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Thank you for your kind (and unkind) letters. Mark reads all the letters, but especially enjoys the vicious ones.  Drop a line to Mark's Mailbox and 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. It would help if you could indicate your city or town, or, at least, your state, province or country. Failing that, your continent or hemisphere would do.

Letter of the Week
REMEMBERING LEE HAZLEWOOD
I would have sent this note even if Lee Hazlewood had not died this week.  But, seeing as how his death increases his chances of getting a Song of the Week this coming Monday, the note is even timelier. 
 
Last Friday, the last evening of our vacation in the Wisconsin Northwoods, my wife and I dropped by the local tavern.  The bar featured a disc jockey who had the unique talent of getting the title wrong of virtually every song he played.  The only song I heard him call by the correct title was “Jackson”, which he credited to Johnny Cash and June Carter.  He must have seen I Walk the Line a few times too many, as he had played the Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood recording, the version I remember as being a hit. 
 
The Chicago Tribune ran an obituary of Mr. Hazlewood from the LA Times, in which the writer seemed to admonish Mr. Hazlewood for not being identified with a signature sound the way contemporaries such as Phil Spector and Brian Wilson were, which misses the point.
 
Lee Hazlewood got sound.  Listen to his work with Duane Eddy or Nancy Sinatra (and Dino, Desi and Billy, if you want) and you hear crisp recordings by someone who knew what he was doing in the recording booth.  The Beatles recordings stand out for the same reason--George Martin got sound.    
 
You have commented (correctly, of course) on how poor Phil Spector recordings sound today.  Spector may have understood sound the way that Hazlewood’s did, but Hazlewood’s recordings sound fresh and Spector is the more famous producer. 
 
The LA Times obituary quotes Nancy Sinatra on Hazlewood: He hasn't gotten the recognition he should.   And it wasn’t only the Wisconsin DJ who didn’t give it to him.
 
DH
Evanston

Re: Today’s wandering Jew is blond haired and blue eyed
THE PRICE OF LEAVING
Regarding this article I have a bit of advice to offer. You don't want to live like Jews. Most people have neither the stamina, the resiliency, or the raison d'être to live that way. They don't have the cultural artifacts necessary to survive, or the assurance that one day it will all work out. They don't have the moveable culture. ANYONE asking me that advice would get the same answer. Stand and fight for your home and your soil, because, as I'm fond of repeating, there's one thing worse than fighting for your country, and that's not having a country to fight for at all. All of Israel's wars haven't cost as much in Jewish life as one day at Auschwitz. Whatever the price of staying, it's not as high as the price of leaving.

Today you fear shadows. You fear offending someone, you worry about your retirement benefits. Tomorrow you will long for the day your fears were so negligible.

This talk about emigration and wandering reminds me of the guy who hasn't got the guts to go look for a job who thinks about starting his own business. If you haven't got skin thick enough to look for a job, how do you think you'll survive one week as an entrepreneur? If you haven't got the cultural backbone to adapt and resist when you are living on your own land--land that currently the entirely world acknowledges as yours historically--because you are being surrounded by people weaker than you, how do you propose surviving in a world in which those surrounding you are more numerous and more powerful than you? When you won't have any roots, any cultural ties to the place where you live. And where will you go where the enemy that you have identified won't follow you? He can't really live without you. He'll follow you everywhere. He wants the world. He needs you to work for him as a slave.

Stop feeding them. That's the first step. You can do that with a stroke of the pen. All it takes is the clarity, and the will, to act.

Ezra Marsh
Baltimore

MAKING UP THE NUMBERS
Not saying you haven't touched on this but is anyone connecting these two particular dots?

If the blonde blue-eyed will migrate out of Europe, including Britain, to places like the US, Canada, Oz and NZ (and maybe SA), then won't those countries' founding "Caucasian" peoples thereby make up their demographic losses?

Not necessarily my own view but I'm surprised this doesn't get an airing (e.g. "Ports of Call").

Lionel Albert
Knowlton, Quebec

Re: Nuking Cleveland won’t help
A DEMOCRAT TILL 9/10
Yes, indeed, a crater the size of Buffalo would only give certain people one more thing to blame George Bush for.  (And, just for the record, I'd be opposed to blowing up Buffalo even if it did serve a larger purpose.)
 
Your NRO line about bathetic hand-holding and performances of "Imagine" reminded me:  I was a Democrat on 9/10 and all my life prior, but do not expect I will ever be one again.  A longtime friend of mine, a former fellow lefty, and now just a lefty, treats me like I must have bumped my head.  Just recently we were talking about the all-star music telethon that ran a day or two after the, um, tragedy.  His most moving recollection:  Someone-or-other singing "Imagine."  Mine:  Tom Petty staring straight into the camera with "I Won't Back Down."  I think that sums up the divide pretty well.
 
Keep keeping it real.
 
Matt Tanner

MOVE ALONG
Move along, buddy, there's nothing to bomb here.

Thanks,

David Duke
Buffalo, New York

BY THE TIME YOU GET TO CLEVELAND
Well, nuking Cleveland would help a little bit.  Have you ever been to Cleveland?

Dave Toohey

URBAN RENEWAL
As a lifelong Buffalo native, I object most vociferously to your suggestion that "a big smoking crater in Buffalo" would not be beneficial.  Perhaps so, as pertains to terrorism-related issues, but I assure you that a crater in Buffalo would help in many other ways under the themes of urban renewal and "addition by subtraction.")

Keep up the good work.  And please don't disclose my name -- Buffalonians are awfully defensive.

Name withheld

STUNNED BY THE ANTI-AMERICANISM
I was in London six weeks after 9/11 and saw my first anti-American (anti-pre-Afghanistan-war, anti-capitalism, whatever) rally. It was stunning for me, as an American, to see. Fortunately there were sane Brits there to calm me down. I was simply stunned, and headed for the nearest pub just to keep from getting arrested. First time I saw a Bush=Hitler sign too. I'll never forget it. It was then, looking back, that the full force of the idea that roughly half of the west is simply unprepared to deal with radical Islamism, and would just as soon blame America or whatever the current boogey man is, hit me. And it's not got any better since.

Brent Smith

BEST POST
Bravo on your post.   It is quite possibly the best thing ever placed at The Corner.

Dan Brass

BLAME BUSH
Regarding your Corner post about the likely reaction to another terrorist attack:

Here  is a link to the web site of the treasurer of the DNC.  Today (8/10) he recommends a column by Paul Craig Roberts.  (Andy is a great financial writer, but on politics he has IMHO veered off into cloud cuckoo land.)

And here  is a link directly to the Paul Craig Roberts article.  As you can see, if there is a terrorist attack it will only confirm a plot by Bush to turn America into a dictatorial police state.  (And he was in the Reagan administration - surely he knows the truth about the conspiracy!)

I enjoy your writing immensely but wish, as I'm sure you do, that more of your predictions weren't panning out.

Kevin Clark

WHAT’S IT LIKE TO BE A PUSSY?
You are the worst kind of pussy. You advocate American war, violence, and terrorism, but you are afraid to put your own ass on the line and fight.

Coward.

Why can't you fight in the war you advocate???

David Appell
National Association of Science Writers
Portland, Oregon

FOUR MINUTES LATER
Pussy.

What's it like to be a pussy?

David Appell
National Association of Science Writers
Portland, Oregon

MARK REPLIES: What's it like to be a pussy? Well, I'll tell you if you tell me what it's like to be a "science writer".

NOT JUST KOOKERY
Exactly. My mother-in-law and her boyfriend were saying the same thing months ago ("it'll take another attack for people to believe there's a serious threat"), and I told them that it would happen that way. The worst part, the thing that in my view takes "Loose Change" past harmless kookery into actual evil, is that terrorists could blow up a bus full of black gay orphans in the middle of Times Square on live television, and 10-20% of the country would be positive that Bush-Cheney-Rove set it up, and as many as 40% would be inclined to entertain the idea.

Anthony Frazier

YOU’D JUST SCREW IT UP AGAIN
You know, you describe all of these things that the "left" would say or do if another attack happened without describing what some of you on the right would do (or continue to not do, such as actually sacrifice something for the war effort besides printer ink. For sure, many of you would continue your incompetent war-fighting and strategizing, that's without question. Once again, you guys would screw it up, like you did in Iraq. Move over, you Ambrose Burnsides and Douglas Haigs. Let some better fighters have a crack at it. Petraeus can't do it all, chickenhawks.

Victor Lamas

THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE
A brilliant response.  I thinking of saving it as a morbid time capsule should the unthinkable (but at this point, inevitable) happen again.

PS - LOVED America Alone!!

P McGrath

POLARIZING BLOWHARD
You're right. There will be much less magnanimity should there be a second attack. And it will be due to polarizing blowhards like you, Malkin, Kos, Armstrong, et. al.

Joseph Mullin

A STRIKE IN THE STICKS
. . . but incinerating the hundred-odd attendees of a high school  basketball game in sleepy little Pinedale, Wyoming might.  9/11 is perceived (forgetting, as frequently happens, it's Pentagon 
component) as an attack on a very blue city in a very blue state,  hence meeting the necessary criteria to incense those left-of-center,  including residents of America's other large, liberal, coastal  cities.  That right-leaning residents of the red fly-over states  would be outraged is a given.  Duh.  But the red-state outrage took on a slightly different contour, in my mind, due to the vast cultural gulf between God-fearing ranchers in Wyoming and homosexual artists in Greenwich Village.  As a hick from Wyoming (now a culturally literate educated businessman living in Arizona) I can tell you that westerners and mid-westerners largely perceive a visit to NYC the  same way they would perceive a visit to a very foreign European city (and considering the success of the multi-culti movement in Gotham, who can blame them?)

Where am I going with this?  There are two diverse cultures, divided roughly along political lines, in the US.  And to be sure, they intersect hither and yon, but I can tell you that redneck friends and family of mine, while blind angry and seeking answers after 9/11, still felt in their heart of hearts, like, "Man, that really sucks what happened to those poor people in New York.  I sure am glad I live out here in the sticks where that kind of stuff never happens."   It was their country that was attacked, but it was still a world away to them.  And to be sure--they still have Calvin pissing on Osama's head in the rear window of their pick-up truck, and many of their numbers volunteered to serve in uniform immediately after 9/11.  I'm  not saying they didn't care.

What I am saying is that if Al Qaeda or some other terrorist organization were to hit middle America (particularly a small town somewhere in the Heartland) the response would be vastly more swift,  intense, and enduring.  I would submit that many would even resort to  inappropriate, misguided actions, but the palpable need for revenge  would overwhelm anyone or anything that gets in the way.  I believe that the character trait that would spawn such a response is a key  component of the elusive definition of "American-ness," for better or worse.

One other point is that a hick-town terror attack would drive home the gravity of the threat in a heretofore-unseen way.  Upon realizing that no one is safe, even the hicks in the sticks, America's red-state population would respond with substantially more vitality,  possibly even in unimaginable, terrible ways.

As a moral human being, I would never advocate for an attack on  innocent people anywhere.  But at the same time, very few people in  the world have fooled themselves into believing that Islamic terrorists will never again strike in the United States.  In my estimation it is a foregone conclusion.  What I describe here is an outcome of that eventuality that could be described as very positive by democratic capitalists the world over.  You are correct that Stu Bykofsky is full of beer on this one, but a certain kind of attack in a certain kind of town at a certain time could ignite quite a firestorm.

Just my $.02.

BTW--you rock, my friend - I love your writing, and I love your  exceedingly alert, sober sagacity.  Oh, and your humor as well - got my first taste at the NRI summit in January - you, Goldberg, and Rob Long should take your show on the road!

Thanks much,

John F. McJunkin
Avalon Podcasting, LLC
Arizona

IS THERE NO HOPE?
You wrote:
"The split in this country is real. The so-called "singular purpose" of Fall 2001 was mostly illusory. Lightning won't strike twice, even if the Halliburton Tsunami-Hurricane Machine wants it to."

So, another 9/11 won't do, fine.

But then, there is no hope? Is our society dying from suicide, not murder? What can we do?? Follow the lemmings to the cliff?!!

Thanks,
Jacques

LAST PAGE FIRST
"Lightning won't strike twice, even if the Halliburton Tsunami-Hurricane Machine wants it to." I love reading lines like this, because they remind me why you're my favorite columnist and author. I've read your book three times (bought extra copies for family) and anxiously await each new NR in the mail so I can read the last page first. I have no hidden agenda or ulterior motive here, I just wanted to take a moment to say that I think you’re fantastic and keep up the phenomenal work!

Josh Nelson

I’VE GIVEN UP ARGUING
I thought your comment about the reaction to yet another 9/11 was dead-on.  I've often thought that the first reaction to another attack would be some variation of "It's Bush's fault."  Even if it's after he leaves office, it will be, "Well if we never had Bush, this would never have happened." 

I wonder though, if you would expand on your closing comment, that being the comment that the divide in the country is real.  I thought that was equally accurate yet even more ominous.   I used to welcome a chance to argue.  Now even I have tired of it - that the Left is so hardened to their positions that there is no room for discussion.  They almost immediately escalate any argument to a shouting match or a tu quoque gotcha fight.  In truth, I don't think even the Left knows what they want.  Take a look at most of the 200 + comments on any Kos post and you can discern 50 or
more separate positions that even they can't agree on.  (It's going to be interesting to watch them eat their own by the way, as they "cleanse" the party in Kos' words)

Where do you think we go from here with such a divide?  The inability of a people to unite in the face of an external threat is a death sentence.  I'd like to believe my kids will grow up in a better country than what we have right now.

By the way, I'm a big fan of your writing.

 John Macnamara

SOURCE OF THE SPLIT
The actual differences between real American's is far, far less than the irrelevant but noisy difference between Conservative bloggers and Liberal bloggers. If every time a blogger wrote a line like 'those who wanted to wallow in bathetic weepy let's-hold-hands-and-drone-"Imagine" candlelight vigils and retreat into antiquated tropes about "root causes" like global poverty,' he decided instead to write something incisive or even interesting I think you'd be amazed at how your perception of American unity improved.

The “split in this country” you refer to is just about as real as people like you want it to be.

Marc Schriftman

FANTASY TARGET SHOOTING
You are dead right about the split in the country.  You mention what the left would be doing.  And you are spot on with regards to all their Chamberlainesque pandering.

But the right (and I am talking about average Joes, not NRO types) would be making out fantasy target lists.  Not for dropping 2000 pounders, either. And they would be absolutely demanding to know why the list was not executed by dawn over the targets.

There are a LOT of us in the Average Joe category.  But we have been keeping our mouths shut, to give the President the benefit of the doubt.

Even the most patient have their limits.

Love your stuff.  Keep up the great work.

Jim
14 year NRODT subscriber

Re: Propping up the princes
MY ENEMY’S ENEMY
Your line under the link for PROPPING UP THE PRINCES, "The enemy of my enemy is also my enemy" reminded me of something from Schlock Mercenary.  There's a book in the Schlock-verse called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates.  Rule 29 states, "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less."

Something our foreign policy wonks should probably remember.

Of course, I also like number 37: There is no "overkill". There is only "open fire" and "I need to
reload."

Anna Waite
Virginia

Re: A star isn’t Bourne
BOURNE TO DOZE
I don't hate the Bourne movies all that much (though I must admit everyone fell asleep in a hotel room watching the second one, so I'll  have to rent it again before seeing the new one, and I guess I'll have to rent the first one too since I don't remember anything about it and am not all that sure that I saw it).

Paul Greengrass directed the new Bourne (he's the guy who did United 93). So I'm giving it a chance. Especially because the critic for the Seattle Times hated it because it made him seasick.

Love your stuff,

Mike Lee

Re: Esteem train to nowhere
IT'S OK TO BE ORDINARY
As a teacher I had to fight guilt over not giving into the self esteem crap...grading kids for the actual quality of their work and not just in sympathy with their efforts...but the problem is pretty rampant in my generation as well.  Some friends and I were just discussing how we were told all along that we could do anything, the world was our oyster, and that we were amazing (even when we really, really weren't) and now as we hit mid thirties and nobody is stroking our egos, we have had to realize we aren't that impressive, just normal, and now it is our job to take care of others without all the thrills, we can be a moody lot...even though all of us are doing fairly well even by American standards.  We'll get over it, but I have taken to reading Churchill and C.S. Lewis quotes online regularly to kick my own ass.  They were made of sturdier stuff.

What surprised me, as a fairly regular reader, was that you slunk off out of the school board meeting...since when do you back down from a fight?  Saudi, terrorist funding princes are no problem, but the head of the PTA...THAT'S scary.  What kind of conservative are you, gees, talk about dealing with stuff on the local level...there were probably teachers with their mouths gagged just waiting for someone to speak some sense into the meeting.

Jennifer
Pasadena, California

CELEBRATING WILLIAM HENRY
Henry's book to which you referred is titled In Defense of Elitism. Beautifully written, incisive, its substantive points and conclusions are corroborated almost daily all these many years later-unfortunately, usually by various intellectual dwarfs, hacks and losers doing their squirrelly worst in government, the bureaucracy or the education behemoth.  A genuine shame he died so young, so much promise unfulfilled.  Keep up the always outstanding and hilarious work. 

Stu

YOUR VIEWS DON’T COUNT, YOU DROP-OUT
Seeing as how you are a high school drop out with no real formal education, your views on education do not count. You lack any credentials to make any judgement about something you failed at completing. If you wish to comment on education, return to high school and sit along the kids and complete the work, then you will have earned the right to comment as a high school grad. If you wish to comment on education, you will then need to complete university undergrad studies and some postgraduate studies to bring yourself up to the standards of the lowest qualified teacher. Now that you understand your place, kindly refrain from your impudence to presume to write on matters that are beyond your limited intellect and qualifications.

Thank you.

Roger Ali
An educated Muslim who does not tolerate impudent fools like you

AN IRISH EDUCATION
Hi Mark,

(Please forgive the familiarity, but you do come into my workplace and home on a daily basis.  Turnaround, etc.)

I spent my secondary school time being taught by the Christian and Patrician Brothers (St. Joseph's, Galway, Patrician Brothers, Ballyfin, Laois).

The only way to gain credibility in those schools was to perform.  Failure to perform led to a quick clip on the side of the head, and a prediction of the gutter to come.  I performed, and to this day, things like "mensa, mensa, mensam, mensae,...", or "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree...", or "Ta Tir na n'Og ar chul an ti...", or "Il avait connu des jours meilleurs, malgre sa misere et son infirmite..  A l'age de quinze ans, il avait eu les deux jambes crasees par une voiture...", or "Ring Out Your Great Bells In Victory", or 6.023 x 10^23, etc., etc. still rattle around in my head.  Though I never really tried to keep current, I can still read French, Irish, and Latin fairly well.  It's a freaky experience to be in Bayeux and realize that two of the tapestry languages are redundant.  It's even freakier to be in a French cinema and realize that the French subtitles are conflicting with the English soundtrack.

Sorry.  I started showing off.  But then, I did achieve.  And not in the Lebowski sense.

The upside to this education was that I gained confidence by demonstrating ability.  This pretty much eliminates the sort of nihilism that comes from confidence coupled with inability.

The downside - and I swear to God, I'm serious about this - is that the rote learning really does stunt creativity.  Well, it did for me, anyway, and many of my peers.  The few who remained creative went into politics.  (And bad cess to them, as my grandmother used to say.)  It's only after a decade or two in the US that I'm getting back to childlike creativity.  Or maybe it's senescence.  Still, childlike creativity coupled with adult experience and machine-like recall is not a bad place to be.

Mind you, this was Ireland in the late 1970's and early 1980's.  I'm sure things have improved since then.  (Hah!)

Ah well, I've gone on way too long.  My thoughts, this evening.

Thanks for all the great columns,

Patrick

QUEST FOR THE MEANINGFUL MISSION STATEMENT
I'd like to question on something in your comment.  Since you participated in a mission statement discussion, I assume you understand what a mission statement is.  Could you please explain to me what mission statements are?  I have to write mission statements from time to time as part of my job and I'm afraid that I still don't understand what they are.  I feel rather sheepish about this, as I've often been praised by my superiors for writing excellent mission statements.  I would truly  appreciate your help.

By the way, do you plan to publish in book form your essays on The Great America Songbook?  If you do, I'll be the first to buy it.

Tim Saunders
Half Moon Bay, California

BOOMER  NARCISSISM
We boomers have much to be proud of, and even more to be ashamed of.

I think our most important, and most shameful, legacy will be the way that we have elevated narcissism to a civic virtue.

Steven C. Den BesteADVICE FOR EVERY AGE
If you have a general feeling of malaise (a la Carter) and can't figure out what's wrong, someone (a doctor, a teacher, a parent, a spouse) will say the following:

If you're over 50 -- "You're just getting older"
If you're 25 to 50 -- "You've got too much stress."
If you're under 25 -- "You have low self-esteem."

Jim Rudolph
Senior Environmental Specialist
POWER Engineers, Inc.
Boise, Idaho

A CROSS STITCH IN TIME
My school-marm friend taught a class of middle-school boys and girls how to cross stitch. By cross stitching a couple of hours a week, the lucky students would be so filled with self-esteem that their lack of knowledge about math and English was inconsequential.

Jean Spik
Moon Township, Pennsylvania
(18 miles west of Pittsburgh)

SELF-ESTEEM PROBLEM?
You wrote:
  
"I wound up leaving the room, sheepishly apologizing to my neighbors that I'd attended a school which, even though it was entirely unaware of the concept, operated on the basic educational principle that self-esteem should be lowered to undetectable levels by the end of the first week."
  
Is that why you dropped out of high school?
  
Ben Cronin
Duxbury, Massachusetts

Re: Song of the Week – Send in the Clowns
SOND IN THE CLOWNS
Your piece on "Send In The Clowns" reminds me of one of my favorite cartoons.  A man in his office is speaking into the intercom as some clowns are coming through the door.  The man is saying, "Miss Jones, don't bother, they're here."

Vincent Books
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

FOUR-PART SONGS
Are your wonderful Song of the Week columns accessible in other than groups of three
or four?

If they are all here on Steyn Online, I have not discovered where.

I hope for your help.

Aben Rudy
Scottsdale, Arizona

Re: Believing the worst
HUNT THE DATA
In your column for the Orange Co Register today, you mentioned going to the Nasa website to view the changes to the average US temperatures.

I cannot find that place on their website.  Do you have a link?

S Baker
Boise, Idaho

Re: Sheikhs rattled and rolled
IMPORTS FROM SAUDI ARABIA
I know I am a day late to the discussion you had about our oil addiction and Saudi Arabia, but another important fact is that Saudi Arabia only accounts for 11% of our imports (and thus barely 6% of our overall oil consumption).  Yet another reason driving a Prius is hardly a significant action in combating Middle Eastern terrorism.

Paul Zummo

RESTRICTING SUPPLY
Mr. Steyn, in your Corner post you respond to an emailer who writes "But it's basic economics that if supply stays constant while demand falls, then the price of the good decreases. So the sheiks won't quite be as rich." You rightly mention that "Saudi oil is cheaply extractable". Implicit in that, yet not explicitly said, is that because of this the Saudis change your emailer's basic economic axiom of constant supply. We have well seen how OPEC can restrict global supply in order to keep the price where they want it.

Steve in Indy

WHY I DON'T OWN AN SUV
”What worries me about this letter is that it came from an ‘MIT’ e-mail address. I think that stands for "Massachusetts Institute of  Technology", which I gather is supposed to be an elite institution. I find it disheartening that a big-time MIT prof thinks we can whip the Saudis by all going back to horse-and-buggy and the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.”

Hey now...  It's unfair to malign an entire university based on the comments of one person.  All universities, "elite" or not, have their share of people with crazy ideas.  Unfortunately, they also tend to be the most vocal people on campus.

For what it is worth, I would point out that living in the Boston/Cambridge area tends to skew one's perspective on the merits of big cars.  Owning an SUV is quite inconvenient in the cramped neighborhoods around here.  By U.S. standards, Boston is confined to a pretty small area and the public transportation is pretty decent.  So, many people make do with small cars, or no car at all.  Heck, as a native Texan, I've had to make significant changes in my automobile tastes in order to adapt to the environment up here.  My wife and I share a Civic Hybrid.  So far, we have found it to be sufficient for the needs of our family.  However, too many in this area think that they can apply their standards of living to people in other parts of the country, though.  It just doesn't work that way.

Bryan

BALDERDASH
So much balderdash, so little time to debunk....
  
Mr Steyn, where to start?  Fuel efficient cars are less comfortable and unsafe? Aren't you in New England?  Ever hear of a company called Subaru?  How about Volvo?  Plenty of room for the kids, better fuel economy and S-A-F-E-R than roll-over SUVs and (unsafest and least comfortable of all) pick-up trucks.  Quick IQ test: in a snowstorm on I-89, you want to be in a Hummer or an Outback?
  
  Do you get a dividend from Exxon to spout such tripe about "small, unsafe cars" while the Explorers roll (over) along?  Or are you truly so befuddled that you believe your own BS?  In addition to the above-mentioned vehicles, there are minivans, which are more family-friendly, safer and fuel efficient than SUVs as a class.
  
 Even more hilarious is the grain of truth in your response.  Yes, the only way to truly break the economic base of the Saudis is to move to a post-fossil fuel economy.  Gee, what a novel idea.  Too bad your party has done all it can to prevent such a step over the past 50 years.  Remember Jimmy Carter's solar panels that your hero, the Gipper, ostentatiously removed from the White House? Brilliant!
  
And yet, similar to the "fuel efficient cars are unsafe and uncomfortable" claptrap, there is the never-ending refrain on the Right that enviros who want to move beyond petroleum are anti-tech Luddites!  Wanting new technology makes one anti-tech?  (To review, the guy who removed the solar panels is a demi-god, the ones who want the solar panels hate technology).  Such is the erudition from your fellow travelers, Mr Steyn.
  
 And yet, somehow, you manage to sound smug and snarky in your reply to an email that points out the decades-long pro-oil campaign by the Right, as if such a campaign never existed.  Whatever you lack in ethics or truthfulness, you certainly make up for it with chutzpah!
  
 Pax

David Bragg

WHO’S THAT GUY?
MIT students can keep their mit.edu e-mail addresses after graduation, mail just gets forwarded to yahoo or Gmail or wherever.  So it may not be a professor.

C. Romanowski, PhD at RIT who drives a brand-spanking new Sierra 1500 (strictly an American car girl, no Honda Civics for me)

HOW MANY CALVES CAN YOU FIT IN A CIVIC?
I want the professor to bring his Civic down so I can transport a sick calf or 20 bales of hay.  Perhaps he might then grasp why I drive a Dodge Ram 3500 dually.  Theories have a way of collapsing in the face of reality.

Mary McLemore
Pike Road, Alberta

LIGHTS ON, NO ONE’S HOME
I feel your pain......  It seems to be a classical lib characteristic that when politics (Bush) or pet ideologies are mentioned normally brilliant people revert to foaming at the mouth blithering idiots who have zero regard for factual logic. 

My own example concerns a fellow worker who is an electrical engineer ascribing to the liberal path.  We once had a discussion regarding electric cars in which he was convinced that they were TOTALLY pollution-free because you could just plug them into the electrical outlet at night for recharge.  No emissions, no oil use, enviro-friendly, etc.  After leading him by the nose through the logical path of where electricity comes from (he's an ELECTRICAL engineer remember) and how manufacturing processes work and how raw resources are turned into products, he RELUCTANTLY conceded that maybe his little pet concept wasn't pollution-free.  But being the good lib that he is he could never let facts get in the way of his ideology.

Craig Baker
Mechanical Engineer

LIBERALISM IN A NUTSHELL
I think you accidentally laid out the perfect definition of liberalism/aka progressivism in an NRO post today:

"we'll be driving worse cars and feeling virtuous."

There it is.  Liberalism in a nutshell. A person who would follow that advice is 100% guaranteed to be a leftie.

As with most thing "progressive", it is downright reactionary.  I believe 15th Century monks had the same approach: mortification of the flesh through a phoney asceticism combined with moral preening of the highest order.

Patrick J. Shanahan
Chaska, Minnesota

OVER A BARREL
You should edit your post "Sheikhs rattled and rolled" in the National Review online.  The use of dollar signs in these sentences - "In 1990 China consumed $2.4 million bpd. Fifteen years later, it was $7 million bpd" – is an obvious error.  There is no such unit of measure as a "dollar barrel per day".

Otherwise, excellent points. However, I believe a better argument is that while we may not impact the wealth of the Saudi royal family through reduced consumption, we (the US) can reduce our exposure to the political and economic consequences of being dependant upon any potentially unfriendly outside entity for our vital energy supplies.  However, reduced consumption must be coupled with a comprehensive energy plan that also addresses increased domestic production, serving as a supply bridge until more promising alternative energy technologies come to fruition. Reducing consumption without addressing supply is akin to trying to reduce your oxygen intake in a sealed room, no matter how shallow the breath, you're still going to die if you don't open a window.

Patrick Reames
VP - Energy Trading and Risk Management
Houston, Texas

CRUNCHY CONS
Your anti-Saudi letter writer is wrong in many more ways than one. But I thought I'd remind you (as I'm sure you already know) that his/her contention that neocon "pundits" should have been, but haven't been, trading in Hummers for Civics is quite wrong.

The folks at MIT apparently live in a cave, as it's pretty well known that the Iraq, hawks/neocons have been on the energy independence bandwagon for years. According to that bastion of right-wing nuttery, Slate Magazine, in an article over two years old, James Woolsey drives a Prius. Frank Gaffney is downright Al Gorian in stumping for biofuels.

Heck, the Slate article is titled "Neocons who drive Priuses".

Of course, the kids at MIT might not have heard of this newfangled internet thing - maybe they haven't connected up their tubes...

Brian

TIME WARP
Your post at The Corner this morning was particularly appropriate for me and I thought I'd share a little anecdote.

I'm a graduate student here at MIT.  Just last night, I was out at dinner with a fellow grad student and we started talking about energy policy and how/if the government should regulate automobiles for the sake of the environment.  My dinner companion said that the government
should ban the use of all SUVs and pick-up trucks for non-commercial uses.  My eyebrows must have gone through the roof, but before I could tell him what an idiot he was, he started to expound with the standard, "These people don't have a right to ruin my environment!" line.  I gave him example after example of non-commercial uses for trucks and SUVs (home repair, large families, etc.) and for each one, he wanted the government to issue a permit. 

We went around and around in circles for quite some time.  Eventually, he admitted that he hates the internal combustion engine.  He said that if we had the foresight of how much damage it would cause when it was invented, then he hopes we would have put the engine on the shelf and stuck with horses and buggies.   I think my response to that was something like,  "Ahahahaha!"

It seems to me that my dinner companion has taken a course with the professor who emailed you.  Make no mistake: folks here know their physics, but they're as Left as Left can be.  It's really quite astonishing.  The amusing part of this whole story is that our conversation started when he said, "Tree-hugging hippies bother me."  "Forgive me," I said, "But don't you think you're one of them?"

Keep up the good work at NRO.  You guys keep me sane here in Cambridge.

Nicole DiLello

ON THE BUSES
My wife was also a big fan of public transportation from the time she left college until she actually had to use it once.

Robert Lowry

WASSAMATTA U.
Bullwinkle’s alma mater is ...Wassamatta U (according to a T-shirt I had some years back).
 
You and Lileks are the greatest writers out there!  Keep it up!
 
j e link

GET DRILLING
Another point re: your MIT correspondent - The liberals have prevented the oil industry from developing domestic reserves that at least would keep some of the money at home. 
 
There are reserves that have been identified offshore Florida, California, the East coast and, of course, Alaska.  These reserves can be economically developed with no serious environmental consequences.  But, Americans have been brainwashed about the environmental consequences associated with oil and gas development and those who could refute the PC crowd are intimidated by the green movement.
 
I really enjoy your thoughts,

Michael KristensenCOAL IS HOT
One of the most annoying aspects of the Global Warming acolytes is their demonizing of coal.  We have lots of coal in North America. Coal can be turned into diesel (which can power trains, trucks and nifty cars).  And coal miners would use the money we pay them to buy pickup trucks and bass boats instead of AK-47s, explosively formed projectiles and islamic propaganda.

Coal is dirty. Sure. And burning coal makes CO2.  But heck, I make CO2.  Since when did CO2 become a pollutant?

Matt Sz

YOU’RE A DEUCHE BAG
I don't know about the rest of the gang but I was kinda looking forward to spending the weekend doing cracks about rock stars taking their private jets halfway round the world to tell the little people why they need to sell the second-hand Honda Civic and get back on the bus. But to be honest my heart's not in berating the rock colossi for their carbon footprints of clay. The way this thing's going it looks like, thanks to Al Gore, all-star charity galas will be joining the polar bears on his endangered species list.

You and the rest of the conservatives are just jealous that a cause embraced by liberals is resonating so deeply with the rest of the world while your shit for brains president is loathed by the rest for the world.

Tim Dunne

MARK SAYS: Thanks for sharing. Hey, at least you can spell “shit”. Congratulations! But what is a “deuche” bag? Maybe you’re not ready for these difficult six-letter insults.

FAREWELL, MERV
As you appear to be the only one posting to the Corner today, I would ask that you offer NRO's sincere condolences and the requisite "RIP" notification for Merv Griffin, as solid a supporter of Republican causes as anyone in the entertainment industry.  Well, except maybe Chuck Norris.

Christian Peck

FIFTEEN COPIES AND COUNTING
First of all, I just received my CD of America Alone.

I really hope you were the one that signed it, because I ripped the  wrapping off and was THRILLED at seeing your name!

I should let you know that me husband and myself have bought no less than 15 copies of America Alone; the problem is that we give them away! In fact I have just purchased several more just in case.

But I figure that the C.D. plus the autograph made out to my husband and myself (Michelle and Steve), would make it impossible to give it away.

And I am sorry if this is a silly letter. You are a fantastic writer; and it is embarrassing really to try and extend our appreciation and thanks for your work.

But thank you very much!

Michelle (and Steve too)

UNWINDING AT THE CORNER
After a very long day at work - just one of many this very long, hardworking year - reading your Corner posts is by far the highlight of  my regretfully brief leisure time.

Draw your own conclusions as to my leisure time opportunities.

"...the Halliburton Tsunami-Hurricane Machine..." indeed.

Paf. It's not near as devastating as the Steyn Verbal Wedgie-Pinkbelly Imprecation Generator.

You are a rhetorical, logical, and linguistic golden god.

Don't get cocky.

And please short-sheet Rich Lowry. Has he smiled this century?

Jim McMahon
(no, not that one)
(powered by Smirnoff)

ALL OVER THE PLACE
I just have to say that it is always a treat to read your column and remarks at The Corner.  When I get the Sunday Orange County Register newspaper the first thing I look for is your article.  I have never read an article by any other writer that is deadly serious, ironic and also funnier than hell.  I also don't see how you have the time to write so many articles and cover so much ground.  You are all over the place, but as Martha Stewart would say "That is a good thing". Keep up the good work and keep taking it to those who threaten Western Civilization.

Tom Page
Silverado, California LAST WORD
So, any chance of getting some new letters posted any time soon?

Mark Salas
Leavenworth, Kansas

 MARK REPLIES: I agree.