Theodore Dalrymple: Much Ado About Nothing - pledging allegiance to identity politics.

The killing of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis launched a new global epidemic, one not deadly like Covid-19 but perhaps as infectious—that of insincere breast-beating that, oddly enough, has given new credence to the term institutional racism. 

One of the institutions busy institutionalizing racism is the Folger Library in Washington, D.C.

Theodore Dalrymple: The sanctification of George Floyd

When I first saw the mural of George Floyd with large angel wings, I assumed that it was a satire on his sanctification – effective, perhaps, but not in the best of taste. Shortly afterwards, however, I realised that the mural was in earnest: the picture of the mural in the newspaper included a man genuflecting before it and the caption said that he was making a ‘pilgrimage’. Apparently, St Peter can no longer cope alone at the Pearly Gates: he need bouncers too, Heaven having become something like a nightclub.

George Floyd was not a saint; in fact, he was a bad man, and being killed by a brutal policeman does not change a man’s life from bad to good. 

He was a man of many convictions – criminal convictions, that is, not political ones – and at least one of his crimes was of deep-dyed malignity. Along with five others, he broke into a pregnant woman’s house and held her at gunpoint while his associates ransacked the house for drugs and money. This is not the kind of crime that results from a sudden surrender to temptation. It was premeditated and planned, albeit not very intelligently or successfully.

Theodore Dalrymple: Burning Indignation - a law student’s callous treatment of a homeless man sparks a national outrage

In February 2017, an 18-year-old Cambridge University law student, Ronald Coyne, was filmed on the streets of Cambridge at night burning a £20 note in front of a 31-year-old homeless man, Ryan Davies, who had asked him politely for spare change. According to Davies, Coyne said, “I’ll give you some change. I’ve changed it into fire.” Coyne then continued down the street as if he had done nothing worthy of note. A member of the university’s Conservative club, he was drunk at the time—though not dead drunk, for he was more swaggering than staggering—and dressed in white tie and tails.

The video of the encounter went viral; a picture of the young man, looking very pleased with himself, appeared in most British newspapers. Public condemnation swelled. Before long, 23,000 people signed a petition calling for his expulsion from the university.

Theodore Dalrymple: No Consolation - the Netherlands didn’t actually euthanise a teenager

If I were Dutch, I would not be altogether reassured by the ease with which it was widely (though mistakenly) believed that a 17-year-old girl named Noa Pothoven was put to death by doctors because of her unbearable mental suffering, rather than the fact that she was actually allowed to refuse all food and drink until she died of dehydration. The first was believed because putting a depressed teenager to death is the kind of thing many people have come to expect of the Netherlands.

Their expectations are not the result of mere prejudice. In August 2017, a Dutch doctor published a letter about the evolution of euthanasia in the country. “In 2015,” he wrote, “92 percent of the patients who received physician assisted dying had a serious somatic disease,” from which it follows that 8 percent (or 450 persons in absolute numbers) did not. Even this number may be an underestimate, for it was based on a survey to which only 78 percent of doctors replied. Furthermore, “serious somatic disease” is not the same as “imminently fatal disease.”

Theodore Dalrymple: Trawling the trolls

I am no respecter of persons, particularly politicians, but even politicians are human -- more or less -- and are therefore deserving of some kind of elementary courtesy. 

When, shortly after my arrival in Australia to spend April at CIS, I read a Guardian article reporting the Treasurer's remarks on state taxation, I read with mild dismay, but not surprise, the readers' on-line responses; for example the following: