britain is the place where all the evils summarized above are most clearly manifest.[14]
References
- ^ See: Website Skeptical Doctor. For an example of an article written by Edward Theberton, see: Black Marx (The Spectator, 5 juli 1986). The characteristic opening sentence of the article reads: "If the people of Mozambique could eat slogans, they would be fat."
- ^ a b Theodore Dalrymple. Where nobody knows your name. (Globe and Mail, Feb. 16, 2008).
- ^ See: Profile published in the New York Sun, 2004.
- ^ In his essay 'What we have to lose', in: Our Culture What's Left of It, p. 158, Anthony Daniels wrote: "(...) my mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany (...) She had left Germany when she was seventeen (...)".
- ^ A good number of Daniels' themes are discussed in the interview by Paul Belien with Daniels: 'Dalrymple on Decadence, Europe, America and Islam', in: The Brussels Journal, the Voice of Conservatism in Europe, 17 September 2006.
- ^ See: Life at the bottom. The Worldview that makes the Underclass (passim).
- ^ See: What is Poverty, City Journal, spring 1999.
- ^ See: 'The Law of Conservation of Righteous Indignation, and its Connection to the Expansion of Human Rights', in: In Praise of Prejudice. The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas, p. 68 (chapter 17).
- ^ See: When Islam Breaks Down, City Journal, Spring 2004.
- ^ See: http://www.newstatesman.com/199904090021 New Statesman, 09 April 1999. See also: Romancing Opiates (passim).
- ^ See: 'The Uses of Metaphysical Skepticism', in: In Praise of Prejudice. The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas, p. 6 (chapter 2).
- ^ See: Multiculturalism Starts Losing its Luster, City Journal, summer 2004.
- ^ See: All our Pomp of Yesterday, City Journal, summer 1999.
- ^ See: Not with a Bang but a Whimper (passim). Daniels does not baulk at the use of the concept of evil. Numerous articles of his have evil in the title.
Works
- Coups and Cocaine: Two Journeys in South America (1986)
- Fool or Physician: The Memoirs of a Sceptical Doctor (1987)
- Zanzibar to Timbuktu (1988)
- Sweet Waist of America: Journeys around Guatemala (1990)
- The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World (1991) (published in the U.S. as Utopias Elsewhere)
- Monrovia Mon Amour: A Visit to Liberia (1992)
- If Symptoms Persist: Anecdotes from a Doctor (1994)
- So Little Done: The Testament of a Serial Killer (1996)
- If Symptoms Still Persist (1996)
- Mass Listeria: The Meaning of Health Scares (1998)
- An Intelligent Person's Guide to Medicine (2001)
- Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (2001) ISBN 1566633826
- Violence, Disorder and Incivility in British Hospitals: The Case for Zero Tolerance (2002) ISBN 0907631975
- Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses (2005) ISBN 1566636434
- Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies And The Addiction Bureaucracy (2006) ISBN 1594030871 (published in the U.K. as Junk Medicine: Doctors, Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy ISBN 1905641591)
- In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas (2007) ISBN 1594032025
- Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline (2008) ISBN 1566637953
External links
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