... similar or identical passages from different publications, including Steyn’s book, America Alone. Of course journalists sometimes publish a collection of their newspaper columns in book form, but they usually identify the publications and give them credit. I can’t seem to find that in my (library) copy of America Alone. Nor does Steyn indicate within the text itself when and if the material (which ranges from paragraphs to, at times, almost full columns) were published elsewhere.
Later articles including material appearing in America Alone don’t seem to acknowledge the book either (except perhaps when Maclean’s published identified excerpts a few years back).
Maybe Mark Steyn said it best: “I've been writing on this subject…for the best part of a decade now and, to be honest, I might as well recycle the 1996 or 1997 column and spend the week in the Virgin Islands.”
Indeed.
1. Imprimis and America Alone
Is Canada's economy a model for America?
Copyright © 2008 Hillsdale College. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the following credit line is used: “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.”
My colleague at National Review, John O’Sullivan, once observed that post-war Canadian history is summed up by the old Monty Python song that goes, “I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK.” If you recall that song, it begins as a robust paean to the manly virtues of a rugged life in the north woods. But it ends with the lumberjack having gradually morphed into a kind of transvestite pickup who likes to wear high heels and dress in women’s clothing while hanging around in bars.
Of course, John O’Sullivan isn’t saying that Canadian men are literally cross-dressers—certainly no more than 35-40 percent of us — but rather that a once manly nation has undergone a remarkable psychological makeover. If you go back to 1945, the Royal Canadian Navy had the world’s third largest surface fleet, the Royal Canadian Air Force was one of the world’s most effective air forces, and Canadian troops got the toughest beach on D-Day. But in the space of two generations, a bunch of tough hombres were transformed into a thoroughly feminized culture that prioritizes all the secondary impulses of society—welfare entitlements from cradle to grave—over all the primary ones. And in that, Canada is obviously not alone. If the O’Sullivan thesis is flawed, it’s only because the lumberjack song could stand as the post-war history of almost the entire developed world.
America alone, page 42:
John O’Sullivan, a former editor at National Review, once observed that postwar Canadian history is summed up by an old Monty Python song. “I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK” begins as a robust paean to the manly virtues of a rugged life in the north woods – as the intro goes, “Leaping from tree to tree! As they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia!” – but ends with the lumberjack having gradually morphed into a kind of transvestite pickup who likes to “wear high heels. Suspenders and a bra” and “dress in women’s clothing and hang around in bars.”…
… John O’Sullivan isn’t saying Canadian men are literally cross-dressers – certainly no more than 35, 40 per cent, and me only at weekends – but nonetheless a once manly nation has undergone a remarkable psychological makeover. In 1945, the Royal Canadian Navy had the third largest surface fleet in the world; the Royal Canadian Air Force was one of the most effective air forces in the world; Canadian troops got the toughest beach on D-Day. But, in the space of two generations, a bunch of tough hombres were transformed into a thoroughly feminized culture that prioritizes the secondary impulses of society – rights and entitlements from cradle to grave – over all the primary ones. In that, Canada’s not alone. If the O’Sullivan thesis is flawed, it’s only because the Lumberjack Song could also stand as the post-war history of almost the entire developed world.
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2. Western Standard and America Alone
Another large chunk of this Western Standard article was recycled into this 2009 Maclean’s article that contains significant errors.
“History swings both ways”, Western Standard 2006 (no link available):
…a chap like Sir Iqbal Sacranie, a Muslim of such exemplary "moderation" he's been knighted by the Queen. Sir Iqbal, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, was on the BBC the other day and expressed the view that homosexuality was "immoral," "not acceptable," "spreads disease" and "damaged the very foundations of society." A gay group complained and Sir Iqbal was investigated by Scotland Yard's "community safety unit" which deals with "hate crimes" and "homophobia."
Independently but simultaneously, the magazine of GALHA (the Gay And Lesbian Humanist Association) called Islam a "barmy doctrine" growing "like a canker" and deeply "homophobic." In return, the London Race Hate Crime Forum asked Scotland Yard to investigate GALHA for "Islamophobia."
Got that? If a Muslim says that Islam is opposed to homosexuality, he can be investigated for homophobia; but if a gay says that Islam is opposed to homosexuality, he can be investigated for Islamophobia. As someone who's routinely called Islamophobic and homophobic every day of the week, …
….But, even so, one can't help noticing the speed and skill with which Muslim lobby groups have mastered the language of victimhood so adroitly used by the gay lobby. If I were the latter, I'd be a little miffed at these Ahmed-come-latelys. "Homophobia" was always absurd: people who are antipathetic to gays are not afraid of them in any real sense. The invention of a phony-baloney "phobia" was a way of casting opposition to their political agenda as a kind of mental illness. On the other hand, "Islamophobia" is not phony or even psychological but very literal--if you're a Dutch MP or Danish cartoonist in hiding under threat of death, your Islamophobia is highly justified. But Islam's appropriation of the gay lobby's framing of the debate is very artful.
America Alone pages 84, 85:
For example, Iqbal Sacranie is a Muslim of such exemplary "moderation" he's been knighted by the Queen. Around the time Brokeback Mountain opened, Sir Iqbal, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, was on the BBC and expressed the view that homosexuality was "immoral," "not acceptable," "spreads disease" and "damaged the very foundations of society." A gay group complained and Sir Iqbal was investigated by Scotland Yard's "community safety unit" which deals with "hate crimes" and "homophobia."
Independently but simultaneously, the magazine of GALHA (the Gay And Lesbian Humanist Association) called Islam a "barmy doctrine" growing "like a canker" and deeply "homophobic." In return, the London Race Hate Crime Forum asked Scotland Yard to investigate GALHA for "Islamophobia."
Got that? If a Muslim says that Islam is opposed to homosexuality, he can be investigated for homophobia; but if a gay says that Islam is opposed to homosexuality, he can be investigated for Islamophobia. As someone who's called Islamophobic and homophobic every day of the week, I can’t help marveling at the speed and skill with which Muslim lobby groups have mastered the language of victimhood so adroitly used by the gay lobby. If I were the latter, I'd be a little miffed at these Ahmed-come-latelys. "Homophobia" was always absurd: people who are antipathetic to gays are not afraid of them in any real sense. The invention of a phony-baloney "phobia" was a way of casting opposition to their political agenda as a kind of mental illness…
…On the other hand, "Islamophobia" is not phony or even psychological but very literal--if you're a Dutch MP or Danish cartoonist in hiding under threat of death…your Islamophobia is highly justified. But Islam's appropriation of the gay lobby's framing of the debate is very artful.
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3. National Review and America Alone
Two days before Christmas, I was in a store in Vermont buying a last-minute gift when the owner’s twentysomething daughter walked in. “Thanks for the sweater, mom,” she said. “Kevin really liked his present, too.”
“But it’s only the 23rd,” said the bewildered lady.
“Mom,” sighed the kid, wearily. “How many times do I have to tell you? We always open our presents on the solstice.”
A couple of weeks later, a neighbor of mine in New Hampshire got married. He’s a biker and a tattooist, and he’s deeply spiritual. So he and his bride were married in the middle of a field in a service filled with imprecations to Odin, Thor, and sundry other Norse gods. The congregation of bikers rolled their eyes, which may or may not be a traditional Norse mark of respect.
G. K. Chesterton made a famous observation that when men cease to believe in God they’ll believe in anything. But the anything they’ll believe in is at least in part environmentally determined. Alice Thomson of the Daily Telegraph in London was recently granted an interview with the Dalai Lama at Dharamsala, the old British hill station in northern India where he lives in exile. En route to his pad, she encountered both a native Tibetan bearing the brutal marks of Chinese torture and, at one of the luxury hotels that have sprung up for moneyed pilgrims, a “rotund Austrian biscuit heiress” who turned to Buddhism after her stomach staple failed to take.
My North Country neighbors can’t afford air tickets and a suite in Dharamsala. So, given those constraints, solstice worship and Norse deities seem a reasonable fit with the landscape of northern New England. But they’d be a tougher sell in, say, Glasgow or Rotterdam. So what would work in the densely populated parts of western Europe? I’ve been a demography bore for years now — pointing out how aging childless French, Belgian, and Dutch populations are surrendering their turf to young fecund Muslims — but, at the risk of piling too many doomsday scenarios atop one another, it’s worth noting that Islam is advancing not just by outbreeding but also by conversion.
Herbert Asquith is not the most famous British prime minister to American ears, but he’s the one who took his country into the Great War, which is the one that ended the Caliphate and delivered the Arab world into British hands. His great-granddaughter, Emma Clark, is now a Muslim. She’s a landscape artist and has designed an “Islamic garden” at the home of the Prince of Wales. The Honorable Jonathan Birt, son of Lord Birt, the former director-general of the BBC, is also a Muslim and is known as Yahya Birt. The Earl of Yarborough is a Muslim, and goes by the name Abdul Mateen, though whether he can get served in the House of Lords tea room under that moniker is unclear.
The above “reverts” — as Islam calls converts — are not merely the Muslim equivalents of the Richard Gere Buddhists and Tom Cruise Scientologists but the vanguard of something bigger. As English and Belgian and Scandinavian cities Islamify, their inhabitants will face a choice between living as a minority and joining the majority: Not all but many will opt for the latter. At the very minimum, Islam will meet the same test as the hippy-dippy solstice worship does in Vermont: It will seem environmentally appropriate. For many young men, it already provides the sense of identity that the vapid nullity of multiculturalism disdains to offer.
As for the gals, I was startled in successive weeks to hear from both Dutch and English acquaintances that they’ve begun going out “covered.” The Dutch lady lives in a rough part of Amsterdam and says, when you’re on the street in Islamic garb, the Muslim men smile at you respectfully instead of jeering at you as an infidel whore. The English lady lives in a swank part of London but says pretty much the same thing. Both felt there was not just a physical but a psychological security in being dressed Muslim. They’re not “reverts,” but, at least for the purposes of padding the public space, they’re passing for Muslim in public.
America Alone, pages 91 to 94:
In the run-up to Christmas not so long ago, I was in a store in Vermont buying a last-minute gift when the owner’s twenty-something daughter walked in, “Thanks for the sweater, Mom,” she said. “Kevin really liked his present too”. ." "But it's only the 23rd," said the bewildered lady. "Mom," sighed the kid, wearily. "How many times do I have to tell you? We always open our presents on the solstice." A couple of weeks later, a neighbor of mine in New Hampshire got married. He's a biker and a tattooist, and he's deeply spiritual. So he and his bride were married in the middle of a field in a service filled with imprecations to Odin, Thor, and sundry other Norse gods. The congregation of bikers rolled their eyes, which may or may not be a traditional Norse mark of respect.
It is, indeed, the case that when men cease to believe in God they’ll believe in anything. But the anything they’ll believe in is at least in part environmentally determined. In 2006, Alice Thomson of the Daily Telegraph was granted an interview with the Dalai Lama at Dharamsala, in northern India where he lives in exile. En route to his pad, she encountered both a native Tibetan bearing the brutal marks of Chinese torture and, at one of the luxury hotels that have sprung up for moneyed pilgrims, a “rotund Austrian biscuit heiress” who turned to Buddhism after her stomach staple failed to take.
Not all my North Country neighbors can afford air tickets and a suite in Dharamsala. So, given those constraints, solstice worship and Norse deities seem a reasonable fit with the landscape of northern New England. But they’d be a tougher sell in, say, Glasgow or Rotterdam. So what would work in the densely populated parts of western Europe?...
… at the risk of piling too many doomsday scenarios atop one another, it’s worth noting that Islam is advancing not just by outbreeding but also by conversion.
Herbert Asquith is not the most famous British prime minister to American ears, but he’s the one who took his country into the Great War, which is the one that ended the Caliphate and delivered the Arab world into British hands. His great-granddaughter, Emma Clark, is now a Muslim. She’s a landscape artist and has designed an “Islamic garden” at the home of the Prince of Wales. The Honorable Jonathan Birt, son of Lord Birt, the former director-general of the BBC, is also a Muslim and is known as Yahya Birt. The Earl of Yarborough is a Muslim, and goes by the name Abdul Mateen, though whether he can get served in the House of Lords tea room under that moniker is unclear.
The above “reverts” — as Islam calls converts…are not merely the Muslim equivalents of the Richard Gere Buddhists and Tom Cruise Scientologists but the vanguard of something bigger. As English and Belgian and Scandinavian cities Islamify, their inhabitants will face a choice between living as a minority and joining the majority. Many will opt for the latter. At the very minimum, Islam will meet the same test as the hippy-dippy solstice worship does in Vermont: It will seem environmentally appropriate. For many young men, it already provides the sense of identity that the happy-face nothingness of multiculturalism declines to offer……
…(page 94) I was startled in successive weeks to hear from Dutch and English acquaintances that they’ve begun going out “covered.” The Dutch lady lives in a rough part of Amsterdam and says, when you’re on the street in Islamic garb, the Muslim men smile at you respectfully instead of jeering at you as an infidel whore. The English lady lives in a swank part of London but says pretty much the same thing. Both felt there was not just a physical but a psychological security in being dressed Muslim. They’re not “reverts,” but, at least for the purposes of padding the public space, they’re passing for Muslim.
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4. Maclean’s and Imprimis
An Ottawa panhandler says he may have to abandon his prime panhandling real estate on a downtown street corner because he's being shaken down by officials from the panhandlers' union… Did I read that right? There's apparently a real panhandlers' union which exists to protect workers' rights? Er, hang on, non-workers' rights. If the union-negotiated non-work contracts aren't honoured, the members will presumably walk off the job and stand around on the sidewalk. No, wait, they'll walk off the sidewalk . . .
an Ottawa panhandler said that he may have to abandon his prime panhandling real estate on a downtown street corner because he is being shaken down by officials from the panhandlers union. Think about that. There’s a panhandlers union which exists to protect workers’ rights or—in this case—non-workers’ rights. If the union-negotiated non-work contracts aren’t honored, the unionized panhandlers will presumably walk off the job and stand around on the sidewalk. No, wait...they’ll walk off the sidewalk!
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5. Sun Times and America Alone
Do you worry? You look like you do. Worrying is the way the responsible citizen of an advanced society demonstrates his virtue: He feels good by feeling bad.
But what to worry about? Iranian nukes? Nah, that's just some racket cooked up by the Christian fundamentalist Bush and his Zionist buddies to give Halliburton a pretext to take over the Persian carpet industry. Worrying about nukes is so '80s. "They make me want to throw up. . . . They make me feel sick to my stomach," wrote the British novelist Martin Amis, who couldn't stop thinking about them 20 years ago. In the intro to a collection of short stories, he worried about the Big One and outlined his own plan for coping with a nuclear winter wonderland:
"Suppose I survive," he fretted. "Suppose my eyes aren't pouring down my face, suppose I am untouched by the hurricane of secondary missiles that all mortar, metal and glass has abruptly become: Suppose all this. I shall be obliged (and it's the last thing I feel like doing) to retrace that long mile home, through the firestorm, the remains of the thousands-miles-an-hour winds, the warped atoms, the groveling dead. Then -- God willing, if I still have the strength, and, of course, if they are still alive -- I must find my wife and children and I must kill them."
But the Big One never fell. And instead of killing his wife Martin Amis had to make do with divorcing her. Back then it was just crazies like Reagan and Thatcher who had nukes, so you can understand why everyone was terrified. But now Kim Jong-Il and the ayatollahs have them, so we're all sophisticated and relaxed about it, like the French hearing that their president's acquired a couple more mistresses. Martin Amis hasn't thrown up a word about the subject in years. To the best of my knowledge, he has no plans to kill the present Mrs. Amis.
So what should we worry about? How about -- stop me if you've heard this one before -- "climate change"? That's the subject of Al Gore's new movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth…
…The editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, says the Earth will “likely be an uninhabitable planet.” …
…Oh, and here’s my favorite — Dr. Sue Blackmore looking on the bright side in Britain’s Guardian: “In all probability billions of people are going to die in the next few decades. Our poor, abused planet cannot take much more. . . . If we decide to put the planet first, then we ourselves are the pathogen. So we should let as many people die as possible, so that other species may live, and accept the destruction of civilization and of everything we have achieved.
“Finally, we might decide that civilization itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population — weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example.”
Hmm. On the one hand, Dr. Sue Blackmore and the bloke from Coldplay. On the other, Dick Cheney. I think we can all agree which people would be “needed” — Al Gore, the guy from the New Yorker, perhaps Scarlett Johansson in a fur-trimmed bikini paddling a dugout canoe through a waterlogged Manhattan foraging for floating curly endives from once-fashionable eateries…
…Scrap Scarlett Johansson’s fur-trimmed bikini and stick her in a waterlogged burqa.
America Alone, Prologue:
Do you worry? You look like you do. Worrying is the way the responsible citizen of an advanced society demonstrates his virtue: He feels good by feeling bad.
But what to worry about? Iranian nukes? Nah, that's just some racket cooked up by the Christian fundamentalist Bush and his Zionist buddies to give Halliburton a pretext to take over the Persian carpet industry. Worrying about nukes is so eighties. "They make me want to throw up. . . . They make me feel sick to my stomach," wrote the British novelist Martin Amis, who couldn't stop thinking about them during the Thatcher Terror. In the introduction to a collection of short stories, he worried about the Big One and outlined his own plan for coping with a nuclear winter wonderland:
"Suppose I survive," he fretted. "Suppose my eyes aren't pouring down my face, suppose I am untouched by the hurricane of secondary missiles that all mortar, metal and glass has abruptly become: Suppose all this. I shall be obliged (and it's the last thing I feel like doing) to retrace that long mile home, through the firestorm, the remains of the thousands-miles-an-hour winds, the warped atoms, the groveling dead. Then -- God willing, if I still have the strength, and, of course, if they are still alive -- I must find my wife and children and I must kill them."
But the Big One never fell. And instead of killing his wife Martin Amis had to make do with divorcing her. Back then it was just crazies like Reagan and Thatcher who had nukes, so you can understand why everyone was terrified. But now Kim Jong-Il and the ayatollahs have them, so we're all sophisticated and relaxed about it, like the French hearing that their president's acquired a couple more mistresses. Martin Amis hasn't thrown up a word about the subject in years. To the best of my knowledge, he has no plans to kill the present Mrs. Amis.
So what should we worry about? How about -- stop me if you've heard this one before -- "climate change"? If you’ve seen Al Gore's new documentary, ''An Inconvenient Truth…
America Alone, pages 7 – 9:
…David Remmick, editor of the…New Yorker, declares to the magazine’s readers that the earth will “likely be an uninhabitable planet”….
…As Dr. Sue Blackmore wrote (in Britain’s Guardian) in an unintentional side-splitter of an enviro0doom column: : “In all probability billions of people are going to die in the next few decades. Our poor, abused planet cannot take much more. . . . If we decide to put the planet first, then we ourselves are the pathogen. So we should let as many people die as possible, so that other species may live, and accept the destruction of civilization and of everything we have achieved.
“Finally, we might decide that civilization itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population — weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example.”
Hmm. On the one hand, Dr. Sue Blackmore and the bloke from Coldplay. On the other, Dick Cheney. I think we can all agree which people would be “needed” — Al Gore, the guy from the New Yorker, perhaps Scarlett Johansson in a fur-trimmed bikini paddling a dugout canoe through a waterlogged Manhattan foraging for floating curly endives from once-fashionable eateries…
…Scrap Scarlett Johansson’s fur-trimmed bikini and stick her in a waterlogged burqa.
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6. The Australian and America Alone
The Australian, 2006:
MY interest in demography dates back to September 11, 2001, when a demographic group I hadn't hitherto given much thought managed to get my attention. I don't mean the, ah, unfortunate business with the planes and buildings and so forth, but the open cheering of the attacks by their co-religionists in Montreal, Yorkshire, Copenhagen and elsewhere. How many people knew there were fast-growing and culturally confident Muslim populations in Scandinavia?
Demography doesn't explain everything but it accounts for a good 90 per cent….
… Why is this newspaper published in the language of a tiny island on the other side of the earth? Why does Australia have an English Queen, English common law, English institutions? Because England was the first nation to conquer infant mortality.
By 1820 medical progress had so transformed British life that half the population was under the age of 15. Britain had the manpower to take, hold, settle and administer huge chunks of real estate around the planet….
…What country today has half of its population under the age of 15? Italy has 14 per cent, the UK 18 per cent, Australia 20 per cent - and Saudi Arabia has 39 per cent, Pakistan 40 per cent and Yemen 47 per cent. Little Yemen, like little Britain 200 years ago, will send its surplus youth around the world - one way or another.
America Alone, pages 4 - 7:
My interest in demography dates back to September 11, 2001, when a demographic group I hadn't hitherto given much thought managed to get my attention. I don't mean the, ah, unfortunate business with the planes and buildings and so forth, but the open cheering of the attacks by their co-religionists in Montreal, Yorkshire, Copenhagen and elsewhere. How many people knew there were fast-growing and culturally confident Muslim populations in Scandinavia?
Demography doesn't explain everything but it accounts for a good 90 per cent…
… Why is this book written in the language of a tiny island off the coast of Northern Europe? Why does Canada share its queen with Papua New Guinea? Why does a quarter of the world’s population belong to the British Commonwealth and enjoy…English Common Law and Westminster parliamentary traditions?
Because in the early nineteenth century, the first nation to conquer infant mortality was England…by 1820 medical progress and improvements in basic hygiene had so transformed British life that half the population was under the age of fifteen…
… What country today has half of its population under the age of fifteen? Spain and Germany have 14 per cent, the United Kingdom 18 per cent…Saudi Arabia has 39 percent, Pakistan 40 per cent and Yemen 47 per cent. Little Yemen, like little Britain 200 years ago, will send its surplus youth around the world - one way or another.
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