An Alternative Review

My last essay was a review of Dr. Theodore Dalrymple's In Praise of Prejudice. I encourage you to read the book itself, but if you are interested in an alternative review to mine, here is a link to Sir Peregrine Worsthorne's review entitled "Conservative Iconoclasts Required" which appeared in the December 15, 2007 issue of The Spectator (London):

http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/397616/conservative-iconoclasts-required.thtml

The title of Worsthorne's review refers to his one reservation about the book. Worsthorne writes:

I have only one reservation: that Dr Dalrymple’s valuable reassertion of the need for prejudice — by drawing attention to the idiotic notions which proliferate in its absence — has come too late...This is the trouble with encouraging prejudice today: it will be liberal prejudice, since liberalism is what is in the air we breathe...So the last thing conservatives need is a return to prejudice. Indeed they need exactly the opposite — a recrudescence of freethinking, iconoclasm and audaciously cocked snooks at received views and liberal pieties — all too often the same thing.

That too, is food for thought.