Social Analysis and the Quotable Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple has recently given an interview, and he's got all sorts of interesting things to say. I give you a few notable quotables to pique your curiosity!

On Great Britain and social decline:
"Britain is performing a valuable service, by setting such an obviously bad example for others to avoid."

On the negative view of history:
"I think this negative historiography is extremely important and destructive. One of its functions, of course, is to aggrandize public intellectuals."

On why intellectuals seem to sympathize with the wrongdoer:
"Intellectuals need to say things that are not immediately obvious or do not occur to the man in the street. The man in the street instinctively sympathizes with the victim of crime; therefore, to distinguish himself from the man in the street, the intellectual has to sympathize with the criminal, by turning him into a victim of forces which only he, the intellectual, has sufficient sophistication to see."

Oh, my!