"Theodore Dalrymple" is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, a British medical man of letters remarkable not only for being that, in the tradition of Conan Doyle, Somerset Maugham, and Anton Chekhov--all writing doctors--but principally for being a clear-eyed and objective observer and eloquent chronicler of our decaying civilization. As a prison doctor in Birmingham for many years, he came face to face with the victims and perpetrators of a utopian social ideal that in many ways has turned dystopian; the title of his book Our Culture, What's Left of It says it all. He is an atheist, but not of the chest-pounding, aggressive Hitchens--Dawkins school; indeed, he cherishes many of the irenic, cultural aspects of religion. "To regret religion," he remarks, "is to regret Western civilization." I nearly always find his articles (mostly in City Journal and the New English Review) sobering, sane, and thought-provoking. There's something of the old Romans about Dr. Daniels (he says he chose the nom de plume"Dalrymple" for its "dyspeptic" and "gouty" implications); something of the Grand Siecle, too, when Reason wasn't a naughty word, and Civilization something worth fighting for, and detachment was a virtue.
    His latest book is The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to BarbarismHere is an excerpt (p. 63):   
"One of the great advantages of the Christian philosophy was that it managed to reconcile the unique  importance of each man with humility. Every man was important in the eyes of God, and in that sense was at home in the universe because the universe was expressly created for beings such as he. His every action        was known to God and was therefore not without significance, however ordinary in other respects it might be; moreover, death itself was not without meaning, nor was it  the end of his existence. Yet, by comparison with the author of his being, he was infinitely small, as indeed  was every other human being. However scholarly a man might be, God, being omniscient, was infinitely more knowledgeable; howsoever powerful a man might believe himself, it was finally God who disposed, so that all human power was both illusory and transitory."