RAEL JEAN ISAAC INTERVIEWS THEODORE DALRYMPLE FOR FSM
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10251/pub_detail.asp
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10251/pub_detail.asp
The combination of family reunion and social security is disastrous.
The great majority of Moslem immigrants, in my experience, make no special demands. The minority who do have their demands echoed and magnified by some intellectuals and politicians. The problem of Islamism, therefore, is at least as much with us as with Islamists.
In my belief, modern Islamism is a nasty hybrid of Islam and a certain kind of politics, and owes as much to Che Guevara as to Mohammed.
I do not know this for sure, but I would doubt there are many converts to Islam in women’s prisons.
After Anders Breivik, a seemingly “normal” individual, methodically gunned down dozens of politically active young people at a summer camp in Norway the Wall Street Journal turned to the most likely person to be able to elucidate the mystery. The Journal interviewed Theodore Dalrymple, prison doctor, psychiatrist, essayist, author of over a dozen books, most of them puzzling wryly and trenchantly over the human condition and the ways in which the social engineers who have sought to improve it have made matters far, far worse. Readers of this book of essays will not be surprised that Dalrymple offered no easy “explanation.” For the subject to which this eclectic group of essays repeatedly returns is evil, its fascination for us, its permutations, and ultimately its mystery, which Dalrymple believes is never likely to be resolved.
On the other hand, a few weeks later, when rioters smashed their way through a number of British cities, Dalrymple did not hesitate to identify the “root cause.” Again in the Journal–this time in an op-ed “Barbarians Inside Britain’s Gates”– Dalrymple zeroed in on the intellectuals, politicians and bureaucrats who fostered a sense of entitlement in a large segment of the population subsidized by the government in a near permanent condition of unemployment augmented by criminal activity. Such activity, up to and including murder, meets ludicrously small punishment (if any) by the criminal justice system. Those who defend themselves are more likely to wind up on the wrong side of the law.
Anyone who had read these essays as they appeared over the last few years in New English Review (or indeed his articles in National Review, City Journal and elsewhere chronicling the British underclass) would have known such riots were in the cards.
The reader of this book is in for an intellectual feast for Dr. Dalrymple takes us on multi-level tours all of them thought-provoking. There is a tour of Europe with reflections on everything from art to arsonists, the joys of borderless travel to the losses that come from the neglect of cultural identities. And then there is the tour of the dysfunctional politics of Western societies, with their efforts to make life free of pain which wind up making it empty of purpose, with terrible consequences. Finally there is the tour of the soul, its mysteries, the evil which so many pretend does not exist but manifests itself in ways small and great–Dalrymple, who spent years in Africa, gives us a glimpse into Rwanda’s heart of darkness where friendly, normal people turned into remorseless monsters on a dime.
In one of these essays Dalrymple talks of an internet correspondent with whom he struck up a friendship and the words well describe Dalrymple himself: “He wrote of this and that, often of modern follies that he dissected with detached amusement rather than bitterness, for of course he had experienced a lot of folly in his time and he knew that life continued, usually with enjoyment, in spite of it.” For Dalrymple writes not only of evil and folly but of Shakespeare and fine art, of book collecting and of globalism, of religious faith (he is a respectful non-believer) and of moral ambiguity. It is the range of his interests and the wit, style and knowledge he brings to his subjects that makes literary critic Roger Kimball call Dalrymple “our age’s answer to Dr. Johnson and George Orwell.”
It is a great pleasure to interview Dr. Dalrymple.
RJI: Readers may have encountered you as either Theodore Dalrymple or as Anthony Daniels, your real name. What made you use pseudonyms and is there any principle underlying your sometimes use of your name-by-birth?
Answer: I needed a pseudonym because I was a practicing doctor and was writing about my work. I wanted the name of someone who did not exist but who, if he had existed, would have sounded bad-tempered and old-fashioned. I soon became better-known under that pseudonym than under my own name, so I continued to use it even when there was no real need. I have no special reason now for writing under one name or the other; I usually let editors decide.
RJI: These essays appeared in the New English Review and I know you are one of its editors. Can you tell us more about it, its history and core interests?
Answer: Actually, I know relatively little about the NER and its history. I have never met any of the people associated with it except Ibn Waraq. Some years ago, Rebecca Bynum asked me whether I would be willing to write monthly and I agreed because I am a graphomaniac. We have had happy electronic relations ever since. I suppose our preoccupation is the preservation and if possible furtherance of culture.
RJI: You describe a rocky childhood with parents you felt at the time did not give you sufficient attention. You also mention that your father was a Communist and your mother a refugee from Nazi Germany who never spoke of what she and her family went through. Did this unusual background have any role in impelling you into the adventurous and sometimes dangerous life you led as a young doctor, in the heart of Africa and elsewhere? If not, what did propel you and what led you to come back and settle in Britain?
Answer: An unhappy childhood did cause me to seek adventure and even develop a taste for danger, which dissolved any personal problems I might have had. And since Nazism and Communism were present in my household in some fashion, I also developed a taste for ‘big questions.’ My settling down was a gradual process, as I began to realise that you didn’t have to go to the ends of the earth to find interest. Indeed, everywhere is interesting.
RJI: In the wake of the riots British Prime Minister David Cameron has been emphasizing the need for family responsibility, and I expect you would agree. Yet at the end of your Wall Street Journal op-ed you say “David Cameron is not the man for the job.” Can you amplify on why you think he is not and is there any possibility under current conditions that someone capable of meeting the challenge will come to the fore?
Answer: I am not an admirer of Mr Cameron because I think or fear that he is a typical modern product of our system, namely a person whose most salient characteristic is personal ambition and avidity for office. I would be delighted to be proved wrong; but I suspect he has a focus-group mentality; his eyes are on next week’s polls rather than on what is right. I repeat, nothing would give me greater pleasure that to be proved wrong, and I would love to recant my error. But he is said to admire Blair. Need I say more?
RJI: You write chiefly of the largely self-created problems of Britain given that much of your working life was spent there. But you also live part of the year in France and are quite familiar with life in the United States. How do France (with its special problems of the banlieues) and the U.S. stack up compared to Britain? Do you see signs of what has happened in Britain coming to the U.S.?
Answer:The countries have similarities and difference. France is virtually an apartheid state whereas Britain is not. It can therefore keep its social problems isolated whereas Britain cannot. You can go hundreds of miles in France without realizing it has social problems, whereas in Britain you can’t go a hundred yards without seeing them (noticing them is another matter).Cultural degeneration has also gone much further in Britain than in France.
As to the United States, it is not immune from these troubles. It has one great advantage over Britain, however: while its worst may be as bad as anything in Britain, its best is much better. While the best a country has is still very good, there is greater ground for hope.
RJI: You write of Islam with a mixture of sympathy and trepidation, more of the latter. What policies are needed to deal specifically with the problems Islamic immigration poses for Western societies?
Answer:The first thing is to make clear that it is for immigrants into a country to understand the country they are immigrating into and not the other way round. Except in rare cases, no special official provisions should be made for them.
The combination of family reunion and social security is disastrous.
The great majority of Moslem immigrants, in my experience, make no special demands. The minority who do have their demands echoed and magnified by some intellectuals and politicians. The problem of Islamism, therefore, is at least as much with us as with Islamists.
In my belief, modern Islamism is a nasty hybrid of Islam and a certain kind of politics, and owes as much to Che Guevara as to Mohammed.
RJI: You have been a prison doctor. In the United States, we have a serious problem with Moslem clergy that convert a large number of incarcerated youth to Islam? Will you comment on that?
Answer: I am no expert, but I would expect the majority of converts to be black. There comes a time when criminals want a reason to give up crime, and religious conversion is a good one. Converting to Islam allows black prisoners to give up crime without having surrendered to society, since they know that the latter fears Islam.
I do not know this for sure, but I would doubt there are many converts to Islam in women’s prisons.
RJI: Largely because of our non-existent southern border and our incoherent immigration policy, immigration has become a major issue in the U.S. How important is it to come to grips with this issue and what policies do you think need to be followed?
Answer: I am really no expert at all on this difficult problem.At the least I should say that there should be no bilingualism. Amnesties seem to me absurd. But I would have to give the matter more thought than I have given it.
RJI: You use the term, which resonated with me, “moral frivolity.” Can you expand on this for our readers?
Answer: By moral frivolity I mean the refusal to take more problems seriously, as manifested for example by refusal to look at or to think about the results of a policy based on a treasured idea or ideal – treasured not because it does good, but because it allows one to feel good about oneself. A typically frivolous idea is that there are large numbers of people who are incapable of making decisions for themselves.
RJI: Your last book focused on the toxic sentimentality of British culture and how it led to brutality and neglect. Is this a phenomenon special to Britain?
Answer: We in Britain have long had a curious and disastrous policy of maintaining numbers of indigenous unemployed on state benefits while importing foreign unskilled labour. I suspect social security and social housing have created this situation, but don’t know if there is an analogy in the States.
RJI: Although not culturally dominant there is considerable conservative movement in this country with institutes, journals, television stations, internet sites that are receptive to what you say. What is the situtation in England?
Answer:The situation is slightly different. There are conservative think tanks and I have had not much difficulty in writing for magazines, journals, newspapers etc. The broadcast media, however, very rarely invite me – though I do not really like appearing on radio or TV and do not think it is my forte. But perhaps it is a sign of the grip of an opposing world view on those media.
For a long time I had difficulty in having my books published in the UK. This could not have been for commercial reasons. If my books about England sold substantially -not hugely – in the US and elsewhere, there was absolutely no risk of publishers in the UK not making a profit on them. They did not like what I had to say and therefore would not publish it. This is mildly sinister.
However, the situation has improved. The costs of publishing have fallen dramatically, and with electronic distribution and e-books the larger publishers have lost their de facto powers of censorship. Small publishers have grown up who have been prepared to publish me, although I admit that I still find it disappointing, and perhaps an unhealthy symptom in our dominant culture, that no large publisher will.
Thank you very much for your book and your participation in this interview.
Anything Goes by Theodore Dalrymple (Perfect Paperback – Sep 1, 2011)
Available for Pre-order. This item will be released on September 1, 2011.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Rael Jean Isaac is co-author (with Erich Isaac) of The Coercive Utopians.
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