The Culture of Dependence

I just ran across the writings of Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist and conservative intellectual.  In one essay entitled "The Uses of Corruption", he compares the Italian and British cultures and economies, and lauds the Italian for being more 'corrupt' and thus oddly less deleterious to the Italian citizens.  In the course of making his argument about corruption (for which I recommend that you read the entire essay), he wrote this excerpt, which is as good a case for conservative policies as you could probably find:

The vast and seemingly benevolent state has completely eroded the proud and sturdy independence of the British population, once remarked upon by visitors. Forty percent of Britons now depend on government subsidy, receiving direct payment from the public purse as part, or all, of their income. Even so, the government regularly mounts advertising campaigns to ensure that people claim all their entitlements. Moreover, the British state has removed several important areas of human life from the responsibility of individuals to arrange for themselves or their families: health, education, social security, pensions, and (for at least a quarter of the population) housing. The income left to them after taxation—or received from the government dole—is thus a kind of pocket money, the more serious, if more vexatious and boring, aspects of a personal budget having been already taken care of by the government. This explains why, whenever the British government considers a tax cut, almost all newspapers, no matter of what political tendency, describe the measure as giving money away—indulging in a handout, like a parent doling out a weekly allowance to children.

The entrapment of people in the psychologically and economically debilitating dialectic I have described is not a marginal, but a mass, phenomenon. It addles the brain and paralyzes action. It helps to explain the degradation and lack of self-respect that is so obvious in the streets of Britain but so absent from those of Italy.

When I worked in East Africa, I saw an instructive contrast between an Italian and a British construction project within a few miles of each other. The British construction workers were drunken, violent, debauched, and dirty, without shame or dignity. Utterly egotistical, yet without much individuality, they wrecked hugely expensive machinery when drunk, without a moment’s regret, and responded with outrage if reprimanded. They intimidated their managers, who made little attempt to control them. They were truly representative of a population that has lost any pride in itself or in what it does, and that somehow contrives to be frivolous without gaiety.

By contrast, the Italians were hardworking, disciplined, and clean, and could enjoy themselves in a civilized way even in the African bush, drinking without drunkenness or that complete loss of self-control characteristic of today’s British. Unlike the British, they never became a nuisance to the local population, and everyone saw them as people who had come to do a job of work. At once more social and more self-reliant than their British counterparts, they were men whose dignity had not been destroyed by a culture of dependence.