Every dysfunction we're seeing today--due to Dem "free money" policy--was predicted in 2004. Liberals ignored the prediction

I wrote the piece below about a year ago.  Most of it is an edited version of an article written in 2004 by an M.D./psychiatrist in the U.K, under the pen name "Theodore Dalrymple."

Dalrymple spent 14 years working with petty thugs and criminals in British prisons, and another decade working with dysfunctional poor for the U.K.'s ghastly National Health Service.  His experiences gave him an insight into the thought processes of people who seem to live lives wrapped in evil, destruction and violence. 

It's a topic that seems highly relevant to the U.S. today.

Dalrymple's piece is titled "The Frivolity of Evil," and it's well worth reading.  (Click the link to read the original.)  I've extensively edited it, and my comments are outdented.  Obviously any ideas that the original author didn't intend are mine. 

After years of experience with low-class, dysfunctional people, Dalrymple began to regard social pathology as a manifestation of evil.  (Note:  Calling liberal policies evil is a career-ending move.)  He began to ponder why his patients did things they should have known--and in fact many admitted that they did know--would have evil results.  He wondered what conditions enabled such people--and their pathologies--to flourish.

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When I began my work I optimistically believed that in the absence of the worst political deformations, widespread evil was impossible. Working in a British slum proved this conclusion was wrong.

Of course beating a woman because of jealousy, terrible as it is, is a long way from mass murder. But men commit evil within the scope available to them. Most pathological people merely make the most of their opportunities--they do what they can get away with.

In my work I met literally thousands of people who lived lives marked by violence, destruction and pathology, and thousands of their victims.  One of the things I noticed about these pathologies was that they were totally unforced.  No one ordered these people to commit their ruinous acts.  Rather, in every case the bad acts were freely chosen.

A huge part of the problem is that academics and intellectuals have convinced society that man should be free from constraints of social convention or self-control.  Following the demands of those academics, the government then enacted laws that created a welfare system that not only enabled people to live without working, but also protected them from the economic consequences of ruinous behavior.

We see that happening here in the US.: After congressional Democrats sneaked a provision into the virus stimulus bill boosting unemployment benefits by $600 per WEEK, critics quickly noted that low-wage workers would now make more by staying idle than taking a job.  This year laws like the cunningly mis-named "American Recovery Act" have made that even worse.  People are making more by staying on welfare than by getting a job.  Democrat pols either deny this is true, or else regard it as a good thing.

When the barriers to evil are lowered or removed, it flourishes.

Is anyone at all surprised by that conclusion?

In 1921 there was one crime recorded for every 370 inhabitants of England and Wales; 80 years later, it was one for every ten residents. There has been a 12-fold increase since 1941 and an even greater increase in crimes of violence. Clearly, something bad is happening. And just as clearly, it's not that people have simply become materially poorer.

Yesterday a 21-year-old woman came in, claiming to be depressed. She had swallowed an overdose of prescribed antidepressants and then called an ambulance.

The term "depression" has almost entirely replaced the word "unhappiness" in modern life. Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three claimed to be unhappy--the rest said they were "depressed."  The word substitution is significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with one's life is pathological, a medical condition--and thus is the responsibility of doctors to alleviate, by medical means.

Once liberals succeeded in replacing the term "unhappiness" with "depression," suddenly unhappiness became a medical condition.  When combined with the liberal demand that so-called "free"medical care was an absolute human right, the natural conclusion (per liberals) was that everyone has the right to be happy, regardless of the choices they make.

The problem with this reasoning is that it implies that terrible choices have no effect on life outcomes.  That belief completely disconnects conduct from outcome. 

The absurdity of this claim should be obvious to all rational people

Thus when a "depressed" patient comes to the hospital, a ridiculous pas de deux ensues: the patient pretends to be ill, and the doctor pretends to cure him. As a result, the patient remains blind to the obvious conclusion: that his or her choices caused the misery in the first place.

Social conditioning prevents people from understanding the true situation--which is that their problems are the inevitable result of the choices they make.  Indeed, those choices could not possibly produce any other outcome than the one he is experiencing. Thus no effective change is ever undertaken.

One of my patients had already had three children by three different men--a common situation for my patients. The father of her first child had been violent; the second died in an accident while driving a stolen car.  The third, with whom she had been living, had demanded that she leave his apartment a week after their child was born because he no longer wished to live with her. (The discovery of incompatibility a week after the birth of a child is now common.)

The father of her first child had, of course, recognized her vulnerability.  A girl of sixteen living on her own is easy prey.  He beat her from the outset, being drunken, possessive, and jealous. She thought a child would make him more responsible--sober him up and calm him down. Not surprisingly, it had the reverse effect. She left him.

The father of her second child was a career criminal, already imprisoned several times. A drug addict who took whatever drugs he could get, he died under the influence. She had known all about his past before she had his child.

The father of her third child was much older than she. It was he who suggested that they have a child--in fact he demanded it as a condition of staying with her. He had five children already by three different women, none of whom he supported in any way.

The conditions for the perpetuation of evil were now complete. She was a young woman who would not want to remain without a man for long; but with three children already, she would attract precisely the kind of man who--like the father of her first child--was looking for exploitable women. Almost certainly at least one of these men (for there would be a succession of them) would abuse her children sexually, physically, or both.

But my patient was not solely a victim: she had knowingly borne three children by men of whom no good could be expected. She knew perfectly well the consequences of what she was doing.

I often tell these patients, "The next time you want to date a man, bring him to me and I'll tell you if you can go out with him." This never fails to make the most wretched, most "depressed" woman smile broadly or laugh heartily. They know exactly what I mean: that most of the men they have chosen have their evil written all over them.  The women understand that if I could easily identify bad men, so could they.

One of the goals of feminism has been to convince girls that men are unnecessary.  Unfortunately for society, that simple idea misses the mark:  Yes, bad men are useless.  But good men hugely improve the chances of raising functional children.  When liberals and Democrats made fathers unnecessary--by enacting programs that enabled women to raise children without a man's help--the stage was set for the disasters we see today.

I believe having children without considering even for a second whether the men have any qualities that might make them good fathers is a huge evil.  Of course errors in judgment are common:  a man may turn out not to be as expected.  But not even to consider the question is to act as irresponsibly as it is possible for a human being to act. It is a thoroughly bad thing. And sooner or later it will have consequences.

Wow.  Totally prescient.

My patient did not start out with the intention of doing anything bad, but her refusal to take act on the clear signs she saw was not due to ignorance. It was utterly willful. She knew from her own experience--and that of most of the women around her--that her choices would lead to the misery and suffering not only for her, but also for the children she would have with these men.

In fairness, even nominally "smart" people often don't consider future consequences.  If you're unclear on this point, consider liberal policies in "advanced" nations over the last 50 years or so:  What have generous welfare policies done to the social fabric?  Were the results predictable?  Of course they were.  In fact those exact results were predicted--but the ruling liberals were determined to do as they wanted.

The men in these situations also know perfectly well the meaning and consequences of what they are doing. The same day that I saw the patient just described, a man of 25 came into our ward, needing an operation to remove foil-wrapped packets of cocaine he had swallowed in order to evade being caught by the police in possession of them. As it happened, he had just left his latest girlfriend--one week after she had given birth to their child. They weren't getting along, he said; he needed his space. Of the child, he thought not for an instant.

I asked him whether he had any other children.

"Four," he replied.

"How many mothers?"

"Three."

"Do you see any of your children?" He shook his head.

Med-school instructors tell would-be doctors not to pass judgment on how patients choose to live, but I may have raised an eyebrow slightly.  At any rate the patient caught a whiff of my disapproval.

"I know," he said. "I know. Don't tell me."

These words were a complete confession of guilt.  I've had hundreds of conversations with men who had abandoned their children like this, and they all knew perfectly well the consequences for both the mother and, more important, for the children. They all know that they are condemning their children to lives of brutality, poverty, abuse, and hopelessness.

They tell me they know this. And yet they do it over and over again.

The result is a rising tide of neglect, cruelty, sadism, and willful malignity.

Where does this evil come from? Clearly something is flawed in the heart of man that he should behave in this depraved fashion.  Academics and "intellectuals" claim this is due to poverty, but this is demonstrably false, because there was a time--not that long ago--when such conduct was far more rare than it is now.  There is much less poverty today than back then--something those who think poverty explains everything conveniently ignore.

It seems to me one obvious cause of this problem is the welfare state, which makes it possible--and often advantageous--to behave irresponsibly.  Liberals, using the obvious truth that children raised in horrible conditions are innocent victims, demanded that the State give money and free housing to the mothers.  In fact, in matters of public housing in Britain it is actually advantageous for a mother to be single and have no support from her child's father, as this exempts her from local taxes, rent, and utility bills.

Of course once the State took responsibility for children, it absolved the fathers of all responsibility for their children. The biological father was then free to use whatever income he had for his own pleasure.  Having no responsibilities (and often no job) he became petulant, demanding, self-centered, and violent if he didn't get his way. The violence escalated and became a habit. A spoiled brat becomes an evil tyrant.

Wow, prescient.

But the welfare state is only part of the cause of the spread of evil. After all, the British welfare state is neither the most extensive nor the most generous in the world, and yet our rates of social pathology are among the highest in the world. To produce this much dysfunction requires something more than just the welfare state.

I think the other crucial factor is that social elites must convince people to believe it's morally permissible to live this way.  And this idea has been peddled by the intellectual elite in Britain for many years, so successfully that no one is allowed to question it.

Sound familiar?  "I can do whatever I want and you can't stop me."

The Left claims the state must not discriminate among "different forms of association" and child rearing--even if the result has been conclusively shown to be disastrous.

Academics and "intellectuals"--always leftists--have convinced governments that the consequences to society of policies and choices must not be considered.  Instead the only proper function of the state is to redistribute wealth (via taxes) to the people making horrible choices, thus enabling them to be irresponsible.  And then to hire an army of social workers, psychologists, educators, counselors and the like to ameliorate the inevitable, predictable emotional, educational, and spiritual effects of those policies.

Significantly, this army itself is now a powerful force for continuing the liberal policies that have enabled the problems.

So while my patients know in their hearts that what they are doing is terribly wrong, they are encouraged to do it by the strong belief--inculcated by the Left--that they have the *absolute right* to do it--because according to liberalism everything is merely a matter of value-free choices, with no consequences for making bad choices.  Almost no one in Britain dares to publicly challenge this belief, nor has any politician had the courage to demand a withdrawal of the public subsidy that allows the intensifying evil I have seen over the past 14 years-- violence, rape, intimidation, cruelty, drug addiction, neglect--to flourish so exuberantly.

With 40 percent of children in Britain now being born out of wedlock--a number that continues to rise--soon there will be no electoral constituency for reversal. Politicians already consider advocating any change along these lines as electoral suicide.

That was in 2004 in the U.K.  In the U.S. today, 80 percent of black births are to single women.  But don't worry, citizen:  This is not a problem.  Not. A. Problem.  Trust your liberal betters.

The greatest factor in the continuing social disaster that has overtaken Britain--a disaster whose full consequences have yet to be seen--is the moral cowardice of the intellectual and political elites. The elites cannot even acknowledge that we *have* a disaster--obvious as it is--for to do so would open the door to recognizing their responsibility for it, and that would make them feel bad.

Better that millions should live in wretchedness than that the elites should feel bad about themselves.

Dalrymple wrote this 17 years ago, in 2004.  We see the consequences today, in every headline.  But we're constantly told by the elites that there is NO connection whatsoever, citizen.  Repeat after me:

No.  Connection.  Whatsoever.