The usual brilliance.
Some key excerpts from the article:
“By a mixture of ideology and fiscal and social policies, the family has been systematically fractured and destroyed in England, at least in the lowest part of the society that, unfortunately, needs family solidarity the most.
“Certainly the notions of dependence and independence have changed. I remember a population that was terrified of falling into dependence on the state, because such dependence, apart from being unpleasant in itself, signified personal failure and humiliation. But there has been an astonishing gestalt switch in my lifetime. Independence has now come to mean independence of the people to whom one is related and dependence on the state...by which they meant independent of the fathers of their children...The state would provide. In the new dispensation the state, as well as television, is father to the child.
“When I started out as a doctor in the mid-1970s, those who received state benefits would say, “I receive my check on Friday.” Now people who receive such benefits say, “I get paid on Friday.” [T]o say that they get paid on Friday is to imply that they are receiving money in return for something.
“[A]bout the intellectual and moral corruption wrought by the state in recent years—[t]he governments of Britain, of both political parties, managed to lessen the official rate of unemployment by the simple expedient of shifting people from the ranks of the unemployed to the ranks of the sick. [B]y 2006—a year of economic boom, remember—the British welfare state had achieved the remarkable feat of producing more invalids than the First World War. This feat, then, could have been achieved only by the willing corruption of the unemployed themselves—[a]nd the government was only too happy, for propaganda purposes, to connive at such large-scale fraud.
“[W]e [have] destroyed all economic incentive for [unemployed people] to work.”
Thanks for posting!
It IS an excellent article and has been downloaded, saved and passed along.
Thanks for making us aware of this. I’ve enjoyed reading articles by “Theodore Dalrymple” but was unaware of his background.
I also like his quote from Kipling: ‘ “What should they know of England who only England know?” Indeed, what should anyone know of anywhere, who only that place knows? ‘
Like Dr. Daniels, Mrs. BN & I have also spent a great deal of time in rural Africa. Whenever some politician, celebrity or news commentator starts blathering about “Poverty in America”, she usually looks at me and says, “They really don’t have a clue as to what real poverty is, do they?”
Several years ago, Dr Daniels published a book called “Life at the Bottom” under the pen name Theodore Dalrymple. It addresses the same subject as this article, but in more depth. It is a profound book.
BFL. I adore Dalrymple’s stuff.