http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Dalrymple
Here are some of his best quotes!
* "Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
* "All the things that men desire are not compatible, and therefore discontent is the lot of Man; as Rasselas’s sister, Nekayah, puts it: “No man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.” A man who understands this will not as a result cease to experience incompatible desires—for example, those for security and excitement—but he will be less embittered that he cannot have everything he wants. An understanding of the imperfectibility of life is necessary for both happiness and virtue."
* "When exactly did this downward cultural spiral begin, this loss of tact and refinement and understanding that some things should not be said or directly represented? When did we no longer appreciate that to dignify certain modes of behavior, manners, and ways of being with artistic representation was implicitly to glorify and promote them? There is, as Adam Smith said, a deal of ruin in a nation: and this truth applies as much to a nation's culture as to its economy. The work of cultural destruction, while often swifter, easier, and more self-conscious than that of construction, is not the work of a moment. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day."
* "He describes one murder as "a parking lot stick-up gone bad". What is a parking lot stick-up that goes well, then? Is it a man being relieved of his property without being killed, merely frightened out of his wits? When lawyers think like gangsters, using virtually the same language (more than one murderer has told me that it wasn't murder because it was only a robbery that went wrong), the outlook for society is not encouraging."
"The combination of relativism and antipathy to traditional culture has played a large part in creating the underclass, thus turning Britain from a class into a caste society. The poorest people were deprived both of a sense of cultural hierarchy and of the moral imperative to conform their conduct to any standard whatever. Henceforth what they had and what they did was as good as anything, because all cultures and all cultural artifacts are equal. Aspiration was therefore pointless: and thus they have been as immobilized in their poverty - material, mental, and spiritual - as completely as the damned in Dante's Inferno. Essay, "Uncouth Chic", in "Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes The Underclass", (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2001.)
I think that last quote is really on the money.
But the fact remains that the quality of life was much higher than in England even if I had less disposable income than I did when in England, and there were virtually nil anti-social problems that I experienced, in the town I lived in (which admittedly was fairly small about 10k or so) or in Prague itself, in fact the few times I witnessed loutish behaviour was in Prague and it was caused by scummy English "people" who'd come over for stag parties.......
