"The first thing I would say to those who say that we must come and give, otherwise these people are incapable of improving their situation or getting out of their poverty, is to ask them, 'Why?'"

Anthony Daniels, who publishes under the pen name of Theodore Dalrymple, is an English writer and retired psychiatrist and prison doctor, best known for his collections of essays—Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass and Our Culture, What's Left of It. He writes for National Review and has contributed a regular column to the London Spectator. In his writings, Dalrymple emphasizes a distinction between the poor of the developing world and “the underclass” people in the developed world. He attributes a cultural breakdown among the underclass to the destructive effects of systematic aid to the poor and to the West becoming unmoored from its Judeo-Christian cultural foundations. Although not a religious believer himself, Dalrymple commented in a City Journal essay that “to regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy.”