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Thank you for your kind (and unkind) letters from Canada, America, Britain and Iraq. 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
WHEN YOU WORK IN A COLLEGE TOWN, WATCH YOUR BACK
Hey Mark, You're my fave. Keep up the fight!
You made a reference to checking out bumper stickers in a college town. I am working in a college town now, complete with all the stickers, flags, and over-priced, under-caloried veggie lunch places. I work on the power lines, and we work all over. I'll leave the exact location unstated, but it is one of the penultimate college nuclei. Here's an observation about working in this kind of area from a working guy who has been around. When you work in a rich area, the locals ignore you. When you work in a ghetto, the locals scatter when they see a hard hat and a
safety vest. You be the man! When you work in a working class area, people say hello, offer you water (and beer!) and wave. When you work in a college town, watch your back! The locals will drive (speeding) inside the cones, honk and act very annoyed and irritated while you are trying to improve/maintain their infrastructure. It’s always Saabs/Volvos with faded Kerry bumper stickers that almost kill you speeding to get to Starbucks for a "fair trade" brew. But what do I know? I just keep the lights on.
Anonymous
College Town USA
Re: Arms are for hugging and heads are for chopping
THE LANGUAGE OF DIVERSITY
I loved your piece on Deval Patrick's speech commemorating 9/11. You used the speech as an example of our failure to recognize our peril at the hands of Al Qaida. As evidence that this is not just the failure of Deval and his friends, I attach this email, which arrived this morning from the senior management of a large NASA Laboratory where I work. As you can see, we are being required to attend classes to help us learn to talk more like Deval by "building a common language around diversity and inclusion". Having taken these taxpayer funded classes, will I be more or less likely to attack Richard Reid when I see him lighting his shoes?
Name withheld
To: All Employees
Subject: Diversity and Inclusion Training Action
Action Required: Please ensure by September 25 that all JPL employees in your organization know this mandatory training should be completed by December 31, 2007.
The Diversity & Inclusion Training Subcommittee and our contractor, Workplace Answers, have been working diligently in preparing a D&I training course for all JPL employees. This customized on line training course includes study cases that help build awareness and sensitivity regarding diversity and inclusion issues in the workplace. This particular training will be a one-time mandatory offering for all employees. Please make certain all JPL employees take this training by December 31, 2007. This mandatory training for new hires must be completed within the first six months of employment.
It should take approximately 40 minutes to complete the course. A survey link is presented at the end of the course to provide feedback on the training and solicit additional comments.
The course has been tested under three pilot runs with very positive feedback; 250 employees participated, including EC members and randomly selected managers and employees. Those employees who completed the training pilot will not need to retake the course and have already been given training credit on JPLís Learning Management System (LMS.)
This introductory course is just one of the resources that will become available for employees to help build a common language around diversity and inclusion. To learn more about what the Lab is doing with regard to this topic, visit here.
CARING AND SHARING
Your article was right on target as usual. I call this syndrome Sesame Street-itis, but Barney will also do nicely.
Jeff Robinson
YOUR WITTY WAKE-UP CALL
"Looking for love in all the wrong places"
Where have you been all my life?
Mr. Steyn, I am no stranger to conservative commentary. Having been awakened politically during the 2000 Florida mess I suddenly found myself tuning into the AM dial between 12:00 and 3:00 Monday through Friday for solace and encouragement. In short time I subscribed to National Review and subsequently added William F. Buckley Jr. to a "personal American Heroes" list that includes men no less than John Wayne and Douglas MacArthur. However, low taxes and private medicine never really ignited the fires within. I dug the lyrics but the melody never really grabbed me. Then I went back to school. Then 9/11. Then I sat speechless as I heard 19-year-old girls
declare, "who are we to define who are terrorists? I mean, what about the Indians? Besides, pick on a little guy long enough and you'll get a punch in the nose."
Mistakenly looking to the professors for correction I instead sat stunned as they paused dramatically and gave a "you finally get it" type speech and went on to compare Bush to any number of third world dictators, with the unspoken understanding of course that Bush was of lesser quality. My frustration has turned to apathy and where my mouth once opened in shock it now opens to yawn. Balding professors and girls with shapely (though unshaven) legs bore me to tears...but your witty, sarcastic observation on the greatest enemy of our time has re-awakened me to care! Radical Islam is a formidable foe to be sure, but they can be defeated. What will be
the greater challenge is the war against the cultural relativism that has reduced men to zombies and our institutions of "higher learning" to nine month long symposium's on why Western Civilization must be defeated if America is to survive. I hope Osama and the boys appreciate how Allah has blessed them; it's not often one is rewarded with enemies who hate themselves with the same intensity as those bent on destroying them. I realize my revelation is old news, but your column illuminated the battle that must be waged stateside. Although I fear it will be damn near
impossible to win. Anything I can do to help. You made the list sir. Even with Buckley, though not surpassing Wayne.
Jamie Shaver
High Point, North Carolina
HOWIE HAS IT
I was glad to see a reference to Howie Carr in a recent column of yours.
I am a compulsive talk-show listener (via the internet) and Howie Carr is my absolute favorite
(Rush comes second on a good day).
Carr's show is by far the funniest thing on the airwaves (and on the internet wires).
Allan Trojan
Toronto
WILL THEY GO PEACEFULLY?
As a fellow Canadian - or rather, a fellow from the Anglosphere with a wider view - I think that it's
pretty clear that the American left has become utterly deranged to the point that, if they don't get their way, I can foresee violence as a result.
Like the Sybil and Enoch Powell, it isn't hard for someone today to "see the Tiber foaming with much blood."
Everyone always gets it wrong about America, especially here in Canada. America isn't like the
Roman Empire - about to fall. America is like the Roman Republic, a mighty psuedo-empire whose political institutions are straining under the combined pressures of the needs of extended foreign engagements and hysterical and unreasonable partisanship. As the years pass, if this goes on, we'll sooner or later reach a point where the idea that someone would step outside of the normal political process in order to achieve their goals will not be unthinkable.
Imagine, Mark, if the 2008 Election came off like 2000! Can you imagine that such a situation might, in 2008, be resolved entirely peacefully? Or that the left, if it lost, would accept the result?
The right probably would. Indeed, some people on the right - if 2000 was repeated - would be desperate to concede because the senior ranks of the right tend to often by filled by conciliators and other people determined to get along. But the left sure wouldn't.
Imagine if the Republican wins by, say, a thousand votes or so. Is it at all hard to imagine the left
trying to pull off a "Blue Revolution" in Washington? And, come to that, there will also be those, likely including myself, who will simply wish to dispense with such a rabble and to reshuffle the constitutional deck.
Adam Yoshida
THE TRUE NATURE OF THE ENEMY
Wonderful piece! Let's hope it causes some people to "re-examine" their heretofore "suspended disbelief"....about the true nature of the enemy. (Man, those Clintons can complicate the language, can't they? Remember the national debate over the meaning of "is" ? I'm not even sure my second sentence makes any sense...but I'm stickin' with it anyway. If you have any doubts about my intent here, just remember I'm a "vast right-winger").
From an un-invited co-conspirator,
John Gross
Beloeil, Quebec
Re: What might have been
VINYL CURTAIN
I assume only those that agree with his views should buy his music??? Bummer, I have about four albums that are over 30 years old I should send back to him.
Lori Dattilo
GREAT MUSIC, DISAPPOINTING VIEWS
I'm a huge fan of Barry Manilow and saddened to hear of his uninformed view-points.
I'm not given to poking fun at such a great entertainer and artist, but I thought your parody of his song was hilarious....
Sam Shollenberger
POP FOP
Your post on The Corner reminds me that back when this fop was a leading purveyor of pop-crap
recordings, his moniker in my circles was Barely Man-enough.
Dan Breen
Saratoga Springs, New York
Re: GI Joe
ANY OLD IRON
Re your assertion that the term "G.I." stands for "Galvanized Iron".
Actually, I believe it originated when all US military material was stamped with the words “Government Issue”, later abbreviated to GI. How do I know that? As a child living in the Pacific during WWII, when everything from basic food stuff and even medicines were rationed, we were the recipients of the overwhelming generosity of ‘The Yanks’. So much so that we were hard pressed to use all the supplies given to us for years after the war. (Psssst – don’t tell Uncle Sam).
P.M.
British Columbia, Canada
NOT ON THEIR METAL
G.I. stands for Government Issue. Not Galvanized Iron. Hire new researchers. Well, at least take your current ones to the woodshed.
Thomas Leak
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
THE JEYI JIVE
In your Macleans article on GI Joe, I believe that you stand in need of correction:
While nowadays, GI is commonly an abbreviation for "galvanized iron" (and to my knowledge, "general infantry" has never been a term in American military usage), the original derivation of GI came from "government issue".
I should know: when I was born in 1944, when my father - trained as a classical philologist - was overseas in the Army, he insisted that my official middle name would be "Jeyi", which was his own phoneticization of "G.I."
And so it was and so it appears on my own military records. I have never encountered "Jeyi" in any other Anglophone context, although it is evidently a place name in Nigeria and a proper name in Tamil.
Alan Potkin
THE COG-NOSCENTI
I was told by an old veteran that GI stood for "Government Issue"; in other words just another cog in the machine. And he was proud of it.
Jim Doherty
Houston, Texas
BASED ON A HARROWING TRUE STORY
Brian de Palma's use of the real-life rape of a 14-year old to dramatize the flaws of the US military in “Redacted” has inspired me. I am now working on my own screenplay: 'Directed'. It's also based on the real-life rape of a 14-year-old, by a member of a group much more prone to the crime than the Army: Academy Award-winning directors. A staggering 1.6% of the members of the latter group (that is, Roman Polanski) has been convicted of sex crimes. If the Army were as prone to crime as the Academy, there would be 2,000 soldiers charged with rape in Iraq by now. If the Army were as dismissive of rape as the Academy, the convicts in de Palma's story would be suggested for medals while on trial, as Polanski was nominated just months after he was charged (and fled the country).
At first I was worried that extrapolating from that one case might be unfair to the 81 Oscar winning directors who have never drugged and sodomized a teenager. But to judge from de Palma, I guess slandering huge numbers of decent people is just the price I will have to be willing to pay for critical recognition.
So my story will have a film director as its villain, the entire film industry as his accomplices, and France as the place a child rapist runs to to escape justice. It should be just the thing for the crowd that's always going on about how it likes 'challenging' art. How do you think it will do?
Brian Gates
Maitland, Florida
ANGER OVER IMMIGRANTS
Good article on Brussels.
Re your comment on Northern Ireland - I was there last month seeing some friends in the Portadown area (traditionally an area with bad Protestant/Catholic relations) and what did I hear from respectable middle-class people from both sides but anger and resentment about immigrants.
Boethius
Re: Be careful who you smile at
CLOSETED CONSERVATIVES
Can you shed some light on all the conservatives who are closet homosexuals? It looks like the Republican Party is trying to give the Catholic church a run for its money. Hey, there's an idea! Instead of kicking them out of political office, why not just have them reassigned?
Sergio Rizzo
Berwyn, Illinois
MARK REPLIES: Well, since you ask, we're all closet homosexuals, and our secret plan is to wait till you change planes at Minneapolis and then hit on you.
BACK OFF
"... Senator Craig should know that what matters is not whether an artful lawyer can get him off on a technicality but whether the public thinks he trawls for anonymous sex in public bathrooms."
It's certain Craig “knows” this, and is why he pled guilty on the q.t. to a lesser offense.
But do you “know” (for certain, that is) that Craig "was trawling for anonymous sex in public bathrooms?"
Back off, Mr. Steyn, and have a nice cup of STFU (my treat).
Pat T A STING OPERATION WITHOUT ANY STING
Minneapolis' potty prosecutions are laughable. Craig “solicited” sex without actually soliciting sex or having sex. He didn’t touch himself or the officer in any sexually overt way. He didn’t expose himself. He stayed in his own stall. And neither he nor the officer exchanged a single word about having sex. In fact, Craig never said a word.
In the end, what we have here is a shoe touch … or was it a tap? That, along with his hand on the divider between the stalls, and something or other was, we are told, code for soliciting sex. It seems to me that the officer should have taken the sting operation at least one more step, no? Wasn’t he a little premature in flashing his badge when he did?
In the end it was a “sting” operation with out any sting! Not only couldn’t prosecutors have made the gross misdemeanor charge stick, they would have lost the disorderly conduct charge too. Read the statute.
Prosecutors and police would throw half the nation in jail had they the power to do so, and the other half would applaud them. Thank God for constitutional restraints.
ACLU Backs Senator CraigSept. 17, 2007
JD
Re: I Read the News Today, Oh Boy and
Re: Hurricane Dan
FIRST-CLASS POST
That is actually an astonishingly good post.
Made my day (and it was an especially rotten one).
Thanks!
Doug Barber
53 year old former history major aging away in Crisfield, Maryland
HEADLINE SHUFFLE
About your random reshuffling… The last item listed created a mental image I really could have lived without. Otherwise, you're absolutely right.
Mike McLoud
HE’S THE MAN
Actually, Dan Rather improves almost any headline ("Dan Rather Causes 'Mystery
Illness' In Peru", etc) except this one:
Dan Rather to Appear Nude in PETA Commercial
Don Leonard
CUT TO THE QUICK
Or, as a metaphor for one of today's events...
"Dan Rather awakens during autopsy."
I would also like
"Armless man blames wild sex for car crash."
Walshd
Re: The Loyal Genetically Predisposed Criminally Insane Opposition
CALL ME CRAZY
In The Corner you said,
"What I find slightly unnerving is the curious determination of the contemporary left to attribute political differences to some other factor - to genetic predisposition, to mental illness
("homophobia", "Islamophobia" et al) or, when all else fails, criminality (it's not enough for Bush to have a different view on the merits of toppling Saddam, he also has to have "lied" and committed crimes worthy of impeachment in the pursuit of said policy)."
This essay by James Hitchcock helps answer that question.
"In contemporary America most elites appear to be at least complacent towards nihilistic currents—few are heard to object to the misogynist and racist lyrics of rappers, for example, presumably because the rappers are considered 'marginalized' and are protesting 'society'—and it is primarily the masses who retain some tenuous commitment to traditional beliefs. The famous division between “red” and “blue” on the electoral map of 2000 roughly corresponds to the division within the country between those who believe in traditional values and those who do not. According to liberal dogma, the tradition-minded masses are by definition incapable of embracing necessary changes and must be prodded or coerced into doing so."
As they say, read the whole thing...
Mike Sierk
‘WRONG’ IS JUST NOT RIGHT
Mark, I'm not sure why you find it strange that the contemporary left is no longer satisfied with claiming that its opponents are "wrong", and instead tries to label them as criminal or mentally ill. A sizable chunk of the left has bought into moral relativism, and once you go down that path, you find yourself unable to categorize anything - even your crude, moral objectivism-spouting political opponents - with such an unnuanced label as "wrong".
Once right and wrong are off the table, you're left searching for other distinctions--such as mental illness, genetic predisposition, or un-Canadianness—in order to distinguish yourself from your opponents. This allows the post-modern leftist the opportunity to de-legitimize dissent without ever resorting to something as crass as morality.
There are of course still quite a few people on the left who believe in an objective morality, although they seem to be rarer among the political elite. I think both parties would be much healthier if these people were driving the Democratic Party, rather than the MoveOn crowd. Not only would the Democrats benefit directly from having moral leadership, but they would also be able to criticize the GOP on something more than the tired charge of hypocrisy when Republicans slip up or back-pedal after taking a "wide stance". Many of the GOP's current woes stem from the Democrats' inadequacies as an opposition party over the past few years.
Please withhold my name, as I'd rather not be labeled as mentally ill or genetically defective for my antiquated belief in an objective morality.
Travis Beals
Berkeley, California
INDOLENT OPINION FORMERS
The Loyal Genetically Predisposed Criminally Insane Opposition
The vicious tone from leftists, who no longer have even a remote understanding of traditional liberalism, has its roots in something entrenched in modern America: intellectual laziness. Just go to an education school or journalism school and talk with some of the "professors" and "students" and see how much they know and how well they can analyze. Then remember that these "students" one day will be filtering and interpreting information for millions of Americans. Frightening.
Gary
Lindale, Georgia
UNCIVIL
Seems to me, at least where the extreme left is concerned, "civility" is not in their dictionary.
Dede Bright
Bryan, Texas
DECLINE AND FALL
You say that you don't know where the "curious determination of the contemporary left to attribute political differences" to genes, mental illness, or criminality leads. I would say that it leads to civil war; and perhaps then to imperium.
The American constitution in the broad sense of Bagehot has collapsed. We see it every day in the political news from Washington, which amazes and disgusts. You have also carefully documented the failure of the US system of criminal law, in your series of articles on the trial
of Conrad Black.
If there were any justice in the United States now, you would be a strong contender for a Pulitzer Prize or two, for your Conrad Black articles and for "America Alone". I presume that you are not holding your breath.
At home and abroad the United States polity is in decay where it has not already collapsed. And yet the vigour and the sense of justice of the American people remains largely unimpaired.
Civil war: the leftists can never be brought to act justly, and they become more and more violent with the passing of each day. They cannot even be moved to the least understanding of their vital
interests. Radical feminists for the Taliban! Is that to laugh or to cry?
Civil war: sooner better than later. War is evil; often it is the lesser evil.
John K.C. Lewis
St. John's, Newfoundland
PROTECTION FROM PREJUDICE
If being a conservative is genetic, doesn't that imply that they'd need to be protected from systemic prejudice (like say in hiring practices at universities, for example)? Hmmmmm ?
Alan Bell
PSYCHOLOGICAL ELIMINATION
David Carlin is a liberal Catholic who at one time was Speaker of the state House of Representatives in Rhode Island. He has written columns for Catholic magazines like America. He once told how he was accused of being homophobic by supporters of a pro-gay bill when he suggested he had some problems with the bill. Carlin said that such mental health labels are an attempt to psychologically eliminate a person (and his-her arguments) from the discussion by saying: You are mentally ill, so you have no right to an opinion. It's a kind of shunning or excommunication, one might say. Once the pro-gay people refrained from the labelling, he says he was willing to support some bill, which passed if I remember correctly.
Recall also a point made by black playright, actor, and professor, Anna Deveare Smith. She had a one-person play where she sympathetically portrayed various characters involved in racial troubles in New York. In an interview on Lehrer, she said that the word "racist" had lost its usefulness, and should no longer be used. I think she believed the word is too simplistic; and that its use is, again, a way to eliminate any need for dialogue, while eliminating the other person from the dialogue. It's a kind of billy club or bully club, to coin a phrase. Recall the efforts to both silence and demote anyone who disagreed with people like Al Gore on global warming. They were gored, so to speak
Richard L A Schaefer
BLUE GENES
Actually, it's the left that has tried its damndest to prevent / dismiss research showing that much of what we call "social attitudes" (as well as intellectual abilities) does have a genetic basis.
Dave A.
THE GOOD GUYS VS THE STUPID EVIL GUYS
It's a matter of self-perception for the Democrats. Everyone who is smart and good would choose to be a Democrat, so why are there any Republicans? The only answer that lets them maintain that self-perception is that Republicans are too stupid (Bush, Regan), or too evil (Cheny, Rove) to want to be Democrats. One of the best Saturday Night skits ever worked off of this by having Regan act like a moron, until people left the room, at which point the walls and lighting changed like in a James Bond film and Regan became an evil genius barking out orders, only to have someone “not in the know” wander in at which point he became the happy, likeable moron
again. To a Democrat, that explains everything.
Your book, by the way, was a great read. The only problem is I haven't gotten a good night’s sleep since. I hate the idea of just writing off Europe...
Paul Osnes
Re: Song of the Week
NONE SHALL SLEEP THROUGH THIS VERSION
I liked your column on "Nessun Dorma". Indeed, I like your work as a columnist/journalist in general and it's breadth of subject matters.
Not being in interested in opera myself though, I'd never heard Pavarotti or anyone else's version of "Nessun Dorma" until last year, when I caught a heavy metal band "Manowar" doing a cover of that very song at the end of a concert they'd done a few years ago in Milan that was posted on Youtube.com. Manowar did a fine job covering it I thought. An excellent piece of music, and from what you said about the translation of the lyrics it's not hard to see the appeal to the members of "Manowar".
If you've never heard their original compositions, then you might try "Fight for Freedom" which they wrote in memoriam for the WTC attack. Other music by them include: "Call to Arms", "Carry On", "Gates of Valhalla", "Swords in the Wind", "Valhalla", "Warriors of the World United" and their cover of Elvis Presley's "An American Trilogy". Manowar's European market is an interesting minority trend in post-Christian Europe that seeks to return to other older beliefs. The USA equivalent of the Wiccans or better still Asatru (Norse Paganism). Though on religion I'm more of a Foster Brooks fan: "Everyone should believe in something, I believe I'll have another drink."
David Dwyer
WITHERED LEAF
I notice you carried my request that you “do something” on Canada's “Maple Leaf Forever.” I would think most people under the age of 30 have never heard it sung. Not only because of the "thistle, shamrock, rose entwine" line, but this:
"Wolfe the dauntless hero came and
planted firm Britannia's flag on Canada's fair domain;
here may it stand, our boast, our pride,
and join in love together,
the Thistle, Shamrock, Rose entwine
the Maple Leaf Forever.
Has a ring doesn't it? Imagine. "Boasting". "Firm". "Dauntless"
Oh Canada!!!
Heather McFarlane
Re: Pete's Big Joe Blues
DEBBIE SWINGS SEEGER
I read your Happy Warrior column on Pete Seeger. I may have mentioned this to you earlier, but have you seen the video (available on YouTube) of Debbie Reynolds singing "If I Had a Hammer"? A lot of people might think it's a perfect example a simple song ruined by glitz. I'm guessing you think the opposite: good old-fashioned showbiz degraded in an attempt to be relevant. Maybe Hugh Hewitt can play the audio the next time you're on his show.
Name withheld
McKinney, Texas
LEFTY BUT LIKEABLE
I finished reading your column, "Pete's Big Joe Blues", and while I don't disagree with what you wrote, I think you were perhaps too harsh on Seeger.
As much as anything, it seems that many left wing conclusions can be reached from different starting motivations. Either you can have a starting point of angry jealousy demanding compensative redistribution (Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky), or from a point of (perhaps misguided) compassion and desire to help those worse off (Pete Seeger, Nicholas Kristoff, and Roger Rosenblatt being my favorite examples). On the whole I have much more sympathy and enjoy reading people that fall into the second category, and it is also no surprise that they are generally more willing to accept when they're wrong. Can you imagine Noam Chomsky ever admitting such an error? And if not, surely we should judge Seeger less harshly than him.
One of my favourite Pete Seeger folk songs is "Well May The World Go". The chorus goes:
"Well may the world go, the world go, the world go,
Well may the world go, When I'm far away."
Given the complete self-absorption of most celebrities, I can think of no other artist in the last 50 years to whom the thought 'may the world be happy after I'm dead' would have ever occurred, let alone who would have sang it in a song. And even though I disagree strongly with his sympathies for communism and unions, I still admire that in Seeger.
Thanks for all the great writing!
David Solomon
Re: Home Making for One
MEN JUST WANT WOMEN, WOMEN DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT
I read with wry amusement the commentary on "seraphic-singles" about the despair of women of marriageable age seeking men who are interested in family and marriage. My experience - and I have grown gray in the course of paying assiduous attention to the world around me - is that the behavior of men is entirely predicated on the behavior of women. Men need women: not in some dreamy, idealistic sense, but in a real, physical, emotional way. Men will do anything - literally anything - necessary to get women. They will take jobs, study long hours for years, work out in gyms, fight wars, brave death in a thousand different ways, to achieve the social status or the
wealth or the sheep necessary to get women: for most men, life without women is unthinkable, intolerable, unworthy of living. We also like other stuff, like shooting ducks, studying Talmud or searching for cures to cancer, but if there aren't women in the picture, we're not going to enjoy doing those things. Like the madman who stands up in the tree in that Fellini film, every man ultimately is a madman standing in a tree bellowing, "I want a WOman!".
Until the advent of feminism, there was a broad understanding between men and women
in the Western world about what the requirements were for men to fulfill in order to get the women they wanted. Be brave, manly, hard-working, reliable, dependable, etc. With feminism, women changed the rules, a hundred times, because women, like Freud, cannot answer the question, "What do women want?" In turns out, at the end of the day, that what women want is what women always wanted because, well, they're women. When women collectively make it clear that they're available only at the enormous cost that men up until my father's generation were accustomed to paying, then men will pay that price. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that such a collective understanding will ever again be reached, unless Islam takes over, because societally, religiously and culturally, chaos reigns today. Sorry about that ladies, but it's your collective fault. You make the rules. Men just play by them.
Ezra Marsh
Baltimore
Re: World War IV
HOW ABOUT WORLD WAR V?
Mr. Steyn, don't you think Norman Podhoretz is off by one? After all, I think the French and Indian War (aka the 7 Years War) deserves credit for being the actual First World War. Don't you?
Dennis P. Chapman
As Sulaymaniyah, Iraq
THE INSURGENCY EXPERTS
I really appreciated your piece on Norman Podhoretz' concept of WW IV, and I would ask that you do the same for two British authors whose work could shed much-needed light on our current military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as on the conflicts yet to come.
Please interview Gen. Sir Frank Kitson and Lt. Col. Sir Julian Paget. They are the two best writers on the subject, and they live in England.
Gen. Kitson wrote Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping
(1971), [Faber and Faber - reprint 1991] He also wrote Gangs and Counter-gangs
(1960), [Barrie and Rockliff], which was specifically about his experience in Kenya.
Col. Paget wrote Counter-insurgency operations; techniques of guerrilla warfare (1967) [Walker], which discusses the insurgencies in Malaya, Cypress and Kenya.
These guys know more about insurgencies and how to cope with them than all of the press combined. Why haven't they been interviewed? They have been quoted by the swells at Rand and other places, but their insights should be more widely known.
I drew three distinct lessons from what they wrote: 1) The insurgencies mentioned above were also attended by much negative press at home; 2) It took about eight years to deal with each of them, and 3) most importantly in my view, the counter-insurgency efforts included the promise of self-rule, which is also a central component of our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq: we helped establish indigenous forms of democracy in both places. The sneering remarks that we can't
install "Jeffersonian Democracy" abroad make me wretch. What they have in both places is the result of a lot of negotiation among local interested parties.
I did Google searches for Frank Kitson Iraq and Julian Paget Iraq, and got a couple of bloggers and a few military papers.
A reference to General Kitson appears in a paper at the Strategic Studies Institute, linked here .
A reference to Col. Paget is found in a paper from the Naval War College.
Mark, please locate these two authoritative individuals and use your popular reach to publicize their works. We will certainly confront more of these types of conflicts in the future. The military is learning how to cope with them, but the press and the public simply believe that an insurgency is impossible to overcome. That is false, as Gen. Patraeus is explaining to the boneheads in Congress. Please bring attention to these authors as you did for Norman Podhoretz and his WW IV idea. They would go together well.
Bill West
Los Angeles
Regular Thursday listener to the Hugh Hewitt broadcast
EXPENDIBLE, THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE
Poor Prime Minister Maliki. He’ll rant, he’ll rail against Blackwater mercenaries as they shoot their way through his country, but quite soon, President Bush will tap him on the shoulder and remind him that the head of Blackwater is a top Republican donor, the scion of one of the wealthiest families in South Carolina, and co-founder of Focus on the Family, to boot. Bush will then remind Maliki that the only way Iraq’s Republican sponsors will survive the 2008 election is if high-rollers like Blackwater keep donating. If that means U.S. contractors continue wandering the roadsides dispensing Saddam-style justice as they see fit, then so be it. The unspoken message is that Blackwater will be in Iraq long after Maliki has gone. Yeah, being a figurehead isn’t always easy, but as another figurehead once reminded a roomful of federal Prosecutors, “We serve at the pleasure of President Bush.” Like Alberto Gonzales, Maliki will soon realize he’s about as essential as table garnish, and just as easily replaced.
Naomi Hilt
THOUGHTS ON IDIOCRACY
I just saw Idiocracy, a silly little movie by Mike Judge, but it did have its moments. The movie reminded me of a little theory I espoused 10+ years ago, after watching the explosion of idiotic tort settlements, which I called my "Tort Anti-Darwinism Theory", which went something like: "Ages ago stupid people did stupid things which caused them to injure or kill themselves and most likely never reproduced, now those same stupid things get them large tort settlements allowing them to attract mates and leave offspring, creating an ever greater population of complete idiots." Idiocracy examines a similar trend. Considering that it has a connection (albeit a rather tenuous and far less blatantly sinister one) to your demographic narrative, I was wondering if you had seen it and perhaps intended a review, something which I, for one, would heartily welcome.
John Hudock
SLIPPERY CUSTOMERS
Have you heard about this flight from Orlando to Atlanta last week (9/7/07?). No? I didn't think so as the Orlando Sentinel called it "benign." The people involved were not Swedish, were checked by the FBI and released.
See what you think...
Due to the multiple independent “hits” for traces of SEMTEX, TSA authorities emptied the luggage in a secured area, and were astonished by what they found. Authorities found 3 jars of Vaseline duct taped together to make one large cylinder. An inspection of this Vaseline-filled cylinder determined that someone had previously removed the Vaseline and replaced it back into the containers, something that was proven by air pockets left within the containers. Based on a thorough inspection of all the luggage belonging to these Middle Eastern passengers, authorities also found multiple strands of electrical wire with the ends stripped of the insulation, thus exposing the copper wire, small eyeglass screw drivers, clocks, cocoa butter, 2 tubs of butter, batteries of various sizes and types, a computer laptop, and multiple bottles of hydrogen peroxide – 144 ounces in all.
Even more disconcerting, TSA and security officials observed that two of the Middle Eastern men intended for the flight had smeared Vaseline on their arms and neck areas – a common tactic among hand-to-hand fighters who want the advantage in the event someone tries to grab them or put them in a headlock. Covered by the greasy agent, they are better able to extricate themselves during close-quarters, hand-to-hand fighting. See this link.
Lindsay White
MARTIAL MOMS
"If mothers ran the world there'd be no God-damned wars." Well, I don't know about what happens when they run the world, but when they run, you know, countries, there still seem to be plenty of wars. Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher are or were all mothers who ran countries and fought wars. Won wars. All while while Sally Field was alive.
Ah, hell. BUSH LIED AND PEOPLE DIED.
Brendan P. Cullen
Palo Alto, California
LIBERAL EDUCATOR GETS AWAY WITH MANSLAUGHTER
This is a job for Mark Steyn's detective work:
I wonder if there is a liberal problem with the recent story of the Assistant Principal in Cincinnati, Ohio, who was under such pressure to get doughnuts for her meeting that she FORGOT that she put her 2 year old child in the car until 8 hours later on a scorching summer day with the windows rolled up! The doughnuts were fine but the child was found DEAD in the car, and the Prosecuter would not file any charges! The TV news showed a police interrogation clip when she says, "Good mothers don't do this," and the interrogator tells her, "Nobody says you're not a good mother." Excuse me, but when your child dies in a hot car because you had more important doughnuts to attend to, then yes, you're a bad mother.
Some wonder if she got off with manslaughter due to being a well-placed liberal at a school? An NEA saint above the law?
I am concerned now that all you have to do is cry and say it was an accident, and anybody can get away with murdering their own children! It is like the next step down from abortion, and the law looks the other way with a shrug!
A public meeting was on the TV news where half of the crowd wanted her fired and the other half were louder and indignant about being too " judgmental." Is it now unacceptable to determine right from wrong when a child has been killed through carelessness?
I have always hated the secular application of the Bible's Jesus quote, "Judge not lest ye be judged," which is meant to say do not carry out the PUNISHMENT. It does not mean do not discern between right or wrong, which is what the secular world proclaims it to say. Look at what Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery and her accusers. He does not ask if she had sinned, which all knew to be true, He tells the crowd that none are without sin as well and thus should not be so eager to deliver her punishment, lest they deserve and receive their own punishment. The Old Testament has God saying, "Judgment is mine, I will repay." And Jesus says whatever measure you mete out against others will be the degree that you receive what you deserve in punishment as well.
Bryan Leed
Dayton, Ohio
IS SARKOZY SERIOUS?
What do you make of the new French Government's tough line on Iran, saying we should be prepared for war to stop their nuclear programme.
Has the Gallic leopard changed its spots? Is Sarkozy the last attempt at counter-revolution? Or is it just empty words?
Here's hoping it's the former...
Alex
London, England
DOES THE CHAIR HAVE LEGS?
READER OF THE DAY
"Steyn was easily the worst offender”
SUZANNE KELMAN
Associate Journalism Chair
Ryerson University
September 2007
Mark, fear not: There are still plenty of us here in Toronto who have a good hard laugh when we hear the word "University" appended to "Ryerson".
John Crawford
Toronto
ILLEGAL IMPACT
Illegal immigration. Yeah...let's have more...
We need to publish crime statistics far and wide, blame local and federal governments, and...yes...sue for incompetence when governments fail to protect us by refusing to enforce existing laws.
Am I the one that's out of touch here?
Great work guys
Mark Krikorian
LAST WORD
That's a Hoot.
Nice job on Bill Bennett's show today.
Scott Van Meter
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