Latest / The Catholic Current / Must We Tolerate Tolerance? (Theodore Dalrymple) 5/28/26

Transcript

Must We Tolerate Tolerance? (Theodore Dalrymple) 5/28/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Fr. Robert Mittaig.
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I think we really don't want to be loved.
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We don't want to be loved in a way that evokes a response.
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We just don't want to grow up, and so that's why we insist on this adolescent, juvenile
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This is why Lent is really a time of liberation, but it's a release from a different kind of
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captivity than Egyptian slavery.
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It's a captivity of comfortable lies that we prefer to love, which is too demanding.
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Praised be Jesus Christ, this is Fr. Robert Mittaig of The Society of Jesus, your daily
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As always, let's start with prayer.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Almighty God, through the intercession of St. Ignatius Leroux, we ask that you pour
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forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and
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obey your command.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Amen.
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Well, friends, on some days I like my job more than others, and today is one of those
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days where I do like them more than others.
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One of my favorite literary genres is the essay.
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I try to practice that art myself, and we have here a returning guest whose work I admire
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very greatly.
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He's one of the greatest living practitioners of the art of the essay.
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How would you describe him?
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An author, retired doctor, psychiatrist, traveler, raconteur, maybe even a curmudgeon as well,
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and we're going to link to a lot of his work here today.
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Theodore Dalrymple, welcome back to The Catholic Current.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you for inviting me.
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I want to talk about your article from January about tolerance.
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I have a friend who is a millennial, and every now and again she admonishes me and says,
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even in text, she says, Father, you're using your judgy voice, and apparently exercising
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judgment is a sin against the greatest good, which is tolerance.
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I grew up in a very different moral and religious tradition from that.
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Why is tolerance, why has that been divinized in our lifetime?
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Does that serve us well?
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Well, it doesn't serve us well, of course.
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Actually it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what tolerance is, because if you don't
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judge anything, there's nothing to be tolerant of.
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Everyone presumably tolerates what he thinks and what he likes, and so actually tolerance
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is the control, to a degree, of the dislike of something that you find morally bad or
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repellent, but you decide that it's necessary to tolerate it and to be tolerant towards
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it.
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As I said, if you don't disapprove of anything, there's no need for tolerance.
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Right, and it seems to me that we end up in kind of this persistent relativism, and when
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I taught ethical theory, I told my students, I'm going to teach you how to be an anti-relativist
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ninja.
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Everyone, even the most tolerant, has some non-negotiable issue, and you've got to lean
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on that, and eventually they'll admit, well, you really can't be universally tolerant.
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Aren't there some things, dare I say, by definition, by their very nature, that are just naturally
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intolerable?
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Isn't violation of children naturally intolerable?
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Well, I would say so, but we live in times when things which were once would have been
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thought intolerable are tolerated, and now even celebrated, as it were.
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So, I mean, I remember a patient of mine, and perhaps this was very unfair of me, because
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she was only 17 or something like that, but when asked to describe herself, she said,
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I'm non-judgmental, and I said, well, is that a good thing?
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You troublemaker.
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Perhaps, as I said, it's slightly unfair, because she was only 17, but I wanted to make
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her, I mean, she did look sort of beatific when she described herself as non-judgmental.
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I have seen that as well.
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So moral maturity requires judgment.
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We need to say yes, we need to say no, we need to exercise forbearance, and we praise
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people for having good judgment.
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Beyond the people who just thoughtlessly mouth whatever the current cant is, I do believe
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that there may be something nefarious at work.
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The qui bono, who benefits from the cult of non-judgmentalism, in your view?
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Well, generally speaking, people who don't want to control themselves.
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Oh, that, yes.
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People who say, who are you to say that I shouldn't do this, or I shouldn't do that.
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Right.
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And since there are a very large number of those people now, I think it's a doctrine
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for our times.
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Of course, you see, one of the things that I have noticed, amongst intellectuals particularly,
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is a fear of censoriousness, and people don't make a distinction between making a judgment
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and being censorious.
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Now, censoriousness is actually a very unpleasant quality, and it's the easy condemnation of
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people out of hand, without any interest in their circumstances, or even in them as people,
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just so that you can exercise your moral disapprobation.
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And it's true, that's a very unpleasant quality.
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And I mean, one can see how that kind of censoriousness in the past was often actually very cruel,
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so that, for example, illegitimate children were at one time blamed for their own illegitimacy.
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Now that, I mean, that seems to me not only cruel, but rather stupid, because it makes
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people responsible for their own conception.
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But because there is such a horrible quality of censoriousness, it doesn't mean to say
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that you should abandon judgment.
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Right, right.
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I think that we surrender the entire moral enterprise, and at the risk of sounding conspiratorial
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at the moment, I think the new social contract was, look, I will turn a blind eye to your
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moral nonsense if you turned a blind eye to my moral nonsense.
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And maybe we can do that for a little while, but eventually, doesn't that corrode social
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foundations entirely?
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And I realize I just asked a big question with two minutes left in this segment.
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Yes, of course it does.
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It reminds me a little bit of the social media.
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I pretend to be interested in your trivia if you pretend to be interested in mine.
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Yes.
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Yeah, see, that's part of the difficulty, is we, well, I'm going to put all my cards
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on the table.
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As a philosopher, as a theologian, we've lost the sense of God and man.
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And we don't know what to do with ourselves.
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And we have some vague memory of right and wrong.
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We have some vague sense of what our ancestors might have thought of us.
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And I think for the most part, educated people before us, pious people before us, would disapprove
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of nearly everything that we've been up to for the last few decades, at least in the
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West.
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And that's why I think that's one of the reasons why we've committed to cultural relativism.
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That's why we've committed to not being censorious, as you said, which is a very charming word
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which needs to be reestablished.
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And at the same time, here's the paradox.
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In American slang, it's a terrible thing to be called a Karen, to be called a woke
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scold, that you've violated whatever multicolor flag is currently posted up somewhere.
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You've violated the latest letters of the acronym, etc., etc.
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You're using wrong pronouns for myself because I'm a two-spirited starseed, etc., etc.
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And then comes the cancel culture, followed by what's called the ban hammer.
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And you're eliminated from polite society precisely because you've exercised judgment.
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And the fact that they're using judgment about your being judgmental, I don't think they
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have a habit of self-examination.
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And maybe that, I know we're coming up on a break now, maybe that's something we can
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talk about in the next segment, is that people who have a habit of self-examination, I think
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are going to be more tolerant of judgment than those who are more impulsive, those who
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just want to ride the wave and follow the trend, those who want to be invited to sit
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at the cool kids table at the high school cafeteria.
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I don't know if there was a cool kids table at British boarding schools, but I would imagine
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that there must have been a high table for faculty at most British universities as well.
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Friends, we come back and continue our conversation with author and commentator Theodore Dalrymple.
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We're talking about must we tolerate tolerance.
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There's a cult of tolerance that I think doesn't serve us well.
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Praise be Jesus Christ.
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My returning guest today is author Theodore Dalrymple.
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We're talking about whether we must tolerate tolerance.
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Theodore, as we ended the last segment, I noted that on the one hand, there seems to
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be the iron law of tolerance, and yet if you fail to observe the niceties and proprieties
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around preferred groups or preferred pronouns, et cetera, et cetera, you're driven from
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polite society immediately.
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People throw fruit and vegetables at you if you try to speak at a college campus, et cetera.
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Why is it that the intolerantly tolerant or vice versa, why don't they see their own
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contradiction?
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Well, I think it's probably because they're trying to do something that's actually impossible,
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which is for human beings not to pass judgment.
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I actually believe it's impossible not to pass judgment.
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We pass judgment every minute of the day, actually, about things like this is beautiful,
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that's bad, this is good, and we cannot not do it.
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I mean, it's just impossible not to make that judgment, and yet they're trying to do something
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which is impossible.
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When people are trying to do something which is impossible, they tend to become rather
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aggressive, and so that there's not only a kind of iron law of tolerance, there's also
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an iron law of intolerance.
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If people are not going to be intolerant of one thing, they're going to be intolerant
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of something else.
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There's a conservation of intolerance, and I found for it, to give you another example,
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I found that the most liberal, penological liberals, or the people who argue for leniency
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and complete understanding of crime, even the most atrocious crime, always retain somewhere
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in their mind a crime that for them is beyond the pale and requires repression and condign punishment.
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So, as I said, I think people are trying to do something which is impossible for human
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beings to do, which is not to make a judgment.
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And in fact, someone who doesn't make a judgment, who walks out and tries not to make a judgment,
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won't survive very long in this world, actually.
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Well, yes, and that's something that I want to bring up, that this disinclination to be
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really clear about our moral evaluation doesn't serve us well.
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So I want to quote from your countryman, Hilary Bellock, who said,
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We sit by and watch the barbarian.
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We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace.
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We are not afraid.
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We are tickled by his irreverence.
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This comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us.
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We laugh, but as we laugh, we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond.
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And on these faces, there are no smiles.
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So my own take on Bellock is that if we have a merely tolerant society and not a morally
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wise and prudent society, eventually, the people who are not willing to abide by any
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moral law will have their way with us.
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What are your thoughts on that?
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Well, yes, I mean, in a sense, one can see that situation in, for example, very bad housing
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estates or projects where the most psychopathic person comes to rule and everyone else lives
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in terror.
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Yes.
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So I suppose that that's bearing it out.
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Another thing that I wanted to mention to you was the bad effects of this kind of supposed
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non-judgmentalism on medical practice that requires us actually to start lying both to
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ourselves and to our patients.
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And I was particularly struck.
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You know, I was a doctor in a prison and I was particularly struck because we had many
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heroin addicts who would come in.
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And the official doctrine is that heroin addicts are simply ill in the same way that someone
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with multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease is ill.
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But this is obvious nonsense.
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And at the heart of this nonsense is the fear that if you say to someone, you're doing something
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that isn't good or that isn't right, what you're saying is depart my sight and I will
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have nothing further to do with you.
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But that is, I mean, we are all, as I'm sure you know professionally, we are all sinners.
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We all do things.
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We all do things.
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So we are all in need of understanding.
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And if we say to someone who's a heroin addict, you have done nothing unwise.
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You haven't behaved badly.
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You are simply ill.
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What you're actually doing is dehumanizing, dehumanizing them.
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Oh, say more about that, please.
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Well, what you're saying is you're not like me.
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You're not like me.
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I can control myself.
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I don't behave like this.
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That's because I'm a full human being and I make my choices.
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But you, you are ill.
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And therefore, I am going to come and do something to you irrespective of any effort on your
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part that will stop you taking, in this case, taking heroin.
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But that's nonsense.
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It just can't be done.
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And so we are constrained to, we doctors, I mean, are constrained to lie about it.
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And indeed, there are whole institutes and the National Institute on Drug Abuse participates
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in this lie, in this large lie.
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And this, as I said, is fear of censoriousness.
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If you say to someone, you've behaved badly, what you're doing is not right.
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You are actually casting him out of your sight.
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You will have nothing further to do with him.
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But that is not so, or ought not to be so, I should say.
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Well, you know, I get dragged into a lot of conversations about how to respond to people
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who, I'm trying to speak as neutrally as possible, experience gender dysphoria.
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I'm told it's a terrible lack of charity on my part, an unbelievable cruelty if I don't
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use preferred pronouns, et cetera, et cetera.
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And then I ask, suppose you have a 16-year-old girl who's suffering from anorexia and is
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visibly dying before your eyes and demands to be called fat and obese.
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Would you cooperate with that?
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I never get a response to that question.
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You were not only a doctor and a psychiatrist, you worked in a government system, which I
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think by definition means it was a corrupt system.
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Was there pressure on you to participate in other people's illusions?
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Well, I was extremely fortunate in my career in that actually there was a considerable
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amount of freedom in the system so that you could, or I could do what I thought was right.
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So I personally didn't suffer anything as a result of what I have described.
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But I think that the lies have not served the society well.
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And these lies are very, very pervasive.
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And it's very difficult to fight against them.
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So I can't claim to have been persecuted or anything like that.
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On the other hand, I could see the administration closing in on me and forcing me to do what
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I thought was wrong.
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But in the prison, for example, sometimes it would be said to me that government policy
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was against what I was proposing to do.
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And I would say, well, I don't care what the government says.
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I'm the doctor around here.
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If what I do is wrong and has bad consequences, well, I'm responsible for it.
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But on the other hand, I'm the person who makes the decisions.
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I didn't have any difficulty in that.
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And I can't say that I ever suffered anything as a result of being like that either.
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OK.
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Well, a sigh of relief there as well.
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It seems to me that this exaggerated dependence on tolerance, doesn't that eventually corrode
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the very possibility of having any moral conversation?
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Well, yes, because of course, if you have to tolerate everything, you can't draw attention
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to bad behavior or bad principles at all.
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So there is, of course, also the problem of tolerance in the political sphere.
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How far do you tolerate people who are proposing to destroy tolerance?
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Well, yes.
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What do you do with people who, in the name of inclusion, actively hate you and want to
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drive you from polite society?
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I think that social media and the Internet and connectivity and the 24-hour news cycle,
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I think that really hasn't helped civil discourse, and it certainly hasn't helped to propagate
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sound moral judgment.
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And we've gone from virtue signaling, which is tedious in its own way, as we put our different
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hashtags and our little color markings and so on, and which flag are we wearing today?
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And then we've gone from there, from virtue signaling to hate signaling, that we've decided
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that there are some people who are so beyond the pale, we can celebrate when they're being
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shot at, we can fantasize about their violent deaths, there are comedians who can show up
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with models of severed heads of politicians they don't like, blood-soaked, and that is
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considered okay.
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On the other hand, if I say Christ is king, then people get absolutely hysterical, because
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apparently, I'm cooking up a genocide in my backyard, and in any minute, we'll be planning
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to slaughter the innocent in honor of the prince of peace.
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So my concern for this, as I said, this hyperbolic sense of tolerance, is that it destroys the
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possibility of intelligent conversation.
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Friends, we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with author Theodore Dalrymple.
25:28
I'm asking, must we tolerate tolerance?
25:31
For the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audios
25:37
podcast, where if you can find audio, you can find us.
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Follow us on your favorite platform, write a five-star review.
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We need to attract the attention of the listeners, so that these conversations get the attention
25:47
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We're talking today with author Theodore Dalrymple.
27:26
We're asking the question, must we tolerate tolerance?
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Theodore, I refer to myself as a recovering academic, and I've spent a lot of time in
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academia most of my adult life reading a lot of books and listening to a lot of nonsense.
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Academics just like to bat around theories and never really have to live with the consequences
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of them.
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But some foolish ideas really do trickle down, and then not very bright headmasters and not
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very bright pastors rearrange social and educational life, and then eventually they end up in your
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prison as your patient, having committed violent crimes, drug addicted, no ability to be social
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with human beings at all, and they're not even sure why they're in trouble.
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You've seen this many times in real life.
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What do you make of it?
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Well, I mean, I'm slightly conflicted myself because, you see, when I talk to people like
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that and I talk about their lives and so on, their lives have been terrible.
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However, what I try to do is say that, to tell them that they are human beings with
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some element of control over their own lives and over their own behaviour.
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I mean, lots of people say, well, it's all right for you, you know, you had a decent
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childhood and so on and so forth, which, I mean, they say that just because they assume
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that I had a decent childhood.
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They don't actually know anything about me.
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But I might have told this story before, I've told it many times in other places anyway.
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I remember a burglar who was a repeat offender.
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He had burgled many, many places and he got caught by the police, which suggested to me
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that actually he wanted to be caught by the police because in England, to be caught by
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the police, you have to want to be caught by the police.
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But anyway, he said, do you think my burgling has anything to do with my childhood?
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And I said, absolutely not.
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Absolutely not.
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And he was very surprised by my response and said, no, what do you mean?
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I said, well, something happened between your childhood and breaking into number 37 Acacia
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Avenue.
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And that was your decision to break into Acacia Avenue.
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And he said, well, why do I burgle?
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And I said, well, it's fairly simple.
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You're lazy.
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You want things that you don't want to work for.
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And you're not very clever.
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I said it in such a way, I think, that he started laughing because he knew that his
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own explanation, which was only reflecting back to me the kind of thing that he expected
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people like me to believe, he knew it was nonsense.
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He knew it was nonsense.
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There was a famous bank robber in the 1930s.
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He was a safecracker.
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He wasn't violent.
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And they would ask him, well, why do you keep breaking into bank vaults?
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And he says, well, that's where the money is.
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So there does be something there.
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I want to suggest that academic nonsense, bad ideas, really do need to be corrected
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and held up for vilification.
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Otherwise, people suffer.
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For example, Karl Marx was not only a poor economist and also an absolute moral reprobate
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as a human being.
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He was an awful philosopher as well.
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And I think if he had been identified for ridicule and Marxists treated with the scorn
31:28
and shame they deserve, the 20th century wouldn't have been as blood-soaked as, in fact, it
31:36
was.
31:37
And I begin to fear for the 21st century as well, as people who have no sense of the 20th
31:42
century begin to wax eloquent about Marxism yet again.
31:48
I want to quote from another one of my, I have a pantheon of great curmudgeons, Nicholas
31:54
Gomez Davila.
31:55
And if you're not familiar with him, Theodore, I very highly recommend him.
31:59
He's got great aphorisms.
32:01
He says this, the cultured man has the obligation to be intolerant.
32:07
My academic colleagues would gasp in horror at that.
32:11
What do you think?
32:12
Well, yes.
32:13
I mean, there's obviously, there are things which are genuinely intolerable and should
32:21
not be tolerated.
32:23
And this is perfectly obvious now, of course.
32:28
Judgment has to be exercised in the same way as truth-telling.
32:34
Truth-telling is an excellent quality and to tell the truth is an excellent quality.
32:42
But nevertheless, there are circumstances in which not telling the truth is appropriate.
32:50
And you have always to exercise judgment.
32:56
You start off with a prejudice in favor of telling the truth.
33:00
But that doesn't mean to say that come hell or high water, you tell the truth to someone
33:07
whom it will deeply hurt and for no good purpose.
33:14
So the problem is that we are called on to make judgments all the time.
33:22
And the fact is that our judgments are often, or quite often, mistaken.
33:30
So, in order to be right all the time, we refuse to make a judgment.
33:38
And we see the same thing with regard to aesthetics.
33:42
The other day, I read in the Times Literary Supplement a long article about an artist,
33:48
a British artist who's quite famous, called Tracey Emin, whose work is absolutely abominable,
33:55
of course.
33:56
And the thing about this article that struck me was that there was absolutely no judgment
34:03
of the aesthetic worth of this artist's work.
34:07
Now, the reason for that is, I think, that if you reveal what your idea of beauty is,
34:20
and goodness is, you are revealing something very deep about yourself.
34:25
Yes.
34:26
And you're opening up yourself, possibly to mockery, but certainly to criticism.
34:35
And people are afraid of that.
34:37
Yes.
34:38
So, they become neutral, or claim to be neutral about everything, while in fact, of course,
34:45
they aren't neutral about everything, because you can't be neutral about everything.
34:49
It's just impossible.
34:50
The conditions of life make that absolutely impossible.
34:56
And also, kitsch, poor art doesn't make any claim on us.
35:02
It doesn't move us to excellence.
35:05
It doesn't...
35:06
I mean, when you look at some of these...
35:07
For the person who puts the urinal on display in a museum and calls it art, the person who
35:14
puts a coat hanger up on the wall, or a banana peel, that doesn't inspire someone to say,
35:20
I wish I could do that.
35:22
I should organize...
35:23
What am I doing with my life that I haven't changed?
35:27
Is that part of the appeal of non-judgmentalism, is that someone with a noble character challenges
35:33
us in a way that a slothful man doesn't?
35:36
Yes.
35:37
And there's...
35:38
I don't know whether you're familiar with the work, I've probably talked about it before,
35:43
Simon Lees, the Belgian-Australian sinologist.
35:47
Oh, yes, yes, I've read one of... an anthology of his essays at your recommendation, as one
35:54
of the best books I read last year.
35:55
Yes, indeed.
35:56
Yes, yes.
35:57
Well, I mean, he says that, of course, the philistine is aware of what beauty is, but
36:05
is afraid of it, because it confronts him with his own inadequacies and littleness.
36:12
Yes.
36:13
And nobody likes to be confronted by his own inadequacy and littleness, or some people
36:19
don't.
36:20
Right.
36:21
Anyway.
36:22
And so they actually positively reject and hate, even hate, the beautiful.
36:30
And in the same way, I suppose, people reject the good, because they are afraid of themselves,
36:39
actually.
36:40
Well, you know, I mean, having spent a lot of time working with people with their moral
36:47
conundrums and so on, I have found that there are people who rail against folks who are
36:55
obviously, at least trying very earnestly, to be good, because they stand as kind of
37:02
a reproach, where if someone is virtuous, it means that virtue isn't impossible, which
37:10
means that my vice is my own choice, and I'm responsible, and that's unbearable.
37:16
Did you find that in your work with your patients, that flight from responsibility?
37:21
Oh, yes, I mean, and this is a very human, I mean, we have to admit, this is a very human
37:30
failing, I mean, and I doubt that there's anyone alive who has never done it, so that
37:38
when you do something wrong, your first thought is to find excuses for yourself.
37:45
Right.
37:46
And the problem is that, of course, people sometimes never get beyond making excuses
37:54
for themselves, whereas the maturer person realizes that that is what he is doing.
38:01
Right.
38:02
I think there has to be a time where you're willing to say, I did it, it was my fault,
38:09
it was my responsibility, I knew right from wrong, and I chose badly.
38:16
We have an enormous industry that tries to, if I may use a clerical word, absolve us from
38:25
our sins.
38:26
I know we've got about two minutes left in this segment, we can take it up in the next
38:28
segment, but you've written a book that has suggested that the social sciences and psychology
38:35
actually facilitate moral responsibility.
38:38
Can you begin to address that as we run out the clock on this segment?
38:41
Yes, I mean, I think that the whole enterprise of psychology, which I believe has actually
38:50
contributed almost nothing to human self-understanding, except in very limited circumstances, but
38:57
I believe that the attempt to treat ourselves as if we were objects and not subjects destroys
39:05
moral responsibility, and people are very relieved to be relieved of their moral responsibility.
39:14
Right.
39:15
I, you know, if we don't have a sense that there is a moral standard that everyone can
39:23
see, and you know, very basic things, do go to avoid evil, love your children, don't eat
39:27
grandma.
39:28
If we can't see those absolutely fixed moral compass points, then we're lost, and we come
39:35
back to the conspiracy again of, I will turn a blind eye to your nonsense if you turn a
39:42
blind eye to mine, and eventually that begins to break down.
39:48
We go from a high-trust society to a low-trust society.
39:55
We go from a place where there are manners and respectability and honor to just craveness
40:03
and, you know, I watch in the United States with horror now the violent crimes that take
40:09
place not in back alleys under cover of darkness, but in absolute broad daylight and under traffic
40:15
cameras.
40:16
I find absolutely boggling, and I can't begin to fathom what goes on in a person's mind
40:23
and heart when they act that way.
40:25
Friends, we come back and continue our conversation with author Theodore Dalrymple.
40:29
We're talking about must we tolerate tolerance?
40:32
Part of the conversation, follow what we're following by following us on GAB.
40:37
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40:39
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41:01
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41:03
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41:05
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41:51
Praised be Jesus Christ.
41:52
This is Father Robert McTigge of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic
41:55
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41:58
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Support us, please, at thestationofthecross.com.
42:23
My returning guest today is author Theodore Dalrymple.
42:25
We're talking about whether or not we must tolerate tolerance.
42:30
Theodore, there are moral black and white.
42:33
There are things that are always required.
42:34
There are things that are always forbidden.
42:36
There is a legitimately gray prudential matters about which honorable people may disagree.
42:41
And sometimes people do stumble.
42:44
They fail through, not really through malice or incompetence, but circumstances need to
42:52
be considered, don't we, when we engage in moral evaluation?
42:56
Yes, of course they do.
42:59
And in a legal system, there has to be a pleas of mitigation.
43:04
And you have to exercise judgment as to how far you take the mitigation.
43:10
You can't mitigate all bad behavior so that it is no longer bad.
43:19
And so there's a difference between mitigation and complete exculpation.
43:26
And sometimes, or often in fact, it seems as if we are so afraid, as I said at the beginning,
43:34
of being censorious or condemning people too easily and unkindly or even cruelly, that
43:44
we want to mitigate all the possibility of human wickedness out of possibility.
43:54
So we no longer recognize that people behave badly.
44:02
They are merely objects.
44:05
They haven't made decisions.
44:07
They have no consciousness.
44:10
They're not prey to bad desires.
44:13
Right.
44:15
There's no sense of moral agency.
44:17
Now, I know in jurisprudence, there is discretion for the judge.
44:23
There's discretion for the prosecutors as well.
44:26
And when we have a culture that really values good judgment and has a vivid sense of what
44:33
may be tolerated and what may not, then that sort of discretion can be an appropriate kind
44:40
of mercy, justice tempered with mercy.
44:45
But at least in the United States now with jurisprudence, in certain areas, the prosecuting
44:52
attorney forgives everything in advance.
44:55
In San Francisco, you couldn't be arrested for shoplifting if you stole less than $1,000.
45:02
And so people would calculate, I'm at $950 with my sack of stolen goods.
45:08
Now I get to walk out the door.
45:10
And then the government was shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that stores were closing
45:16
because robbery had been permitted.
45:19
Now, I know in Britain, we're talking about tolerance, intolerance, apparently people
45:26
have a right not to be offended.
45:29
And the authorities can come after you if you post something on social media that someone
45:34
could conceivably find offensive.
45:38
Have I heard that correctly?
45:39
Well, there have been cases like that.
45:41
I mean, I can't say that I go in terrible fear of all that.
45:45
I mean, not that I set out.
45:47
I don't set out to be offensive, of course, and therefore, you know, I don't believe in
45:54
being offensive for the sake of offending someone.
45:58
And some people do believe in that.
46:01
Alas, yes.
46:05
But no one has a right not to be offended.
46:10
That seems to me ridiculous.
46:13
I think we often mistake mercy and forgiveness.
46:20
Oh, say more about that, please.
46:23
Yeah.
46:24
A legal system can exercise mercy, but it can't actually forgive.
46:29
Okay.
46:30
So for example, if I'm attacked in the street by somebody, the judge can exercise mercy
46:42
for the attacker, but he can't forgive him.
46:45
Only I can forgive him.
46:47
Right.
46:48
I, the person who has been attacked, I can forgive him.
46:52
And I may forgive him, but without wanting mercy to be exercised, because I might come
46:59
to the conclusion that if mercy is incontinently exercised, he will go and attack someone else.
47:07
Yes.
47:08
So I can forgive him personally without actually advocating mercy for him.
47:14
Right.
47:15
Because when there is a violent crime, for example, it's not only the victim who suffered
47:22
offense, it is the community as a whole.
47:26
I mean, when I read some of these horror stories of, you know, people spontaneously stabbing
47:31
folks in libraries and bookstores and so on, it makes me think twice about leaving my own
47:37
home ever again.
47:38
So there's a social harm as well.
47:41
I'm conscious we've only got about three minutes left in this segment.
47:46
Many of our listeners are parents who are trying to raise children properly.
47:52
You see what has happened when children are raised badly.
47:57
What advice do you have for well-intentioned parents given the circumstances we live in
48:01
right now?
48:02
Well, I suppose I would say cleave to some of what were once traditional and accepted
48:13
values.
48:14
And that's all really I can say.
48:18
It's really a matter of common sense.
48:21
One of the things that balls me is that common sense is no longer so very common.
48:28
Alas!
48:31
Alas!
48:32
Yeah, I like the idea.
48:34
Maybe we should turn to people who built civilizations rather than destroyed them and see what they
48:40
have to say.
48:41
Do you think that idea would ever catch on?
48:44
Well, who is going to...
48:49
Our big problem is that the people who might do that are the very people who don't want
48:54
to do it.
48:55
Alas!
48:56
Alas!
48:57
Yeah, I speak often on the air about the people who should really know better club.
49:02
And it's not an honor to be nominated for membership.
49:05
It's something that's involuntary.
49:08
It's a very large club.
49:10
Alas!
49:11
Alas!
49:12
And among them are people who have had the opportunity to be educated, who've had the
49:16
opportunity to be raised properly.
49:19
I'm thinking especially of my co-religionists because we had inherited a culture, a civilization,
49:26
that, among other things, produced saints and great art.
49:32
And I think there is often a correlation between the health of a civilization and the quality
49:37
of art that it produces.
49:39
And we've lost a sense of all of that.
49:44
We've squandered our inheritance and are astounded now that we seem to be living among barbarians.
49:52
And that is heartbreaking as well.
49:55
Theodore Dalrymple, thank you for a fascinating conversation.
49:58
I'm very, very grateful for your time today.
50:01
And I do hope that we can talk again before long.
50:03
Thank you.
50:04
I hope so, too.
50:05
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day of The Catholic Current.
50:08
We're going to put a whole bunch of Theodore Dalrymple's writings in the show notes today.
50:13
His work is valuable.
50:14
I've used it in classroom.
50:16
It's entertaining and inspiring and sobering as well.
50:19
I want you to join us on Friday because you know what happens on Friday.
50:22
Tomorrow, let's talk about this.
50:24
You and me, we walk through a controversial issue together, and we always end up with
50:28
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50:32
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50:33
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50:35
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50:59
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51:04
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51:07
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51:10
Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.