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Rich, James Bennett puts it very well. In my piece on American decline for NR a couple of issues back, I tried to emphasize something that I think U.S. conservatives are too complacent about — the impact of Big Government on free peoples:

American exceptionalism would have to be awfully exceptional to suffer a similar expansion of government and not witness, in enough of the populace, the same descent into dependency and fatalism. As Europe demonstrates, a determined state can change the character of a people in the space of a generation or two.

And not just Europe. John O'Sullivan once suggested the entire post-war history of Canada could be summed up in Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song": The eponymous lumberjack hymning the manly virtues of a rugged life "leaping from tree to tree . . . down the mighty rivers of British Columbia " in the preamble has morphed by the third verse into a transvestite in high heels, suspenders, and a bra. From Canada 1945 to Canada 2000 in nothing flat.

Or take Scotland. Most anywhere you go around the planet, from Hong Kong to Hudson's Bay, almost everything that works was created and developed by Scotsmen. Now the whole joint's a statist swamp where government spending accounts for 75 percent of the economy and the menfolk idle away their days on a diet of drugs and fried Mars Bars with a life expectancy in the less salubrious parts of Glasgow getting down to West African standards. They'll never make any contribution to the world again.

Or consider Geert Wilders's address at the House of Lords today, a Dutchman citing Churchill, the Mother of Parliaments, desperate victims of Nazi-ruled Europe listening on their radios for the BBC's famous "This is London . . ." To a significant percentage of the British people and to the entirety of their ruling elites, these are not inspirational evocations of their glorious inheritance but something between a lost language and prima facie evidence of why Wilders is so dangerous he needs to be put on trial.

Second Amendment types insist the same thing could never happen here, but they underestimate the transformative power of government at their peril . . .

National Review's The Corner, March 5th 2010

Three years ago, I was invited out to Berkeley, of all places, as the 23rd Admiral Chester W Nimitz Memorial Lectures. I was the first foreigner to be asked to serve as the Nimitz Lecturer, and I regarded it as a great honor. One of my hosts for my stay at Berkeley was Thomas Barnes, a long-time professor of military history and Canadian studies, which sounds like a slightly schizophrenic job, but which wouldn't have been, for most of the Dominion's history. He was a bright, funny, engaging and enthusiastic host, and I was very sorry to hear the news earlier this week that he had died following complications from a stroke.

Professor Barnes and I wound up, rather to the bemusement of others, talking a lot about the Canadian Maritimes, whence he hailed. But, by the time of his death, he had spent half-a-century in Berkeley, in "the belly of the beast", as a friend of his put it. He was a genuine conservative in a town where most folks are either soft left, hard left or insane left, but he remained a happy warrior in the ideological struggle. You can get a sense of him in his introduction to one of my talks, "After America: New Order And No Order", and he's also present on the Berkeley TV show I appeared on, "Conversations With History", anchored by his friend, Professor Harry Kreisler.

There's something faintly surreal about delivering a series of military lectures at Berkeley. That it was so agreeable was due to my hosts, Captain Buckey and Professor Barnes. I shall miss him. 

Thank you for your kind (and unkind) letters from around the world. Mark reads all mail, but especially enjoys the vicious ones. Each day Monday to Friday we pick six of the best for our Daily Delivery. So drop a line to Mark's Mailbox, and on Friday if you're chosen to be the one and only Letter of the Week you'll join our roll of winners from four Continents and receive a copy of Mark Steyn From Head To Toe. Congratulations to this week's winner:

Letter of the Week
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY? WHAT’S THAT?
Just read your article in Maclean's on the absurdity of the modern nanny state— spot on.

As a lawyer who used to practice employment law, I was intrigued by the part of your column about the Australian who was too stupid to be fired. I say that I "used to" practice employment law, as I no longer do due to the absurdity of the rulings I was getting from the Ontario Ministry of Labour.

I think what closed the book for me was a case I had about five years ago. I was representing a small accounting firm who had fired a junior accountant because he defrauded his employer: he had falsely docketed time for work that he did not do, had told partners at the firm that he was going to clients' offices to meet with them when he really just took off the day, had told partners and clients that he had filed returns and other time-sensitive documents when he did not, etc. The firm lost a major client (and several smaller ones) because of him, and one client had made a complaint to the accountants' governing body because a bill issued to them had been falsified in that it contained charges for the phantom time billed by the junior.

All of these actions were admitted by the employee, and he acknowledged that he had defrauded his employer dozens of times over the course of about two years (he really had no choice, as there was an extensive paper trail). Nonetheless, he lodged a complaint to the Ministry with a claim for severance pay… which was awarded at first instance, and then upheld on appeal. The Ministry ruled that the employee should have been given a warning that he should not defraud his employer and their clients and given a second chance.

One of the arguments that I had made on the appeal was that the circumstances were similar to a situation where a cashier in a store was caught stealing from the register, and that no one in that case would argue that such a person should not only be fired, but charged criminally. Well, the Officer hearing the appeal told me that, in such a case, it would depend on the circumstances (without explaining what would justify criminal behavior in one's employment).

Apparently, in Ontario at least, committing a criminal act against your employer is not sufficient cause for termination. The age of perpetual victimhood and zero responsibility is upon us.

But keep up the good work, Mark— you're fighting on behalf of all of us who look around and continually shake our heads.

David Brooker
Thornhill, Ontario

THEY DIDN’T START THE FIRE… BUT THEY MIGHT AS WELL HAVE
I read with interest your reference to the problem of burning and electrified roofs foisted upon us by Australia's green ratbags, and while it is all true, you have missed an even bigger— and far more deadly— example of the kind.

Last year in February, the state of Victoria was hit by a spell of hot, dry weather which prompted several weeks of horrific bushfires. Some 173 people died, most on a single afternoon, when one of the biggest blazes swept through a slice of outer suburban Melbourne called Kinglake. Kinglake has a local council dominated by Greens who enforced with draconian penalties any clearing of trees— and even banned the collection of fallen limbs from the side of the road and the cutting of native grasses. People could not flee because the roads were lined with flames 90 meters high from all that fuel and their homes went up one after the other. Of the 173 people who died, some 140 lived in the Kinglake area.

But that was not all. The council actually paid people to uproot non-native trees— oaks, elms and the like, which do not burn readily— and replace them with eucalypts (tinder, essentially). Furthermore, they encouraged residents to make the trees shade their homes to lower cooling costs and the reduce carbon emissions from the air conditioners. One plant they encouraged, burgan, is known as "petrol bush" because it practically goes up in flames if you look at it the wrong way.

The environmentally-aware state government accepted and gazetted all these local government by-laws, which produced a vegetation mix that was (a) dangerous and (b) nothing like a natural mix and (c) overran areas that were pastures and orchards only 40 years ago. Yet the same state government, because it took the power of self-defense away from local residents, proved utterly useless at protecting its citizens. Fire command centers argued amongst themselves about who was in charge of which zone while the people they were supposed to be protecting perished.

Australia, Victoria in particular, is one of the world's three worst fire zones; it has burned repeatedly and the perils of the burning bush are well known. There is nothing new about the fire threat, so you would think we would be good at coping with it by now, like Americans are with tornadoes. Instead, one of the smaller fires in the state's history (in terms of area burned) claimed the largest number of lives— by far.

The state's multi-million dollar warning system failed. Its emergency bureaucrats didn't know who was reporting to whom or who was in charge of what. All this has been proven by the testimony and preliminary findings of a royal commission, which continues to uncover evidence of official incompetence on a daily basis.

The icing on the cake? When it came time to apportion blame, the politicians and local council and academics were in agreement: It wasn't their fault, it was the doing of— you guessed it— global warming. Therefore, they say, more effort must be put into making the bush even thicker and more heavily loaded with fuel in order to store atmospheric carbon.

You would laugh if so many people were not dead.

J T Bosco
Australia

BURNING THE MIDNIGHT BED
Re: Peter Garrett and the burning eco-insulation:

Perhaps this is too easy, but Midnight Oil's biggest hit was called “Beds are Burning,” a song about giving Australia back to the Aborigines. Can this be coincidence?

The time has come
To say fair's fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share

The time has come
A fact's a fact
It belongs to them
Let's give it back

How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?

Well?

Peter Wilson
Cambridge, Massachusetts

HELP US OBI WAN STEYN, YOU’RE OUR ONLY HOPE
I am a long-time reader and even a former “Letter of the Week" winner (the book I received has pride of place on one of my bookshelves). I have not written for several years, but your "Why's He Doing It?" article prompts me to write now. You are so right (sadly) when you assert that if Obamacare gets in, it's here to stay… and for that, I think you and your colleagues must bear some of the blame.

How is it I have never seen a single article from any conservative columnist— nor have I heard a single radio or television program— actually calling for repeal of any social legislation? Why do all our writers and pundits— our brain trust, as it were— spend their time on the low-hanging fruit of mocking democrats or the New York Times? It appears that some gentry conservative pundits would rather waste their time reacting to liberals (and thereby conferring legitimacy on their nonsense) than advancing our own politics. Articles foster debate, which fosters law. Our GOP politicians will never call for repeal of anything if our conservative writers and commentariat don’t lead the charge.

Granted, it doesn't happen overnight. A smart GOP president would not dismantle (for example) the Department of Labor overnight; he would cut a small percentage from its budget in the first year, then the next year another percentage, and so on. The public has to be weaned off of bloated government, not simply removed all at once. But the weaning process begins by constant and sustained promotion of repealing existing law, and as one of the most widely read and respected conservative commentators, the obligation must rest upon you to be the leader.

David Francis

SEPARATE FIRST NATIONS?
You write in “A Missed Opportunity for Diversity”:

“In this respect, the First Nations’ contempt for Canadian authority is most instructive. As Mohawk Grand Chief Mike Delisle explained to CTV, ‘We don’t consider ourselves Canadians.’ Well, except for the purposes of federal welfare. And top billing at the Olympics ceremony.”

So I ask, Mark: What do you think of the idea of putting the First Nations into a Foreign Aid status? Rescind all welfare payments, all government programs. Treat these self imposed non-Canadians as the foreigners they claim they are. I like the idea that… After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Lorimer Rutty
Burlington, Ontario

THE WHITE MALE HIERARCHY STRIKES AGAIN!
In this Macleans article, you bring up several issues around diversity that we struggle with in Canada (and elsewhere). But who said respecting and understanding diversity was easy? People are complex, Mr Steyn; our world is complex. Only in homogenous countries— and let’s face it: there are fewer and fewer of those— can a people ignore the differences that exist and let the opinion of the dominant group (often Euro-descent, heterosexual, Caucasian males) rule. Get over it!

Jeanne Martinson

AVE ATQUE VALE
CONVERSATIONS WITH HISTORY: NEW ORDER AND NO ORDER
Thomas Barnes, RIP

MARK'S MAILBOX
FRIDAY FIRINGS AND FIRES
Readers weigh in on a multitude of matters from Ontario to Australia

IN THE CORNER
"FRIEDMAN, MEET TOM FRIEDMAN..."
Steyn, the Times and the "quagmire" - plus Then and now; and Here's your clogs and what's your hurry?

CANADA vs FREE SPEECH
PRETZELS ON THE BENCH
Fight back. It works.

In the old days, I used to wake up to the morning paper, neatly folded on a silver salver and presented by my valet along with the kedgeree and the brace of grilled quail. Now I wake up to an inbox of Internet stories forwarded by readers that cumulatively feel like the front page from some bizarro kingdom cooked up for an unpersuasive dystopian satire. For example, a headline from the Washington Examiner:

“Transsexual Cabaret Performer Vomits on Susan Sarandon.”

An accident? Or the pilot for a hot new reality format? In other news, the London Evening Standard reports:

“Number 10 Denies Naked Gordon Brown Called Aide C-word.”

The second round of the hot new reality show? No, the prime ministerial nude had been trying to fix up some one-on-one face time with Barack Obama only to be rebuffed and having to settle for a hurried few minutes with the President in the aisle of the UN kitchen as they exited the big world leaders’ banquet in New York. Hence, his naked fury. You don’t have to be a G7 head of government to appreciate that that’s not the most helpful headline at this stage in the electoral cycle. But, as is the way, the story quickly moved on:

“Gordon Brown’s Staff Called Bullying Helpline.”

Indeed. According to the BBC, members of the British prime minister’s staff had called the National Bullying Helpline for advice and counselling. After all, as the Financial Times reported:

“Bullying: Seven Per Cent of Cabinet Office Staff Are Victims.”

No doubt. As I said, for a satirical novel it’s all a bit too obvious: the internal contradictions of the Big Government nanny state finally implode when the paranoid leader’s underlings start clogging up the 24-hour bullying helpline. Too pat, too neat. Perhaps it would work as a musical, with Bye Bye Birdie’s Telephone Hour number retooled for teary stenographers, distraught Lord Privy Seals and other minions of the ruthless Gordon: Bye Bye Brownie. “I have never hit anybody,” responded the prime minister, after allegations that he forced a secretary from her chair for typing too slowly. From the Times of London:

“Yes, Prime Minister: the Culture of Fear at Number 10.”

Another Downing Street staffer claimed to be “scared” of Mr. Brown. Big deal. Except that he’s a member of the personal protection security detail. So the guy who’s meant to take a bullet for you is reduced to a quivering jellyfish because your lingo gets a bit salty? What if there was a security incident such as took place at the Vancouver opening ceremony? From the New York Post:

“Mentally Ill Man Breaches Olympics Security to Get Near Biden.”

Wow. That’s almost as alarming as “Mentally Ill Man Breaches Olympics Security to Get Near Opening Ceremony.” He was stopped just a few feet away from Joe Biden. As the RCMP’s assistant commissioner Bud Mercer explained, “He had an infatuation with the U.S. vice-president.” CTV reports that the man has now been “committed to a psychiatric facility for treatment.” Evidently, an infatuation with Joe Biden is the one illness for which there’s no wait time in British Columbia. But what of all those layers of crack security he breached with his homemade ID? It consisted of three words—ALL ACCESS PASS—in big letters; looks like it was downloaded from a Jonas Brothers tour memorabilia site. Shouldn’t we show that this kind of incompetence won’t be tolerated and fire the useless ninnies who let him through? Don’t even think about it. From the Australian:

“Bosses Rapped for Valid Sacking.”

Come again? Well, as the paper reported, “The nation’s industrial umpire has ruled that a long-term employee who was legitimately sacked for repeated safety breaches must be reinstated and paid compensation because of his poor education and poor job prospects.”

Okay, let me see if I follow that: his poor education means that it was unreasonable ever to expect him to do the job. Therefore, his inability to do the job is why he must remain in it in perpetuity. Gotcha.

Interestingly, what he was in breach of was a failure to observe Health & Safety regulations. Like the rest of the developed world, Australians labour under ever more intrusive ’Elf ’n’ Safety rules. One has always assumed the fellows who impose this stuff on the rest of us believe in it themselves: at the headquarters of Britain’s Health and Safety Executive, for example, staff are forbidden to move chairs due to the risk of injuring themselves. Instead, if you’re minded to move the chair by the pot plant over to the umbrella stand you have to book a porter 48 hours in advance and he will reposition the chair in compliance with safety procedures. But at Australia’s Norske Skog Paper Mills, Paul Quinlivan can ignore Health & Safety with impunity because his lack of prospects would make it impossible ever to get a job where he’d be expected to be able to follow them.

Perhaps he could sell hot dogs to minors. From the Toronto Star’s “Parent Central,” Lesley Ciarula Taylor keeps us on the non-cutting edge of Health & Safety developments:

“Redesign the Hot Dog, Doctors Urge…”

No, that’s it. I’m done. I’m outta here. That’s gotta be some fake-o spam headline generator that infected my laptop when I got hooked on the vomiting transsexual porn. But no, it’s real: “Hot dogs need to be redesigned so they aren’t potentially lethal to small children,” reports Ms. Taylor. Yet Janet Riley, president of the U.S. National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, prefers to keep hot dogs sausage-shaped. Needless to say, she “agrees with the need for education, and points out more than half the hot dogs sold in the United States have warnings to parents to cut them into small pieces.” But presumably not at concession stands in Vancouver, where Joe Biden groupies could easily buy them and force-feed them to distracted under-14s standing around agog at the non-functioning electric zamboni.

Speaking of “the need for education,” London’s Daily Mail reports:

“Girls as young as 11 are to be offered pregnancy tests at school.
“They will also have access to contraception, the morning-after pill and advice on sexually transmitted infections.”

Lovely. And, if that works out, we can start educating the nine-year-olds. I’m surprised there’s anything still left to teach British schoolkids in this area. As the Guardian reported a few years back, “Oral Sex Lessons to Cut Rates of Teenage Pregnancy.” This was part of a policy to wean the li’l moppets from intercourse to the joys of “outercourse.” Alas, teen pregnancy rates went up last year. Not sure how the 11-year-old pregnancy rates are looking, but I’m sure the eight-year-olds are holding steady. Still, whatever its deficiencies in reducing pregnancy, you’d have thought that an education system that teaches schoolgirls how to perform oral sex wouldn’t also have to schedule time to teach them how to consume a hot dog safely. Multi-tasking, people!

Poor, unlovely Gordon Brown desperately pursuing Barack Obama past the chopped zucchini and simmering coulis of that UN kitchen in the forlorn hope of landing one brief photo op of the two geopolitical colossi mano-a-mano. He’s as pitiful as that mentally ill guy in Vancouver besotted with Joe Biden. More so, in fact. At least that fellow did it on his own dime, downloading his ALL ACCESS PASS from the Internet, rather than requiring legions of aides and thousands of pounds to achieve pretty much the same result. The United Kingdom has huge systemic problems: its public spending is at a peacetime high and mostly wasted. Its social capital is all but exhausted: what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family in America, Britain’s postwar welfare state has done to the general population. If Gordon Brown rages naked at his aides, it’s a cry of impotence: like many leaders of exhausted, unsustainable, micro-regulated entitlement states, he can do nothing about anything that matters.

Of all the itsy-bitsy stories in my inbox this week, the one that summed it up featured Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York. He’s promising that the big hole at Ground Zero isn’t going to be there for another decade. “I’m not going to leave this world with that hole in the ground 10 years from now,” he says. In the 21st century, that’s what passes for action, for get-tough leadership, for riding herd. Sure, those jihad boys got lucky and took out a couple skyscrapers, but the old can’t-do spirit kicked in and a mere nine years later we’ve got a seven-storey hole on which seven billion dollars have been lavished. But, if we can’t put up a replacement building within a decade, we can definitely do it within two. Probably. The non-official estimated date of completion for the new 1 World Trade Center right now is said to be 2018. Don’t hold your breath. We’ve got a hot dog to redesign.

It doesn’t matter now what the eventual replacement building is at Ground Zero. The hole is the memorial: a gaping, multi-storey, multi-billion-dollar hole, profound and eloquent in its nullity.

from Maclean's

Hi Mark,
     As you mentioned on The Corner, even Thomas Friedman in The New York Times is now changing his story on Bush and Iraq after their recent elections. You wrote a "Happy Warrior" column at the time of Abu Ghraib that I can't find on the web but which mentions an even sillier "Iraq plan" by Friedman. Please post it again - and keep up the good work,

David Alvarez

MARK SAYS: You're right. This column is from six years ago - 2004 - when Abu Ghraib hit the headlines and Ted Kennedy at his most contemptible and other bigshot Dems began willing defeat in Iraq. I mentioned this column over at National Review earlier, so I'd only add that, while we've all got things wrong over the last seven years, I'll take my consistent line over Friedman's ever more ridiculous ping-pongs. Here's what I had to say in America Alone:

I’m not worried about Iraq. Its political class have behaved with both amazing restraint and impressive resolve: the country won’t be New Hampshire or Singapore, but it will be good enough, and better governed than any of its neighbors.  

I'll stand by that - and don't forget, the SteynOnline Request of the Week appears each Thursday, so do drop a line requesting a favorite column or even a favourite column here.

Make the world go away
from National Review, May 31st 2004

It’s the crude sado-masochistic elements that bother me. Not in the photos, but in the ensuing ballyhoo. To witness an entire culture – media and political – toss all other business aside for a non-stop ritual self-flagellation session is a remarkable privilege. I use the term “self-flagellation” because, while many Democrats and pundits fancy themselves in the sado-dominant role and clearly enjoy flaying Bush, Rumsfeld and co, it is in the objective sense an act of masocho-submission, at least for America. Take, for example, Senator Edward M Kennedy:

On March 19 2004, President Bush asked, ‘Who would prefer that Saddam’s torture chambers still be open?’ Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management.

Sad to say, Senator Kennedy, along with Senator Clinton, is the only US elected official other than the President that the rest of the world has heard of. That’s what I mean by self-flagellation: when the most famous name in US politics slanders his country and its military, around the planet, it’s America that’s diminished. For all the bloviating, for all the Vietnam nostalgia, for all the quagmired speechifying, what does the Senator actually want for Iraq?

I know what I’d like: Iraq, circa 2010, is a functioning confederal state, not a perfect democracy, but a respectable one – not New Hampshire, not Norway, but not Zimbabwe, either. Think Singapore or Belize. It has a growing economy, an enlightened education system, a free press, and an expanding middle-class. Its representative at Arab League meetings votes with the King of Morocco more often than with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Its presence as a free society in the heart of the region changes the dynamic, encouraging reform in some of its neighbors (Jordan) and shriveling the dictatorships in others (Syria).

Here’s my fall-back position: A functioning confederal state proves impossible in Iraq, because Fallujah and Najaf cannot be subdued except by measures we’re unwilling to take. In that case, preserve the ten-year old free state in Kurdistan by giving it independence and letting it flourish as the Slovenia of Iraq. Western and southern Iraq become Shiastan, and we turn a blind eye to some old Shia score-settling and content ourselves with whatever more or less benign Musharraf figure the mullahs can come up with.

What do the Democrats want? Beats me. I’m not one of those right-wingers who think the left are actively treasonous, but on this issue they are – to put it at its mildest – highly non-curious. I attended a ton of Democratic rallies during primary season, and, when it came to question time, the striking feature was not the small number of virulently anti-war types but the much larger number of Democrats who had nothing to say. Pretty boy John Edwards had a stump-speech of masterful condescension designed to hit every Democratic button, including the spare ones in your top left-hand pocket, and yet felt no need to say a word on Iraq, except for a pledge to stop Halliburton war profiteering.

I think it’s reasonable to suggest that Democrats and the media just want Iraq to go away so we can get back to talking about all those Clinton-era feminised micro-politics – the things Dems really get passionate about; “bike path politics” I called it a while back, after Howard Dean revealed that he’d quit the Episcopal Church because of a dispute over one. Dems would much rather be talking about mommy politics - Federally-regulated bicycling helmets, mandatory wheelchair access to bike paths, Federal bike-path networks across the northern border so cycling seniors can get fast-track access to Canadian drugs quicker, etc - than all this daddy politics about re-making the Middle East and de-nuking Iran and North Korea. If it takes tarring him as the kinky madam of the Abu Ghraid bondage dungeon to make Daddy Rumsfeld go away, so be it.

The intelligent discussion on Iraq takes place in-house on the right – neocons vs realists, etc. But the wider debate in America is between those who take the Spiderman view of international relations – “with great power comes great responsibility” – and those who think the most powerful nation in human history can simply climb in the Suburban and go to the mall for its entire period of dominance. That’s what the great Democratic all-purpose cure-all boils down to: “We need to hand power back to the UN. Or the EU. Or the Arab League. Or the Deputy Fisheries Minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands.” Or as Thomas Friedman, the hilariously tortured foreign-policy grandee of The New York Times, put it:

Why would it be in America’s interest to inflate the prestige of Boy Assad? This lame-o multilateral outsourcing is the geopolitical equivalent of sub-contracting to “undocumented” immigrants. Here, we don’t mind giving you the money, just take care of it, we don’t want to know the details, we want to go back to the beach.

It’s not an option. To modify Osama, there’s a strong horse and a weak horse, and America is both of them.