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Sonic Boom Boy

I’m currently in Florida and yesterday witnessed first-hand the double sonic boom, like a crack of thunder, as space shuttle Endeavour returned to Earth after 16 days in low orbit. The trip took place so that astronauts could fit new parts to the International Space Station and the landing was perfect.

The shuttle touched down just a few miles away, at Kennedy Space Center where, if you visit, you can see the amazing 3D film Magnificent Desolation, which puts you virtually on the surface of the moon…

U2: Where the Streets Have No Name

Ad hominem: the workhorse of political correctness

Ad hominem arguments are very often deployed, deviously, when people are offended or in other ways disturbed by an argument, but cannot muster any substantive counter-arguments. The person is often offended precisely because the argument is true and they know it to be so. This type of response therefore constitutes both “shooting the messenger” and denial.

Ad hominem arguments are the very workhorse of political correctness, so it wise for us all to be able to recognise and expose them. To this effect there is a clear explanation on the Wikipedia web site.

Those who deploy ad hominem arguments should be ashamed of themselves. Another type of argument that has to be watched is the reverse of ad hominem arguments: the appeal to authority. While less dangerous (because of peer consensus), the inductive appeal to authority is still ultimately a logical fallacy – that is to say, just because someone has been right in the past, that does not necessarily mean they are right in this instance.

The conclusion, then, is that arguments must be taken on their own merits, regardless of whether we happen to like either what they state or who is doing the stating.

John Everett Millais: The Knight Errant

State of the nation

We ought not to think of Britain as always coming last at everything. After all, it does have:

• The highest level of teenage pregnancy in Europe, and rising.
• The highest obesity level in Europe, and rising.
• The highest prison population in Europe, and rising.
• The highest incidence of binge drinking in Europe, and rising.
• The highest consumer debt in Europe (double the European average).

It also has:

• A rising rate of violent crime, with twice as many offences as in the last decade.
• A worryingly high number of illiterate adults and school leavers.
• A declining manufacturing output with the lowest number of people working in the sector since records began.
• The lowest place in Europe’s child well-being table.
• A falling over-all fertility rate.
• A declining rate of marriage (now at its lowest rate since records began).

I wouldn’t look into or list these things, if it didn’t actually seem that way on the streets.

What, broadly, are the causes of these problems that threaten Britain? Affluenza, status anxiety, selfishness, political correctness, the embrace of a “rights before duties” attitude to life, apathy, the safety net of the welfare state, a culture of instant gratification and a widespread abandonment of personal integrity and responsibility. Akrasia.

I won’t discuss the issues any further here because they are analysed in detail in many excellent books I have mentioned on my site. If politicians would only read them and act on their findings, they might be able to reverse the self-destruction of a once great nation.

Theodore Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple is the pseudonym of Anthony Daniels, an ex-prison doctor with considerable experience of dealing with the criminal underclass and disadvantaged of Britain.

Let’s digress briefly to have a look at two of the words I used there. “Underclass”. They’re not really an underclass: people across the social spectrum display psychopathy and I am dubious of the notion of class at all – it at most provides vague boundaries. “Disadvantaged”. In a land where healthcare is free, benefits are paid and libraries offer free books, no-one is really, truly disadvantaged. If you want disadvantaged, try Somalia instead.

Those points cleared up, let us return to Theodore Dalrymple. While I was mystified by his misrepresentation of Sam Harris fine book The End of Faith (as was the author himself), he is otherwise coming from very much the same place as myself. He writes, for example:

“Returning briefly to England from France for a speaking engagement, I bought three of the major dailies to catch up on the latest developments in my native land. The impression they gave was of a country in the grip of a thoroughgoing moral frivolity. In a strange inversion of proper priorities, important matters are taken lightly and trivial ones taken seriously.”

He is concerned about the decline in values, lack of personal responsibility, emphasis on rights before duties and the general cultural malaise and decadence currently prevalent in the UK. Any right-thinking, compassionate and realistic person of conscience should be. We’re not saying everything is bad, of course! But we’re saying some very serious things are, and they are affecting the happiness of the citizens of this country.

Dr Daniels is obviously an erudite, sensitive and compassionate man who has seen so much that he feels he must now speak out, and he has done so in several books which I am reading. There is also a very interesting video of him speaking. If only the government would take on realistic and well informed people such as Dr Daniels as policy advisors instead pandering to political correctness, there might be hope for this society. Meanwhile, Theodore Dalrymple watches and comments from afar, and this is understandable. We are morally obliged to stand up to self-imposed decay, but we’re not morally obliged to stand within it.