John Derbyshire: Difference between revisions

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John Derbyshire, July 2009

For the swimmer, see John Derbyshire (swimmer).

John Derbyshire (the surname is pronounced /ˈdɑːbɪʃə/) is an American conservative writer, commentator, novelist, and author of popular books on mathematics.

Early Life and Career

Origins

Derbyshire was born June 3, 1945 in Northampton, England. His parents were John Robert Derbyshire (1899-1984, born in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England) and Esther Alice Derbyshire (née Knowles, 1912-1998, born in Hednesford, Staffordshire, England).

Derbyshire has written that: "For as far back as I know — middle 19th century — my family is entirely English on both sides. They come from the West Midlands and the Northwest." 

Of his surname, Derbyshire has written: "The surname 'Derbyshire' is a locative, the name of an English county. Like all locatives, it arose when people from that place were living in some other place. ('English' is a common Irish surname on the same principle.) The assignment was presumably made back in the 15th century, when English commoners acquired surnames. At any rate, I have no knowledge of any connections with Derbyshire, a place I have been to only twice, on business both times. Most Derbyshires come, like my father, from south Lancashire. Of all English towns of any size, I think Wigan has the highest proportion of Derbyshires." 

Education

After attending local schools, Derbyshire obtained a bachelor's degree in mathematics from University College, London in 1966, then graduated as a qualified teacher from Liverpool University School of Education in 1967.

Non-literary employment

Until his mid-fifties Derbyshire worked at commonplace middle-class occupations: as a schoolteacher, college teacher, business analyst, and computer programmer. He punctuated these employments with travel (mainly to the Far East), with further study, with spells of casual work (construction laborer, movie extra), and with freelance writing.

Late bloomer

Derbyshire became a full-time writer only in 2001, at the age of 56.

Books

Fiction

Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream , a domestic-comedy novel about Chinese people in the U.S.A., was published by St. Martin's Press in 1996.

Fire from the Sun , an epic novel about "China, Tibet, Wall Street, Italian opera, fate, and sundry other things," proved too long (at 1,100 pages) to appeal to commercial publishers. Derbyshire self-published it via Xlibris, 2001. Derbyshire has since posted the entire text on his website.

Popular mathematics

Prime Obsession , a mathematical and historical account of the Riemann Hypothesis (a famous unresolved conjecture in higher mathematics), was published by Joseph Henry Press, 2003. Prime Obsession was awarded the Euler Book Prize by the Mathematical Association of America in January, 2007.

Unknown Quantity , a popular history of algebra, was also published by Joseph Henry Press, 2006.

Political and cultural commentary

Derbyshire’s fifth book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism , is to be published by Crown Forum in September 2009.

Career as a Commentator

Overview

Derbyshire has been doing fugitive journalism — op-ed commentary, book reviews, and regular opinion columns — since the early 1980s. Several hundred pieces are extant, all but the earliest archived on his personal website. He has written for newspapers, magazines, and webzines.

Newspapers

Daily Telegraph (London), Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, New York Sun, National Post (Toronto).

Magazines

The Spectator (London), National Review, The Weekly Standard, The New Criterion, The American Conservative, Chronicles, Claremont Review of Books, The New Atlantis , The Wilson Quarterly, The American Scholar.

Webzines

National Review Online, VDARE, New English Review , Pajamas Media, Jewcy, Taki's Magazine.

National Review contributor

Since 1999 Derbyshire has been particularly associated with National Review, where he is a Contributing Editor. Since October 2002 he has run a regular as-I-please column, "The Straggler,"  in alternate issues of that magazine. He also contributes unsigned editorial matter, and occasional signed articles and book reviews.

Derbyshire posts articles and blog posts at the National Review Online webzine, with a regular end-of-month online diary  (since December 2001) and a half-hour weekly podcast radio show, "Radio Derb"  (since mid-2004).

The New Criterion contributor

Derbyshire’s next-strongest journalistic association is with the conservative journal of high culture The New Criterion, to which he has been contributing book reviews and articles about literature since September 1999.

Coinages

Word lover

Derbyshire has coined a number of words and phrases since used by others.

The Onomastic Cringe

This was the title of a January 2000 article Derbyshire wrote for The Weekly Standard, in which he mocked and deplored the fashion for changing familiar place-names (e.g. Bombay to Mumbai) in the name of political correctness.

"The need to call peoples and places by their local names is entirely a figment of the Anglo-Saxon liberal imagination — yet another aspect of the absurd cultural cringing our civilization has gone in for this past thirty years. (I hereby christen the whole phenomenon under discussion here 'The Onomastic Cringe.')" 

Bleg

A person who posts a request for information or advice on a blog is performing a bleg, according to Derbyshire, combining the words "blog" and "beg."  "Bleg" is also a regular verb (blegs, blegging, blegged).

Derbyshire believes he coined this word in early 2003, but if anyone can find an earlier occurrence he will yield priority.

The Hypothesis of Collective Imprudence

Coined by Derbyshire in July 2006, the Hypothesis of Collective Imprudence (HCI) stipulates that "no large collectivity of human beings (nation-state or larger) will ever act to avert an obvious calamity until that calamity begins to cause really major, dramatic, unignorable damage."  Often, when humanity is confronted with prospect of a catastrophe, "Nothing will get done until something awful happens. Then something will get done."

HCI seems to be a phenomenon attributable only to large groups of human beings. According to Derbyshire, "Individual human beings can, and often do, act with prudence. Insurance companies would be out of business otherwise. For nations, let alone for humanity at large, acting with prudence is so much the exception rather than the rule …" Examples of HCI cited by Derbyshire include World War II, 9/11, global warming, and, potentially, illegal immigration. Derbyshire himself admits that the HCI is hard to falsify, insofar as any collectivity of humanity that does act prudently against potential dangers thereby prevents the "obvious calamity" from occurring.

Rubble Doesn’t Make Trouble

First used in early 2006 in reference to the Bush administration's Iraq War policy, this is Derbyshire's way of expressing his belief that the solution to terrorism is to kill the terrorists and destroy the places where they are concentrated, as opposed to the administration's efforts to defeat terrorism by bringing democracy to the Islamic world.

Better Dead Than Rude

This was the title of a May 2002 column Derbyshire wrote for National Review Online. "Said [columnist Ann Coulter] last October: 'Ordinary Americans aren't going to die for political correctness.' Oh, yes we are, Ma'am — gladly, willingly! We far prefer an agonizing death to the possibility we might give offense to the differently religioned. Here in what my colleague Florence King calls 'The Republic of Nice' we have reached the reductio ad absurdum of racial sensitivity: Better dead than rude." 

Controversies

Causes

Derbyshire has a caustic sense of humor and a deep contempt for political correctness. He blames the first on his British upbringing, the second on an innately antisocial and contrarian nature — "One of the Awkward Squad." 

He has also pleaded generational issues in his defense: "Grew up in the age before PC. Never internalized the necessary restraints." 

Awards for outrageousness

Blogger and opinion journalist Andrew Sullivan formerly included a Derbyshire Award in his list of Daily Dish Awards, given for "the nuttiest expression of bigotry from National Review's John Derbyshire." The award seems to have been withdrawn.

Derbyshire has at least twice been the recipient of ultra-PC commentator Keith Olbermann’s much-coveted (by conservatives) "Worst Person in the World" award, on one occasion sharing the glory with Bill O'Reilly.

Immigration hypocrisy?

Though a strong immigration restrictionist, Derbyshire has admitted to having overstayed a U.S. visa in the 1970s and to having worked in the U.S.A. without authorization from 1973 to 1978. To charges of hypocrisy he has responded: "If the authorities had told me to leave, I would have left promptly and without complaint. The current twenty million — or whatever it is — persons illegally resident here should be told to leave, and they should likewise leave without complaint." 

Support for wartime internment

In an article in the magazine Chronicles Derbyshire supported the WW2 internment of Japanese Americans, and argued that in the event of a war with China the federal authorities would likewise be justified in interning Chinese Americans and their families, including himself (his wife being of Chinese origin). Derbyshire thinks he may be the only opinion journalist ever to have called for his own internment.

Chelseagate

Following the departure of Bill Clinton from the White House in 2001, Derbyshire vented his disgust with the entire Clinton family with a column wherein he confessed that "I Hate Chelsea Clinton."  To the consequent tongue-clicking from guardians of public taste, Derbyshire posted an unrepentant reply.

Targeted by transsexuals

Derbyshire shared a publisher, and a book tour, with sex researcher Michael Bailey in 2003, when both Bailey's book about effeminate men (The Man Who Would Be Queen ) and Derbyshire's Prime Obsession were published.

Bailey's book spoke approvingly of a psychological theory which, while scientifically respectable, is strongly disliked by transsexual militants. Derbyshire gave Bailey's book a friendly review.

When the transsexuals targeted Bailey, Derbyshire was caught in the crossfire. For some months thereafter, a google on "John Derbyshire" brought up anti-Derbyshire rants from transsexual websites, which lost some of their force by including every other author named John Derbyshire that the transsexuals were able to find on the internet, none of those authors related to, or even known to, this John Derbyshire.

Homophobia and racism

In a November, 2003 interview Derbyshire confessed that "I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one."  Invited to elaborate on the latter, he offered: "I believe race is a real thing, that races differ — statistically — in important ways, and that private racial discrimination is not immoral, and certainly should not be illegal. In the current American climate, I think that makes me a 'very mild, tolerant racist.'" 

Female salad days

Commenting in 2005 on his lack of interest in seeing pictures of then-36-year-old actress Jennifer Aniston shown topless, Derbyshire observed that "beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman's salad days are shorter than a man's — really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20." 

Derbyshire was at once tagged as a child molestor by elements of the blogosphere. He countered: "If it is now eccentric for adult males to find late-teen females sexually attractive, the human race is in worse trouble than I thought." 

Don’t f*** with the Jews

Though describing himself as a philosemite and well-wisher of Israel , Derbyshire expressed qualified agreement with the thesis of evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald that Judaism is "a group evolutionary strategy" when reviewing  MacDonald's book The Culture of Critique  in March 2003.

Then in February 2007 on the Jewcy.com webzine, he laid down Derbyshire's First Law of Opinion Journalism in the U.S.A.:  "Don’t f*** with the Jews!" while averring that he personally, as a philosemite, felt no inclination to do so.

Indifference to Middle East killings

In a March 2006 column for National Review Online, Derbyshire said that: "the spectacle of Middle Eastern Muslims slaughtering each other is one that I find I can contemplate with calm composure."  This was described by commentator "AmberJane" at the Daily Kos as "one of the most appalling things I've ever run across." 

Derbyshire countered with: "The eight-year, half-a-million-dead Iran-Iraq War actually was contemplated with calm composure by wellnigh the entire Western world … except, I suppose, for AmberJane, who was wringing her hands and weeping for the entire eight years, perhaps pausing now and then to fire off a tear-stained letter to the United Nations, begging them to stop the killing." 

Criticism of British sailors captured by Iran

When British sailors were taken prisoner by the Iranian navy in March 2007, Derbyshire offered the opinion that they ought to have fought, and if necessary died, rather than permit themselves to be captured. This was considered an outrageous expression of sadistic warmongering by liberal commentators, leading to a contentious appearance on Alan Colmes’ radio show.

Remarks on Virginia Tech massacre

When, a month later, the Virginia Tech massacre occurred, Derbyshire wondered aloud on National Review Online why none of the students had been able to put up any defense. This brought forth a dissent, "in the strongest possible terms" from then-fellow National Review Online contributor John Podhoretz. Alan Colmes picked on this one, too. So did Keith Olbermann: this was Derbyshire’s first "Worst Person in the World" award.

Slough on the Potomac

Also in 2007, incited to rage by watching the U.S. Senate deliberate the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act" of that year, Derbyshire penned a poem in close imitation of John Betjeman's famous "Slough."  The poem called for the annihilation of Washington D.C.:

Come, friendly bombs, fall on D.C.!

It's not fit for humanity.
There's nothing there but villainy.

Swarm over, Death! …

 … although, as Derbyshire pointed out in his defense, his poem spared most of the non-elite inhabitants of D.C. (as Betjeman's poem had spared most Sloughians). The verses appeared briefly on NRO before being "pulled" by the editors as violating standards of good taste. They can be inspected in all their lyrical tastelessness here.

Friendship with white nationalist

Derbyshire is a personal friend of white-nationalist Jared Taylor, proprietor of the American Renaissance magazine and website, though in debate he has expressed cordial disagreement with Taylor's views. In contrast to Taylor's white nationalism, Derbyshire has proposed an "Arctic Alliance,"  the IQ-100-ish, low-birthrate peoples of the northern frigid zone uniting in mutual self-defense against the IQ-90-ish, high-birthrate "Temperates" further south and the IQ-80-ish, superhigh-birthrate "Tropicals" of the equatorial zone. He has cited his own family circumstances as a model for humanity to follow.

To Derbyshire’s dismay, the "Arctic Alliance" concept has met with near-total apathy, the only recorded comment to date being from Jared Taylor (who grew up in Japan), viz.: "It would never work." 

Admiration for Steve Sailer

A founder member of Steve Sailer's Human Bio-Diversity group, Derbyshire has expressed extravagant admiration for Sailer, to whom he has applied Warren Harding's encomium on Herbert Hoover: "The smartest gink I know." 

Alienation from religious conservatives

Formerly an Anglican, Derbyshire ceased attending church in 2004 and now calls himself a Mysterian. This indifference to religion, together with his warm respect for science, has alienated some American conservatives.

Derbyshire has described the Right to Life movement as a "hysterical cult," and its tenets as "a frigid and pitiless dogma." 

When, in 2008, conservative writer Ben Stein produced a creationist movie, Expelled, arguing that Charles Darwin's ideas led to the Holocaust, Derbyshire wrote that this was "a blood libel on Western Civilization"  (while admitting he had not watched the movie all through). Derbyshire is a co-founder with other irreligious conservatives of the Secular Right blog.

Removal of children from YFZ Ranch

Derbyshire was one of the few columnists to protest the removal of children from the FLDS-run YFZ Ranch in 2008 as an "atrocity." 

Personal life

Marriage

John Derbyshire married his former student Lynette Rose Qi (Qi Hong Mei) of Changchun, northeast China, in August 1986, writing up the event for the London Spectator. Wife and husband became U.S. citizens in 2001 and 2002, respectively.

Children

The Derbyshires have two children: Eleanor Muriel ("Nellie"), born 1993, and Daniel Oliver ("Ollie"), born 1995.

The children, Derbyshire has written, have been instructed from an early age that they are "one-half Chinese peasant, one-half English coal miner, one hundred percent American."  The family lives in Huntington, New York.

Published books

• Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream (St. Martin's Griffin, 1997) ISBN 0-312-15649-9
• Fire From the Sun (Xlibris Corporation, 2000) ISBN 0-7388-4721-6
• Prime Obsession : Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics (Plume Books, 2003) ISBN 0-452-28525-9
• Unknown Quantity: A Real And Imaginary History of Algebra (Joseph Henry Press, 2006) ISBN 0-309-09657-X
• We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (Crown Forum, 2009) ISBN 0-307-40958-9

External links

• John Derbyshire's home page, with archive of web and print articles
• Derbyshire's weekly podcast "Derb radio"
• Archive of Derbyshire articles for "National Review"