Bathroom Wars’ Goal: Humiliate the American Normal Majority

[Stephanie]

this talks about Totalitarianism. and guess what party is using it now? People better wake up before it's too late.

snip:
by John Hayward23 Apr 2016

23 Apr, 2016 23 Apr, 2016
Welcome to life in totalitarian America, where even going to the bathroom and identifying the sex of an adult have now become intensely political acts.
Totalitarianism is about the politicization of everything, and once people’s careers can be destroyed by the New Bathroom Order if they publicly object to the once-bizarre idea of men in the ladies’ room–we’re there. Ask the now-unemployed Curt Schilling.

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals. You can’t get more coercive than forcing the vast majority of people to endorse the utterly bizarre just to accommodate the allegedly hurt feelings of an almost undetectably small percentage of the population. So for the sake of each transgendered person’s hurt feelings, two thousand ordinary folk must be forced to ignore what their eyes and hearts tell them … and be publicly slandered as quasi-racist bigots if they murmur any objection.

Moreover, Americans have already solved the problem: They just politely ignore the fact that public bathrooms are quietly used by transsexuals–both those who look like the other sex and those who really don’t look like the other sex. That decent-minded, live-and-let-live compromise means Americans don’t have to pretend that men are women, and they can call the police if they feel threatened, for example, when a transsexual wants to use a changing room in a school.

But the progressives’ hostility to Americans’ civic compromises was always an element of the gay marriage crusade, as well. It was clear that the amount of coercive force unleashed upon society to make gay marriage work was far, far greater than the coercion necessary to allow civil unions to quietly operate alongside normal marriage. Sure enough, in the blink of an eye, we went from soft-focus “Love Wins” to the nation’s judges’ gaveling out legal threats: “Bake that cake, or lose your entire business.”

As my old colleague Erick Erickson put it, “You Will Be Made to Care” amid an ever-increasing level of coercion, strife, and bitterness. You will now be made to care about men who claim they “identify” as women, while pushing their way past you and into public restrooms that were once the preserve of wives, mothers, girlfriends, and daughters.

It’s going to take a great deal of money, manpower, and regulation to get the New Bathroom Order up and running.

Remodeling public restroom facilities to create more individual, lockable, unisex rooms is one way to reduce the new humiliation, but it would be very expensive.

We’ll probably need some kind of Ministry of the Crapper, where bureaucrats and judges can separate perverts and goofballs and award official-transgender permits to “authentic” transgendered and gender-confused individuals. A great deal of taxpayer money will be spent, and many new rules will be written by many well-paid functionaries. So what’s not to like, for those of a totalitarian bent?

Better still–for the totalitarians–the level of animosity in society will keep growing, as well. A populace stressed out by paranoia and angry accusations of bigotry will be less likely to cooperate, compete, and live in harmony. Instead of local civic cooperation, they’ll resort to government and police when they have to deal with the next dispute that once could be resolved quietly by a healthy civic society. The politicization of everything naturally leads to the enforcement of everything. Debates become bitter because the stakes are higher, and we cannot simply agree to disagree.

Dr. Theodore Dalrymple made this point in a 2005 interview when he described political correctness as “communism writ small.” ( you can read that at: FrontPage Magazine - Our Culture, What’s Left Of It)

“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better,” Dalrymple said, adding:

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

ALL of it here:
Bathroom Wars' Goal: Humiliate the American Normal Majority

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

When 2-3 percent of the population can turn an entire country upside-down with their odd sexual proclivities, it is a problem that needs to be dealt with by that population in the strongest terms possible.

Either stand up or kneel, but do something other than wait, and make it clear.

 

[Dale Smith]

From David Wilkerson's book "The Vision" that was written in 1973 and how this country would be washed away in a flood of filth.....what he didn't say is the liberals would be riding that wave on surf boards....

"A flood of filth and a baptism of dirt in America"

1. Topless women will appear on television, followed by full nudity.
2. Adult, X rated movies will be shown on cable television. Young people will gather at homes to watch this kind of material in groups.
3. Sex and the occult will be mixed. (Eyes Wide Shut comes immediately to mind)
4. There will be an acceptance of homosexuality, and the church will even say that it is a God-given gift.

 

[Stephanie]

snippet. more from the article above.
The totalitarian mindset denies that scientific reality, and insists biology can be overridden by political will–rather like the way totalitarian economic plans assume the laws of supply and demand can be revised by political fiat.

Much of left-wing social engineering is a war between politics and biology, such as the biological truths that children are best raised by their married parents, or that men and women are different. The Left promises to overrule those verdicts of Creation through compulsive force, in a grotesque inversion of the “natural law” ideal, which holds the lightest and most just burden of law flows in accordance with human nature.

Why read academic papers about the Left’s war against identity when you can watch it hilariously demonstrated by the humiliated inmates at a university? Why shouldn’t a white guy of average stature be able to “identify” as a 6’5” Chinese woman?

 

[320 Years of History]

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals.

Actually, it is not.

Totalitarianism (TT) is a form of government that permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual’s life to the authority of the government. In the broadest sense, totalitarianism is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Notice the key traits, all of which must be present:

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

It's bad enough that John Hayward doesn't know what TT is. That he relies on the odds his readers don't know what it is and is not, beyond it being something we as a nation don't want, is worse. That you are among that readership and failed to validate whether the man's opening premise -- that TT is in play in the "bathroom" legislation is worst of all. Why? Because in abdicating your responsibility to "trust but verify," you've also opened yourself up to be cowed into someone else's line of thinking.

 

[Stephanie]

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals.

Actually, it is not.

Totalitarianism (TT) is a form of government that permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual’s life to the authority of the government. In the broadest sense, totalitarianism is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Notice the key traits, all of which must be present:

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

It's bad enough that John Hayward doesn't know what TT is. That he relies on the odds his readers don't know what it is and is not, beyond it being something we as a nation don't want, is worse. That you are among that readership and failed to validate whether the man's opening premise -- that TT is in play in the "bathroom" legislation is worst of all. Why? Because in abdicating your responsibility to "trust but verify," you've also opened yourself up to be cowed into someone else's line of thinking.

the know it all

 

[Dale Smith]

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals.

Actually, it is not.

Totalitarianism (TT) is a form of government that permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual’s life to the authority of the government. In the broadest sense, totalitarianism is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Notice the key traits, all of which must be present:

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

It's bad enough that John Hayward doesn't know what TT is. That he relies on the odds his readers don't know what it is and is not, beyond it being something we as a nation don't want, is worse. That you are among that readership and failed to validate whether the man's opening premise -- that TT is in play in the "bathroom" legislation is worst of all. Why? Because in abdicating your responsibility to "trust but verify," you've also opened yourself up to be cowed into someone else's line of thinking.

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

If you don't see how that is taking shape here now? I don't know what to tell ya because you are asleep....

 

[Dale Smith]

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals.

Actually, it is not.

Totalitarianism (TT) is a form of government that permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual’s life to the authority of the government. In the broadest sense, totalitarianism is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Notice the key traits, all of which must be present:

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

It's bad enough that John Hayward doesn't know what TT is. That he relies on the odds his readers don't know what it is and is not, beyond it being something we as a nation don't want, is worse. That you are among that readership and failed to validate whether the man's opening premise -- that TT is in play in the "bathroom" legislation is worst of all. Why? Because in abdicating your responsibility to "trust but verify," you've also opened yourself up to be cowed into someone else's line of thinking.

the know it all

More like the denier of reality........

 

[The Great Goose]

No! Noooooo! No.

sorry. A lost face is lost.

 

[Stephanie]

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals.

Actually, it is not.

Totalitarianism (TT) is a form of government that permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual’s life to the authority of the government. In the broadest sense, totalitarianism is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Notice the key traits, all of which must be present:

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

It's bad enough that John Hayward doesn't know what TT is. That he relies on the odds his readers don't know what it is and is not, beyond it being something we as a nation don't want, is worse. That you are among that readership and failed to validate whether the man's opening premise -- that TT is in play in the "bathroom" legislation is worst of all. Why? Because in abdicating your responsibility to "trust but verify," you've also opened yourself up to be cowed into someone else's line of thinking.

the know it all

More like the denier of reality........

or one of them who always tells you : you really aren't seeing what you are seeing happening

 

[The Great Goose]

this talks about Totalitarianism. and guess what party is using it now? People better wake up before it's too late.

snip:
by John Hayward23 Apr 2016

23 Apr, 2016 23 Apr, 2016
Welcome to life in totalitarian America, where even going to the bathroom and identifying the sex of an adult have now become intensely political acts.
Totalitarianism is about the politicization of everything, and once people’s careers can be destroyed by the New Bathroom Order if they publicly object to the once-bizarre idea of men in the ladies’ room–we’re there. Ask the now-unemployed Curt Schilling.

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals. You can’t get more coercive than forcing the vast majority of people to endorse the utterly bizarre just to accommodate the allegedly hurt feelings of an almost undetectably small percentage of the population. So for the sake of each transgendered person’s hurt feelings, two thousand ordinary folk must be forced to ignore what their eyes and hearts tell them … and be publicly slandered as quasi-racist bigots if they murmur any objection.

Moreover, Americans have already solved the problem: They just politely ignore the fact that public bathrooms are quietly used by transsexuals–both those who look like the other sex and those who really don’t look like the other sex. That decent-minded, live-and-let-live compromise means Americans don’t have to pretend that men are women, and they can call the police if they feel threatened, for example, when a transsexual wants to use a changing room in a school.

But the progressives’ hostility to Americans’ civic compromises was always an element of the gay marriage crusade, as well. It was clear that the amount of coercive force unleashed upon society to make gay marriage work was far, far greater than the coercion necessary to allow civil unions to quietly operate alongside normal marriage. Sure enough, in the blink of an eye, we went from soft-focus “Love Wins” to the nation’s judges’ gaveling out legal threats: “Bake that cake, or lose your entire business.”

As my old colleague Erick Erickson put it, “You Will Be Made to Care” amid an ever-increasing level of coercion, strife, and bitterness. You will now be made to care about men who claim they “identify” as women, while pushing their way past you and into public restrooms that were once the preserve of wives, mothers, girlfriends, and daughters.

It’s going to take a great deal of money, manpower, and regulation to get the New Bathroom Order up and running.

Remodeling public restroom facilities to create more individual, lockable, unisex rooms is one way to reduce the new humiliation, but it would be very expensive.

We’ll probably need some kind of Ministry of the Crapper, where bureaucrats and judges can separate perverts and goofballs and award official-transgender permits to “authentic” transgendered and gender-confused individuals. A great deal of taxpayer money will be spent, and many new rules will be written by many well-paid functionaries. So what’s not to like, for those of a totalitarian bent?

Better still–for the totalitarians–the level of animosity in society will keep growing, as well. A populace stressed out by paranoia and angry accusations of bigotry will be less likely to cooperate, compete, and live in harmony. Instead of local civic cooperation, they’ll resort to government and police when they have to deal with the next dispute that once could be resolved quietly by a healthy civic society. The politicization of everything naturally leads to the enforcement of everything. Debates become bitter because the stakes are higher, and we cannot simply agree to disagree.

Dr. Theodore Dalrymple made this point in a 2005 interview when he described political correctness as “communism writ small.” ( you can read that at: FrontPage Magazine - Our Culture, What’s Left Of It)

“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better,” Dalrymple said, adding:

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

ALL of it here:
Bathroom Wars' Goal: Humiliate the American Normal Majority

That author must be VERY young.

 

[The Great Goose]

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals.

Actually, it is not.

Totalitarianism (TT) is a form of government that permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual’s life to the authority of the government. In the broadest sense, totalitarianism is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Notice the key traits, all of which must be present:

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

It's bad enough that John Hayward doesn't know what TT is. That he relies on the odds his readers don't know what it is and is not, beyond it being something we as a nation don't want, is worse. That you are among that readership and failed to validate whether the man's opening premise -- that TT is in play in the "bathroom" legislation is worst of all. Why? Because in abdicating your responsibility to "trust but verify," you've also opened yourself up to be cowed into someone else's line of thinking.

the know it all

More like the denier of reality........

or one of them who always tells you : you really aren't seeing what you are seeing happening

Wait! I can see! Equality between the two sexes!

 

[320 Years of History]

...

There are (or were...I don't know when the video was produced) clearly some stupid people in college at the U. of Washington. They seem to place objective and quantifiable realities -- 6'5" tall, for example -- in the same bucket as identity and processes and in turn attempt to evaluate them using the same binary modalities of analysis. That just doesn't (1) make sense or (2) lead to rational conclusions about the topic under examination. I don't know why the students in the video were incapable of understanding that key distinction and consequently responding binarily to those remarks that can only be evaluated that way, but as they are in school, hopefully that is a basic bit of knowledge they will have gained before they graduate.

 

[320 Years of History]

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals.

Actually, it is not.

Totalitarianism (TT) is a form of government that permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual’s life to the authority of the government. In the broadest sense, totalitarianism is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Notice the key traits, all of which must be present:

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

It's bad enough that John Hayward doesn't know what TT is. That he relies on the odds his readers don't know what it is and is not, beyond it being something we as a nation don't want, is worse. That you are among that readership and failed to validate whether the man's opening premise -- that TT is in play in the "bathroom" legislation is worst of all. Why? Because in abdicating your responsibility to "trust but verify," you've also opened yourself up to be cowed into someone else's line of thinking.

the know it all

I don't know it all, but one thing I do know that you and John Hayward do not is what TT is and what it is not.

 

[Stephanie]

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals.

Actually, it is not.

Totalitarianism (TT) is a form of government that permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual’s life to the authority of the government. In the broadest sense, totalitarianism is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Notice the key traits, all of which must be present:

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

It's bad enough that John Hayward doesn't know what TT is. That he relies on the odds his readers don't know what it is and is not, beyond it being something we as a nation don't want, is worse. That you are among that readership and failed to validate whether the man's opening premise -- that TT is in play in the "bathroom" legislation is worst of all. Why? Because in abdicating your responsibility to "trust but verify," you've also opened yourself up to be cowed into someone else's line of thinking.

the know it all

I don't know it all, but one thing I do know that you and John Hayward do not is what TT is and what it is not.

you need a medal or a chest to pin it on?

 

[320 Years of History]

Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals.

Actually, it is not.

Totalitarianism (TT) is a form of government that permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual’s life to the authority of the government. In the broadest sense, totalitarianism is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Notice the key traits, all of which must be present:

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

It's bad enough that John Hayward doesn't know what TT is. That he relies on the odds his readers don't know what it is and is not, beyond it being something we as a nation don't want, is worse. That you are among that readership and failed to validate whether the man's opening premise -- that TT is in play in the "bathroom" legislation is worst of all. Why? Because in abdicating your responsibility to "trust but verify," you've also opened yourself up to be cowed into someone else's line of thinking.

1. Implemented by a strong central government organization
2. Subordinates all aspects of an individual's life to the government's authority
3. Replaces existing political institutions with new ones
4. Discards legal, social and political customs

If you don't see how that is taking shape here now? I don't know what to tell ya because you are asleep....

Please corroborate your remarks with something credible that illustrates anything the federal government has done that constitutes all four of the key elements of TT. Heck, on the "bathroom issue," the federal government has passed no laws at all.

 

[The Great Goose]

snippet. more from the article above.
The totalitarian mindset denies that scientific reality, and insists biology can be overridden by political will–rather like the way totalitarian economic plans assume the laws of supply and demand can be revised by political fiat.

Much of left-wing social engineering is a war between politics and biology, such as the biological truths that children are best raised by their married parents, or that men and women are different. The Left promises to overrule those verdicts of Creation through compulsive force, in a grotesque inversion of the “natural law” ideal, which holds the lightest and most just burden of law flows in accordance with human nature.

Why read academic papers about the Left’s war against identity when you can watch it hilariously demonstrated by the humiliated inmates at a university? Why shouldn’t a white guy of average stature be able to “identify” as a 6’5” Chinese woman?

RE the video. If that c**t isn't on the beach heads in a machine gun turret then he will be Chinese. Useless preppy penis.

 

[320 Years of History]

I see several of you asserting that I am wrong as go my remarks in post #4; however, I see not one of you presenting anything to corroborate your claim and that indicates I am factually incorrect about what totalitarianism is and is not.

 

[Stephanie]

more reading for the "know it all" to dissect for you and tell you all how you don't jack. enjoy

snip:
Our Culture, What’s Left Of ItBy: Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, August 31, 2005



Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a contributing editor to City Journal and the author of his new collection of essays Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses.


FP: Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, welcome to Frontpage Magazine. It is a pleasure to have you with us.


Dalrymple: Thank you very much for having invited me.


FP: It's hard to know where to start Dr. Dalrymple, as your essays evoke so many profound themes.



I guess we can begin with your observations on the root causes of many of our social ills. You discuss how in your practise as a doctor you have confronted a growing pathology in our culture within which there is an assumption that “one’s state of mind, or one’s mood, is or should be independent of the way one lives one’s life.” You connect this to people confusing unhappiness with depression. Can you talk a bit about this?


Dalrymple: I have noticed the disappearance of the word 'unhappy' from common usage, and its replacement by the word 'depressed.' While unhappiness is a state of mind that is clearly the result of the circumstances of one's life, whether self-inflicted or inflicted by circumstances beyond one's control, or a mixture of both, depression is an illness that is the doctor's responsibility to cure. This is so, however one happens to be leading one's life. And the doctor, enjoined to pass no judgement that could be interpreted as moral on his patients, has no option but to play along with this deception. The result is the gross over-prescription of medication, without any reduction in unhappiness.

As you put it, there is a complete disconnection between one's state of mind and the way one lives. Moreover, one does not have a right to the pursuit of happiness, one has a right to happiness itself.

I decided, as a matter of experience, that these attitudes are very destructive and - not surprisingly - lead to a lot of misery about which a mere doctor can do nothing, at least without making judgements.


FP: In your discussion of evil, you observe one central phenomenon: “the elevation of passing pleasure for oneself over the long-term misery of others to whom one owes a duty.” Kindly give us some of your thoughts on this reality.


Dalrymple: The idea that one's pleasure or desire of the moment is the only thing that counts leads to antisocial behaviour. Let me give a small and seemingly trivial example of this.

About half of British homes no longer have a dining table. People do not eat meals together - they graze, finding what they want in the fridge, and eating in a solitary fashion whenever they feel like it (which is usually often), irrespective of the other people in the household.

This means that they never learn that eating is a social activity (many of the prisoners in the prison in which I worked had never in their entire lives eaten at a table with another person); they never learn to discipline their conduct; they never learn that the state of their appetite at any given moment should not be the sole consideration in deciding whether to eat or not. In other words, one's own interior state is all-important in deciding when to eat. And this is the model of all their behaviour.

all of it here:
FrontPage Magazine - Our Culture, What’s Left Of It

 

[320 Years of History]

more reading for the "know it all" to dissect for you and tell you all how you don't jack. enjoy

snip:
Our Culture, What’s Left Of ItBy: Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, August 31, 2005



Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a contributing editor to City Journal and the author of his new collection of essays Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses.


FP: Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, welcome to Frontpage Magazine. It is a pleasure to have you with us.


Dalrymple: Thank you very much for having invited me.


FP: It's hard to know where to start Dr. Dalrymple, as your essays evoke so many profound themes.



I guess we can begin with your observations on the root causes of many of our social ills. You discuss how in your practise as a doctor you have confronted a growing pathology in our culture within which there is an assumption that “one’s state of mind, or one’s mood, is or should be independent of the way one lives one’s life.” You connect this to people confusing unhappiness with depression. Can you talk a bit about this?


Dalrymple: I have noticed the disappearance of the word 'unhappy' from common usage, and its replacement by the word 'depressed.' While unhappiness is a state of mind that is clearly the result of the circumstances of one's life, whether self-inflicted or inflicted by circumstances beyond one's control, or a mixture of both, depression is an illness that is the doctor's responsibility to cure. This is so, however one happens to be leading one's life. And the doctor, enjoined to pass no judgement that could be interpreted as moral on his patients, has no option but to play along with this deception. The result is the gross over-prescription of medication, without any reduction in unhappiness.

As you put it, there is a complete disconnection between one's state of mind and the way one lives. Moreover, one does not have a right to the pursuit of happiness, one has a right to happiness itself.

I decided, as a matter of experience, that these attitudes are very destructive and - not surprisingly - lead to a lot of misery about which a mere doctor can do nothing, at least without making judgements.


FP: In your discussion of evil, you observe one central phenomenon: “the elevation of passing pleasure for oneself over the long-term misery of others to whom one owes a duty.” Kindly give us some of your thoughts on this reality.


Dalrymple: The idea that one's pleasure or desire of the moment is the only thing that counts leads to antisocial behaviour. Let me give a small and seemingly trivial example of this.

About half of British homes no longer have a dining table. People do not eat meals together - they graze, finding what they want in the fridge, and eating in a solitary fashion whenever they feel like it (which is usually often), irrespective of the other people in the household.

This means that they never learn that eating is a social activity (many of the prisoners in the prison in which I worked had never in their entire lives eaten at a table with another person); they never learn to discipline their conduct; they never learn that the state of their appetite at any given moment should not be the sole consideration in deciding whether to eat or not. In other words, one's own interior state is all-important in deciding when to eat. And this is the model of all their behaviour.

all of it here:
FrontPage Magazine - Our Culture, What’s Left Of It

Do you really want to derail your own thread by talking about cultural change and social failings before you even bother to show that the foundational premise of your OP -- that something having to do with the "bathroom issue" is indeed an illustration of totalitarianism -- is indeed factually accurate?

There is nothing in the world having to do with the existence of cultural changes or social shortcomings discussed in that article you referenced that shows that any of the legislation pertaining to bathroom use is an example of totalitarianism. There isn't for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that totalitarianism is a form of government, not a form of cultural and/or social expression. None of the social ills or cultural changes, including who can and cannot use a given restroom, constitutes a form of government. One would need to have a totalitarian government before the things it does can be described as totalitarian rules, proscriptions, etc.