-
Not a Dark Age, Just 50 Shades of Gray
March 16, 2013 | 0 comments
-
Whose Rule of Law?
October 31, 2012 | 15 comments
-
Will the LIBOR Scandal Help Re-Elect Obama?
July 30, 2012 | 17 comments
-
When Baseball Was More Than a Game
April 17, 2012 | 24 comments
-
Risk Responsibly
September 23, 2011 | 18 comments
Buy the Book
Among the Miserabilists
The inimitable Theodore Dalrymple scores again.
The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to
Barbarism
by Theodore Dalrymple
(Encounter Books, 163 pages, $23.95)
Among the features we savor most when reading our London cousins, The Spectator, are the acerbic observations of Theodore Dalrymple about his life as a prison and public hospital psychiatrist in the squalor of the East End. When he retired from those duties some years ago he widened his viewfinder to take in the goofy gyrations of New Labour at home and the posturing of the European Community place servers abroad.
Dalrymple, of course, is just one of the pen names used by Anthony Daniels to create a variety of personas that he uses in dozens of books on topics as varied as the drug culture of South America, the kleptocracies of East Africa, scientific scares, Marxism, the British underclass, or the practice of medicine under the National Health system. My favorite Daniels nom is Thursday Msigwa. But Dalrymple, crusty of mood, laser-sharp in insight, and eloquent in scorn, is doubtless the best of his characters, perhaps because there is so much about modern Britain and Europe to decry.
The old Vichy referred to in the title was a sad and disgraceful attempt by French leaders in World War II to pretend to themselves and the world that they had not been humiliated by Hitler’s Wehrmacht and that they still exerted some semblance of control over France’s destiny. In the New Vichy of Dalrymple’s analysis, a “miserabilist” malaise has seized most of Europe’s intellectual elite, causing them to give up even the pretense of influence in world affairs or responsibility for the world’s perils. Rather, they concentrate on living well while obsessively making sure their neighbor does not do any better than they.
It is certainly true that many of Europe’s problems are both external and relative to other nations. The rise of China and India, not to mention a host of other expansive economies, has left the European Community trailing in many of the global league tables. But Dalrymple warns,
It is one thing to fret over a decline that leads you to inhabit a static, but rich and genteel, country that is more like a museum of past achievement than a living, breathing power, but another to contemplate absolute decline. For once the machinery of international competition is set up, there is no standing still; you can go only forwards or backwards. If you don’t keep up, you will go back, not relatively but absolutely, and Europe is blessed neither with natural resources nor huge tracts of virgin land upon which its population might lead a simpler life than that demanded by advanced economies.
But rather than gear up intellectually to meet that competition, Europe’s opinion leaders in all sectors appear to have seized on the very responses that paralyze them from remedying the Continent’s societal flaws. Instead of listing all the usual and highly visible suspects — the decline of religion, the disparaging of patriotism, the belief that all human responses are relatively equal in moral worth — Dalrymple targets the very idea of Europe itself as being neither an effective form of government nor a force for cultural, let alone political, unity within its borders. Says Dalrymple:
The Second World War destroyed European self-confidence once and for all. This was for two reasons that were synergistic in their effect; the first was the total loss of European power wrought by that war, and the second was the nature of European behavior during it. No European power emerged with both its power intact and an historical record during the conflict that bears moral examination.
Among the prime movers of the idea of a European Community, he adds, Germany sought to bury part of its national guilt for the war under the cover of regional cooperation, while France, its role as a global power gone forever, sought to salvage what power it could through its weight within the new construct. The Community organization that resulted — its pantomime parliament, its mandarin bureaucracy, its nit-picking rules making — has become “a giant pension fund for defunct politicians, who either cannot get elected in their own countries or are tired of the struggle to do so.”
Lest we revel too much in the Schadenfreude of this well-thought-out tour of the European horizon, Dalrymple reserves his final words for the United States, which also “finds itself at a historical conjuncture when its relative power in the world has weakened.” Caught between this relative decline in world dominance and the conflicting demands of an expanding welfare state, America could, he warns, fall victim to the same miserabilist illness that now grips Europe. The bitter disillusion that has gripped the country in reaction to the euphoria over President Obama’s election two years ago is cited as evidence that the virus is with us already.
“A healthy modern society must know how to remain the same as well as change, to conserve as well as to reform. Europe has changed without knowing how to conserve; that is its tragedy,” he concludes. Thoughts worth pondering as we face the new political landscape that we have so recently brought upon ourselves.
About the Author
James Srodes, an author and broadcaster, is a former Washington bureau chief for Forbes and Financial Worldmagazines. His latest book, On Dupont Circle: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Progressives Who Shaped Our World, is being published next week. His email address is srodesnews@msn.com.
Deborah D | 3.10.11 @ 7:47AM
Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh spoke at length about the 35% of Americans who are on the dole. That's up from 26% just prior to the recession. The Obama administration is dragging us along toward the European cliff. Republicans, it's up to us to roll this suicidal government back. If we can survive until 2012, we must take the reins out of the leftists' hands and get Americans to work and off the dole.
Deborah D | 3.10.11 @ 7:48AM
By the way, you can read the transcript of Rush's excellent monologue here: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/ho.....guest.html
martin j smith| 3.10.11 @ 7:58AM
An impression I have of Western Europe Elites ( France,Germany Spain,Italy and I will throw in Greece ) seems to consist of a melange of attitudes which add up to this; We are Brilliant, You are Stupid. And, Lets all get along kumbaya so that all of the"serfs" get their happy meal,we get our millions, and everyone is happy. And, We want to show the world how goody goody we are to Muslims to they wont be bady bady to us. And so, instead of worrying about National Security ( never heard of that ) we can spend money on the goody gooodies to make everyone especially us happy. I should say Elites are the same crowd as in this country--Government,Academia,Media etc. the usual suspects. These folks are the same crowd that supported Obama and It would not shock me to learn that they supported him financially as well. And, there is suggestion that the financial crisis was to some degree engineered by foreign governments. Western Europe certainly joined the Bash Bush crowd as well.
Add it all up and the product that you get is what we have in the white House which all reflects the terrible road that Europe has taken in recent years
JimH| 3.10.11 @ 8:37AM
I’ve had the pleasure reading Dalrymple’s work for years. His is a much needed if sometimes uncomfortable unvarnished view of the human condition.
Sheila| 3.10.11 @ 10:15AM
With Dalrymple's typically artful turn of phrase, he amply sums up western civilization today: "a museum of past achievement." Living through the dissolution of my own society is bad enough; I cannot bear to think of my children's future.
Petronius| 3.10.11 @ 10:45AM
I think Ted picked the wrong title. He should call it Eurotopsy. I do know the cure for what ails us. Try the Flowerpots Ale, Cheriton, Hantz.
gary siebel| 3.10.11 @ 3:02PM
Interesting that you lend so much credence to a psychiatrist, and a prison one, no less. Multiple personalities to boot. Have they been prescribing you drugs? Did drug addict Limbaugh happen to get his first (legal) prescriptions from a shrink? Are you a fan of Woody Allen movies?
Sweeping analyses of supposed historical trends are a dime a dozen -- then they get some job at some Institute or other after their book goes bestseller. The only way to determine a prophet is through prophecy that turns out to be correct, but since there are so many predicting so many different things, many in direct contradiction to each other, that someone should turn out to be right is probably just a matter of luck. A shotgun blast in a crowded room is bound to hit someone. Prophecy works largely the same way -- make enough and some are bound to be right. The ones who are in error (most of the punditocracy) sincerely hope their mistakes will be quietly forgotten.
Occam's Tool| 3.10.11 @ 8:14PM
Perhaps you should actually read his work, first. You might then find out that Dr. Dalrymple is a Conservative.
I was a prison psychiatrist for many years, including working with the Alabama Chain Gang. Multiple Personality Disorders were not found; but suicide attempts were common. My job was to minimize damage to the system. It's worse in England.
Occam's Tool| 3.10.11 @ 8:18PM
Sorry, Dr. Daniels. But his take on the underclass in Britain is pure gold. Quite applicable to the US, as well.
Clint| 3.10.11 @ 3:50PM
The Austrian School's Ludwig von Mises talking about The Marshall Plan:
" The American subsidies make it possible for their governments to conceal partially the disastrous effects of the various socialist measures they have adopted."
ENOUGH ROPE| 3.10.11 @ 9:09PM
Discernment of a root cause for the problems weakening Europe and the United States is clear to some and confusing to others. Given the present economic, political, social, military, and religious realities on both continents, is it likely that those who are confused outnumber enormously those who are clear? Yes!
What is the root cause? All men want peace and happiness. As finite beings, will we ever obtain peace and happiness by seeking only finite things or finite ideas? Will exclusive quests for aggrandizement of wealth, power, fame, and pleasure provide peace and happiness? One wit claimed that it is better to be rich and miserable instead of poor and miserable. Pong to that ping is the aphorism, worded variously by different authors , "We forge the chains that bind us." If we reflect truthfully about the last question, most of us will conclude that something is missing. That something, as Father Corapi says repeatedly, is a somebody--Jesus Christ. Let's be ecumenical and say the somebody is the God of the major religions.
The choir does not need to be converted, but those of us who are lukewarm, agnostic, or atheistic do need to question whether we should try an experiment that seeks to love, OBEY, and serve God and to love with neighborly love our brothers and sisters. Would we feel God's grace in our hearts that would give us a better kind of peace and happiness? The latter is the kind of peace and happiness that is infinite; it is infinite happiness and peace that will satisfy us.
A wise religious leader expressed his yearning for a universal renewal "... that has for Its foundation truth, its object justice, its operation freedom, and its driving force love." Attainment of that renewal would bring "peace on earth and goodwill to men." Has humanity proved that it can produce that peace and goodwill by human will alone? No!. We are too selfish. Our best chance for individual and societal peace and happiness is to love, OBEY, and serve God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Whom shall we love, obey and serve--ourselves or God and our neighbors?
MIKE HARRIS| 3.12.11 @ 8:54AM
He may have been the East End, but it was the East End of Birmingham, our second city, where the doctor spent his career.
Creative Recreation | 8.11.11 @ 2:00AM
is good