Dalrymple's Thesis In his 2004 City Journal article, Theodore Dalrymple gives his views on the enormous decline in the quality of life in Britain. He believed that society had accepted the idea that people are not responsible for their own problems. Furthermore, it is the “moral cowardice of the intellectual and political elites” that perpetuates the social dynamics responsible for the continued decline of British society. According to the author, a doctor about to retire after a career treating criminal justice offenders and victims, there are several widespread misconceptions that explain the continuing decline of British society. The first misconception holds that there is the idea that “evil” is just something committed by despots and tyrants, like the atrocities studied in human history. Second, there is the idea that the medical community is complicit in society's decline by engaging in a “ridiculous pas de deux.” This means that eminently predictable problems attributable to poor choices made by individuals are conceptualized and treated as medical disorders, such as depression. The next point states that while few individuals specifically seek to do evil, virtually all evil in modern life (at least within non-tyrannical societies) is caused by choices people make over the course of their lives. Fourth, the idea that making judgments about moral choices and irresponsible behavior is “wrong.” As a final point, he argues that the state blindly enables conduct responsible for society's decline by rewarding and incentivizing personal irresponsibility. Dalrymple's main arguments in support of his thesisDalrymple makes his first point in......halfway through the paper. .....to provide assistance at the same time to children who are completely innocent of the mistakes of their irresponsible parents. In theory, he is absolutely right that providing government-funded benefits to single mothers and needy children incentivizes certain types of irresponsibility in family planning. In particular, the latter hinders responsible family planning in relation to the responsibility and obligations earned by irresponsible fathers. But simply eliminating all of these benefits would likely contribute even more to the situation Dalrymple describes. In this regard alone, and in his failure to propose a workable solution or alternative, I think his argument is somewhat lacking. While I agree with Dalrymple on most of the points he makes, I have difficulty providing my full agreement with his argument.