The guilty flee when no man pursueth, says Proverbs, but it does not follow from this that the guilty do not flee when they are indeed pursued. The guilty also have a tendency to argue when they know that they are in the wrong, as for example architects who continue to deny that, for the past seventy years at least, they have been disenchanting the world by espousing a dysfunctional functionalism and constructing buildings so hideous that they make Frankenstein’s monster look like Clark Gable.

I refuse to think so ill of architects as human beings as to believe them to be totally unaware of what they have done. Rather, I pity them. They are like those unfortunate government spokesmen who have to defend the indefensible in public, which is always a disagreeable and nerve-racking thing to have to do. As government spokesmen invent a language full of polysyllabic euphemism to disguise the catastrophe their masters have wrought, so architects speak a language that is either incomprehensible or, where comprehensible, entirely beside the point.

I take as an example the response of a university professor of architecture to President Trump’s executive order making the classical style of architecture compulsory for new federal buildings of any size or cost in the Washington area. I do not name the professor because my target is the guild or sect to which he belongs rather than the individual. His article objecting to the executive order is typical of many. Amazon.com Gift Card i... Buy New $10.00 (as of 08:25 UTC - Details)

He begins with the argument from authority: He cites a number of American architectural organizations that are highly critical or fearful of the president’s executive order. But this is like canvassing the opinion of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the KGB, and the Red Army to find out whether communism was as bad as it was painted. It is precisely the nature of the architects’ authority that is at issue.

The president’s executive order starts from what seems to me an indisputable premise, that much if not most of the federal building carried out in the past half century has been at best undistinguished and at worst hideous. But in the 1930s and even later, federal buildings that were (and will always be) a great adornment to the city, such as the Supreme Court and the Jefferson Memorial, were built. And it is not possible that what was possible then should not be possible now.

According to the executive order, classical architecture that takes its inspiration from ancient Greece and Rome symbolizes the American founding aspiration toward democracy and the rule of law. Critics point out that both were slave societies, says the professor, and indeed that the slave-owners in the Southern states of America built neoclassical mansions on their plantations. I think both arguments miss the point, though simply to reject the classical world because it was slave-owning is to deny its other and longer-lasting legacy, and would also—in logic—be to reject the founding of the American republic because some of the American founding fathers were slave-owners (and not a woman among them). History is, or ought to be, more than the backward projection of our current moral enthusiasms or obsessions.

Read the Whole Article

The Best of Theodore Dalrymple

$post_author: WP_User Object
(
    [data] => stdClass Object
        (
            [ID] => 2869
            [user_login] => theodore-dalrymple
            [user_pass] => fb3d7dbaaa78174f50a20716a5bc78b3
            [user_nicename] => theodore-dalrymple
            [user_email] => [email protected]
            [user_url] => 
            [user_registered] => 2012-11-02 09:11:06
            [user_activation_key] => 
            [user_status] => 0
            [display_name] => Theodore Dalrymple
            [type] => wpuser
        )

    [ID] => 2869
    [caps] => Array
        (
            [contributor] => 1
        )

    [cap_key] => wp_capabilities
    [roles] => Array
        (
            [0] => contributor
        )

    [allcaps] => Array
        (
            [edit_posts] => 1
            [read] => 1
            [level_1] => 1
            [level_0] => 1
            [delete_posts] => 1
            [email_single_user] => 1
            [contributor] => 1
        )

    [filter] => 
    [site_id:WP_User:private] => 1
)

get_the_author_meta: 

$bio: Theodore Dalrymple is an author and retired doctor who has written for many publications round the world, including the Spectator (London), the Wall Street Journal (New York) and The Australian (Sydney). He is contributing editor of the City Journal of New York, and his latest book is Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality, Encounter Books.

$bios: Array
(
    [0] => Theodore Dalrymple is an author and retired doctor who has written for many publications round the world, including the Spectator (London), the Wall Street Journal (New York) and The Australian (Sydney). He is contributing editor of the City Journal of New York, and his latest book is Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality, Encounter Books.
)