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Thank you for your kind (and unkind) letters from the Canada, America, Ireland, Britain and Australia. 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. For a selection of recent hate mail, see Mailbox Extra.
Letter of the Week
MR STALIN GOES TO IRELAND
"... in Britain, they're proposing limits on your right to take airline flights to other countries", you say. Oh come on. That was last month. This month, you'll need a passport to fly to the same country.
It all started on 24 October when Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, told the Dail that the Republic faced an onslaught of illegal immigrants and terrorists flooding in from Northern Ireland. Problem - unwanted people. Location - the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Solution - police the border? No.
No, according to Bertie, the solution is for the UK to impose something like passport controls between the mainland and Ireland. Whether we travel between the two by air or by boat, by 2009 we'll need passports or something like them. It's a shame about the 100-year tradition of free travel in the Common Travel Area but, according to Bertie, the severing of this special
relationship between the two countries because of tighter security procedures is actually "an opportunity for deeper cooperation".
But hang on a minute. If that land border is going to be zipped up tight against illegal immigrants and terrorists, then the passport controls or whatever they are, it's still not decided, will have to apply on travel between the mainland and Northern Ireland, as well. And they're in the same country. A country called the United Kingdom.
Cue understandable anxiety from the Unionists in the North. Jim Allister, a former Democratic Unionist and Member of the European Parliament said it would be "intolerable and preposterous if citizens of the UK had to present a passport to enter another part of the UK".
Cue total silence from the UK Home Office, who haven't bothered to explain to anyone how their eBorders scheme will work in this case. (That's electronic borders, of course.)
Which leaves us all asking the European Union what's going on. And apparently we have a Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, one Franco Frattini. "Advance passenger information can and will . be used for security on internal flights and ferry journeys, including those between Northern Ireland and the mainland ..." and according to Frattini checks on internal
travel should apply to internal EU flights as well as external .
Quick history test. What did the Tsars call internal passports when they introduced them into Russia over 100 years ago? That's right - propiski . Lenin banned them, Stalin reintroduced them, the Constitutional Court banned them again in 1991 and, guess what, they're still in use. Not just in Moscow but, soon, in London and Liverpool, too.
David Moss
London, United Kingdom
MARK REPLIES: Very good point. I flew between Birmingham and Dublin the other day and for the first time that I can recall I had my passport stamped when I landed in the Emerald Isle. Sad.
Re: People who don’t need people
GENOCIDAL ECO-MANIACS
Everyone's favourite comment on the eco-fascists is, or should be, that of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic: "What is at risk is not the climate but freedom…I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning"…
But I wondered if you were also familiar with this wonderful passage from C.S. Lewis:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Apart from amending this to "the SUPPOSED good of its victims", I'd say that pretty much covers it, wouldn't you?
Ted
London, United Kingdom
RESTRICTIONS ON MOVEMENT
"...restrictions on freedom of movement were previously the mark of the Soviet Union et al."
You don't think three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline restricts freedom of movement in this vast country of ours? At 20 mpg that's $450 just for the gas to drive coast to coast. And nearly everything we Americans buy is trucked to market, and currently here in the South diesel fuel is $3.19 at the pump, a penny more than premium. Of course the government doesn't count food and fuel when they figure inflation, why in the world would they do that?
John West
South Carolina
I’LL TAKE MY CHANCES
I personally get confused by eco-logic in this global warming debate. They claim to want to save the world, and by extension millions of people, from the ravages of man-made climate change. Yet, as recent history shows, the policies they espouse will result in the certain culling of millions of us, possibly billions. So they are willing to kill billions in order to possibly save millions. I'll take my chances with the climate thank-you.
I've coined a term for these types -Ecullogists.
(I'd rather be a denier than a liar.)
Mark Gray
Calgary, Alberta
THE DISINTEGRATION CHAMBER
Mark, fitting observations on the eco-pseud John Feeney. And to think he may have simply recycled a "Star Trek" plotline:
I wonder if the disintegration chambers will run on solar power or bio-fuel?
Paul Canniff
Edmonton, Alberta
SUBTRACTION PROBLEM
I enjoy your books and your contributions to NR/NRO. Keep up the fine work. Great first name, BTW.
Until and unless the people complaining about the population set the example by subtracting themselves from the earth's human burden, I'm not listening. I'd like to see just one do so publicly. Put your 9mm where your mouth is.
Same with Al Gore. Until I seem him walking to Stockholm to pick up his Nobel (yes, he should be able to walk on water, but if not, he can take a sailing ship I suppose), I'm not going to listen to his horse**** about buying carbon indulgences either.
I suppose if he manages to get cars removed from the planet, we'll have even more horse****. So we get horse**** either way.
Mark Conner
Waterloo, Nebraska
PARADISE LOST
This reminds me that several months ago while listening to NPR on the way into work (I now have XM Satellite Radio so NPR is no more) they were running their Science update or some such thing. So, what hard science did they educate us with? An interview with a "science" author who's book was a description of earth if humans had not existed.
Bill Stephens
IBM Endicott, New York
HUNTER-GATHERING ANYONE?
Mark, as noted in your corner post, John Feeney said:
We must end world population growth, then reduce population size. That means lowering population numbers in industrialised as well as developing nations.
This is an old meme from the green-left. I remember someone similar back in the 80's proclaiming that the only way to save the Earth is to reduce the human population to "10-15,000 hunter-gatherer groups". Back then, it understandably created a lot of controversy (I wish I could remember his name). At any rate, these idiots, who previously came up with this nonsense
in the harmless and swampy back-waters of universities, where they were no threat to anyone, are now being consulted as “experts”.
If Mr. Feeney wants to lower the population of industrialized countries, he can put his money where his mouth is. I invite him to prowl near Jimmy Carter's bird feeders.
Scott Lawalin
Indianapolis
KILLER KITTY
I sure hope you know what a 'LOLCAT' is, because I've been working on this all night since reading your cat killer link earlier this afternoon.
I don't need to be mentioned by name if you use it - just indicate that an angry cat sent you the link.
RS
Re: Ron numbers
TEMPORARY TRACTION?
I won two books of yours in your 2004 election contest for predicting that Iowa and New Hampshire would switch camps. I had been predicting for 18 months to anyone who cared to listen - and, annoyingly I imagine, to many who didn't - that Bush would do worse in New Hampshire than nationally in that election for largely exactly the reasons you give for Paul's finding some traction there.
One special feature of this election is that the front runner has an authoritarian streak that has to put off many of these folks, not to mention his distinctly urban sensibility. Romney might be less frightening; if he can come off as a real boy in time for the primary, it would make sense that he might do well. I don't see the state as a whole taking a flyer on Paul, though they've taken unforeseen flyers before. As has been well said, it will be interesting to see to what use he puts his new pile of cash.
Dean
ULTRA-LEFTIES FOR RON PAUL
While I think Ron Paul may have some popularity in NH, I have to disagree with some of the optimistic hype coming out of Libertarians from Washington DC. First off, I think Republicans lost in NH, because their base was upset about the war, but more so because they thought Republicans had lost their way on spending and corruption. Voter turn out in Republican areas in the southern part of the state were stunningly low. They couldn't stand to vote for a rabid anti-war Democrat (Shea-Porter), and I don't think they'll vote for an anti-war Republican either. Another issue for Ron Paul is that much of his support comes from college students. As a recent alumni of UNH in Durham, I can attest to that. I was at UNH last week for a Career fair recruiting for my company and I saw some Ron Paul supporters, many of whom I recognized as ultra-left people from back when I was VP of the College Republicans in 2004. If Gardner has the primary when school is in session (i.e. December 11th), then Ron Paul could do well as many ignorant college students (both out-of-state and in-state) will come out to vote. However, if the primary is during winter break, all bets are off!
Dave Gillespie
Nashua, NH
A GENUINELY HONEST AND INCORRUPTIBLE GUY
That's right. The mischief they are going to make is to hopefully help Ron Paul win the primary, maybe helping end the war, save the dollar, our savings and retirement funds and do some good old-fashioned conservative things like abolish the department of Ed, Energy etc. Remember when Republicans cared about something other than war?
My family by marriage is Australian and my father in law, who has spent much time in the USA, says we (the US) are what Australia was 40 years ago. It was too much welfare and statism and now Oz is just a big welfare state where you have to fill in an "Application to harm fauna" when you want to shoot kangaroos on your farm. That's until they ban farmers owning guns at all.
And all you guys care about is this war. Absolutely inexplicable.
Also, while a certain amount of anti-US feeling is of the green-left, yuppie variety, a lot of it is not. A lot of what I hear here and the few times I have been to Europe is genuine alarm at how aggressive and controlling America has become. As Justin Raimondo said neoconservatives think force can do anything. Many reasonable OTM's are genuinely worried and horrified by US foreign policy.
Wake up and smell the coffee, Mark. So many neoconservatives who hate Ron Paul think his supporters are liberals or independents - I don't. I think huge numbers are very unhappy Republicans and the numbers are enough to sink the GOP for the foreseeable future. Maybe you should vote for Hillary; she believes in wars in the middle east and Wilsonianism.
I assumed you had been quiet on the war and Ron Paul lately out of despair and a sense that you just can't face trying to promote this failing foreign policy. This neoconservative administration are amazingly clever though to realize how much they can “own” a journalist like you by being your pal and making you feel you have the king's ear. I betchya never thought it would happen to you.
Anyway, you are clearly a die hard so I am not trying to change your mind but give you an indication of the crashing and burning you are about to see (and hopefully destroy your morale – heh heh). But at least you can feel you helped stop a genuinely honest and incorruptible guy from being the Republican nominee - what a great achievement. You're a hero!
But, you are still funny.
Btw, I bought 'Broadway Babies' in 1997.
Adele S.
AHEAD OF HUCKABEE
I enjoyed your analysis of Congressman Paul's numbers this morning, but I just had a minor correction: the most recent figures from New Hampshire actually do show a significant increase in his support from the 1-2% level. The St. Anselm poll last week has him at 7.4% and ahead of both Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson; it is worth noting that this poll was taken before he rolled out his TV and radio ads in the state.
Jon Daniels
New York University School of Law
Candidate for J.D., 2009
FIVE PER CENT OFF
According to the recent St. Anselm's poll Paul is at 7.4% in NH, and that was before he'd run a single radio or TV ad.
Where is your 1-2% figure from?
Matt Gaffney
DANGEROUS ON THE WAR
Here is my take on Paul. I am a conservative who had a lot of sympathies for the grass-roots libertarianism of the Clinton era (I didn't join the Militia or anything, but I would basically sum up my position as anti-Reno).
Ron Paul is an exciting candidate because he is different than anyone else, and seems to be a strict-constructionist small government guy. In any other time I would give him a second look as a guy to support. But I can't do it, because I think his position on Iraq is simplistic and dangerous. I don't care if you are against the war now, if you were always against it, etc. The fact of the matter is that we are there. The only thing that matters is the course to be taken going forward and how to get a result that will best serve our national interest. Quitting Iraq in a hasty manner will probably lead to some level of regional collapse and problems for decades to come.
The funny thing is, if Iraq weren't part of the deal Paul would be a nowhere fringe candidate.
Doug Mooney
NO ONE HAS A CLUE
I appreciate your comments on polls and Ron Paul.
The truth is, no one knows what will happen. Those supporting Paul don't, but neither do you or the rest of the media. It would be nice if people just let the facts speak for themselves rather than trying to force everything to fit pre-conceived conclusions.
All I can do is speak anecdotally. I know there are many Republicans like me who are completely dissatisfied with the "mainstream" candidates. We are the ones who bought into the "voting for a lesser evil" and held our nose and voted for George Bush, only to have our worst fears realized. I think many, like me, have decided that voting for the lesser evil may be a theoretically valid basis for a vote, but it tears a hole in your soul each time and we have been too wounded to continue
inflicting that pain on ourselves in some delusional hope that this time it will be different.
We aren't all 9/11 truthers or "tin-foil" hat wearers. Crazies may abound, but do you really think that there aren't plenty of regular folks, educated folks, who have decided that enough is enough? For once, I'd like to see that acknowledged. There are a lot of us who have accepted this reality: I many not end up voting for the winner, but at least my vote will count for something. Too many seem to think that the only value in a vote is as a signal of your skill at predicting the outcome of
an election. That only reaps benefits in gambling. It's a disastrous way to govern a nation.
As for why Paul is not showing up in polls, who knows. Have you investigated the structure of these polls? Do they even mention his name? Do they reach out to people who have cell phones only? I have no idea if these things have changed the way that polling works, but I know that phone usage has changed. I look at my own, even since the last presidential election. I used to always answer the phone. Now, I don't bother unless the caller ID shows the number of someone I know. No one calls me on a LAN line anymore.
For once, I'd like to see National Review, like the rest of the mainstream media, obsess a bit more on the issues and merits versus how well everyone can predict the outcome. This isn't a sporting contest. Let's devote at least a day a month to pretending we acknowledge that.
Finally, the real test isn't whether Paul wins or not. It's whether the Republican nominee does. I think that's where you are going to see the real change this time. Because some of us won't be coming back into the fold. I've voted my last vote out of peer-pressure and fear tactics that somehow the world will end if I don't vote for this candidate that I hate, but hate less than the other guy. Sorry. Will have to come up with a better basis to earn my loyalty than that.
James Kovacs
THE MONEY AND THE MESSAGE
Nice post on The Corner about Ron Paul. You are one commentator who seems to be able to analyze and comment without feeling the need to belittle Paul or his supporters.
You are quite right, now he has the money, and he has the libertarian message, I guess we will see if we are truly A Nation of Sheep as Judge Napolitano says?
Robert W. Haley
SO RIGHT HE’S LEFT
In "Ron Numbers" in the NRO Corner, you asked:
If Paul is a serious spoiler who can derail mainstream candidates and reframe the debate, doesn't that have to start showing in the numbers? Like the song says: Oh, baby, what he couldn't do/With Plenty Of Money And You. He seems to have the first half of that coalition sewn up. Where's the latter?
I think they're outside the Republican Party.
I'm positive that Ron Paul is getting a lot of financial contributions from rank-and-file Democrats, Independents and Libertarians, for his antiwar stance. As well as from activists for other causes like the "9-11 Truth Movement" conspiracy theorists. But since we're in the primary season, the pollsters aren't polling Democrats for Ron Paul or Radical Leftists for Ron Paul; they're only polling Republicans for Ron Paul and not finding very many.
And yet, on some left-wing and Democratic Party blogs, Ron Paul is mentioned very favorably by lefties as "the only Republican whom I admire." So much so that Markos Moulitsas of DailyKOS had to remind his readership not to be "misled" by Ron Paul's antiwar stance, and look at his right-wing domestic record too.
But the New Hampshire primary allows crossover voting, so any staunchly antiwar voters there who would have never dreamed of voting for any other Republican may vote for Ron Paul in the primary.
Steven L.LIBERALS LOVE HIM
Look at that 7 per cent for Ron Paul closer, the very bottom line of the pdf...44% of those who support Paul describe themselves as liberal. His success is nothing but the move-on crowd supporting him as a true anti-war candidate.
Ed
SECOND TIME AROUND
If we are supposed to accept Hillary was co-President with her husband and it should count as experience, then why would electing Hillary and her co-President husband not be a violation of the 22nd Amendment?
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY
CLINTON APPOINTEE TV
On Sunday, Barack Obama will appear on Meet The Press. He is the SIXTH Democrat to be interviewed in the Presidential series. McCain & Fred Thompson are the only Republicans that break the monotony of Democrat contenders.This from Tim Russert, a person who is said to "ask the tough questions", such that he offended "her thighness" (she of the blimpy thighs) last week during the Democrat debate It's a sad case when a person who asks tough questions can't even hide his heavy Democrat background as Mario Cuomo aide,w/ no pretense of giving each party an even break. So shameless are these cats that, on the DAY Of 9/11/01, CBS & Dan Rather spent the day interviewing a procession of one Clinton appointee after another...& another..& another.
Rather did not have one Republican all day EVEN THO' THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WAS IN POWER AND THE REPUBLICANS CONTROLLED BOTH THE HOUSE & SENATE. That is a demonstration of C R U S T par excellence. This is blindness. On a newscast that is committed to covering the news ,as opposed to a talk show that has entertainment as its primary façade. Is it any wonder that it was Rather who had to resign a few years later because of an unflinching show of sustained bias - about 30 years too late for him to have been exposed (& all the networks) for covering Watergate in an agenda-driven manner THAT WAS TOTALLY UNQUESTIONED IN ITS COMMITMENT AT THAT TIME. Have they considered the case of Sandy Berger lately?
Well I guess if we couldn't even count on George Bush to seize the golden opportunity to highlight Berger's deception how can we count on the biased networks? The Republicans are definitely a party that "knows their place" in the political landscape
Al
Lemon Grove
Re: America Alone
UNSIGNED COPY
I have just finished your wonderful book "America Alone". Having wished for an autographed copy for last Christmas, my family finally bought me an un-autographed version at Waldenbooks for my birthday. They had to search for it. It was stuck on a top shelf in the back among totally unrelated subjects -- with Ann Coulter's latest. Your insights are brilliant and a delight to read. Can't you come back as a guest host on Rush? You are the best. Thank you.
P.S. You have a lot of very sick and angry people writing to you. Humorous for about 2 posts, then just deeply disturbing.
Charlene Pinkava
Brookings, South Dakota
REFORM BEGINS AT HOME
I read America Alone this past week. You've nailed it - I couldn't agree with your message more. I'm not sure, though, how to "reform" a religion whose historically violent legacy is reemerging through reform. We don't seem to have too much reason to be optimistic for the future of Western society. Our best hope is reforming ourselves - i.e. strengthen the basis for our desire to perpetuate ourselves.
By the way, do you receive e-mails only from people who hate you, or do you just publish only those e-mails?
Gerald Mucci
Destin, Florida
THE DEATH CHANNEL
Kind of symbolic, huh?
BERLIN (AFP) - A German businessman plans to launch the country's first television channel dedicated to funerals and mourning, complete with death announcements and documentaries about cemeteries.
Sean Higgins
BABY SHORTAGE
It's very hard to get people to take things like fertility rates seriously. Here in British Columbia the fertility rate is 1.37, yet people are up in arms every time a school is closed due to lack of enrolment. A couple of nights ago on the Vancouver news a UBC researcher commented that she couldn't find enough pregnant women for a study she was conducting. The astonishing thing was her tone of surprise at this state of affairs. People will no doubt be surprised and outraged when the health care system is crushed and economic growth stagnates as all of us "boomers" shuffle into oblivion.
Sorry I couldn't supply some viciousness.
Peter Townsend
MAINLINE PROTESTANTISM
I am currently a student at a very big denominational seminary in Minnesota. Many of my classmates have entered ministry to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and study Holy Scripture. Unfortunately many of our professors consider that our hard earned dollars should be spent so that we can study global warming, multiculturalism, and how to end poverty. This causes no end of frustration for us.
Reading "America Alone" was like a breath of fresh air, especially when you accurately described the mainline depiction of Jesus on page 100. Would you consider ever coming to the desolate cold of Minnesota to offer your insights to my classmates?
Matthew Metevelis
St. Paul, Minnesota
WAY TOO CROWDED ALREADY
You write in The Corner that 'the future belongs to those who show up for it'. Quite true. It is also quite true, as Longman points out, that many populations now reproduce at below replacement. This is unfortunate, but nothing is going to stop it. Further, your suggestion that people ought to reproduce more is not really the answer. The eco-nuts aside, much of the world is too crowded, especially a country like Pakistan. The problem is not, in any event, the fertility rate per se, but the fact that Western governments are beholden to the “egalitarian passion” which means that immigration has become fundamentally subversive of the social order in Europe and elsewhere.
Britain, for instance, does not need more children. Recent projections indicate that the UK will have 53 million denizens without immigration or 80 million with immigration (a third of the population being non-white in this scenario). This latter is such a shocking figure (80 million people in a country the size of Britain!) as to boggle the mind. What is wrong with the population of Britain declining by a few million and that population remaining more homogenous? (Lower
housing prices may then induce a rise in native fertility.) The answer to the export of Pakistani labour is this: no immigration from Pakistan. The capitalists will not like the rising labour costs, but they should not be allowed to determine policy anyway.
Jasper House
PLENTY OF ROOM FOR EVERYONE
Mark: It was interesting to read about John Feeney's comments about too great population growth. I have three sons, ages 16, 14 and 9, who attend public school. As you can imagine, there is much green mantra in the curriculum. To show them how silly some of the green claims are, I shared with my sons an exercise focusing on population and population density. Basically we found the latest estimate of the entire world population. Next we determined the population density of the most densely populated state in the United States (New Jersey as I recall) and then divided the world's population figure by the population density figure of New Jersey to determine how much land would be needed to support the entire world's population with a New Jersey population density. With that figure we could determine how much land we would need in the United States to relocate all of the world's population with a population density no greater than New Jersey's. The result was that the entire current world population could comfortably fit inside the continental United States, with room to spare. Once you look at that fact you realize how foolish all such overpopulation claims are.
Admittedly, my "back of the envelope" exercise assumed all of the land on the continental United States was equally appropriate for use by populations. Some adjustments obviously would be needed to make the analysis more realistic. Maybe you can pass this on to Derb, who appears to
have a number fetish, and he can crunch these numbers in a more realistic way while having an enjoyable time doing it.
Bill TroyNANNYISM NOT TO BLAME
Your thesis - of the apocalyptic demographic decline of Europe – is terrifying, however, from what I understand you lay the blame on social welfare, or the nanny state.
This is obviously incorrect since the nanny state was born after WWII, just as the baby boom was happening. Further the most interventionist of all states, China, had to resort to limiting the number of children to prevent demographic explosion.
Also, as a matter of common sense, social policy can be used to encourage rational economic agents to have children, no matter how interventionist it is. If the nanny state produces "children", it might produce fecund children. (The baby bonus in Australia, produced a “mini baby boom”, largely amongst dropouts .)
Social policy is the thin crust on top of the social consciousness, allow me the term. What your idea really is, then is that the social consciousness has produced the nanny state and not vice versa. Europe is, Europeans are, selfish, weak, effete and despairing.
The picture Michel Houellebecq paints of the modern European mentality explains the demographic suicide uncannily accurately. I recommend him to you, in the unlikely event you have not already read him. It seems to me, that you both of you are saying the same thing.
PS You are often critical of conspiracy theories, and from a common sense point of view you are completely correct. They are moronic. However surely they indicate a lack of trust of the government, which given your hatred of the nanny state, you would deem a healthy instinct?
Robert Asher
Australia
MARK REPLIES: Instead of writing a long letter based on a theory derived "from what I understand" of America Alone, why not try reading the actual book?
As to your argument that a link between welfare and demographic decline is "obviously incorrect" because the nanny state and the baby boom both started after World War Two, have you never heard of lagging indicators? Profound cultural shifts take a generation or two to establish themselves. The loss of the survival instinct - which is what severe demographic decline boils
down to - is the most profound cultural shift of all. The idea that the baby boom, which began in 1945, would therefore be brought to a juddering halt by, say, Britain's introduction of socialized medicine in 1948 is, to be polite, "obviously incorrect".
As for China, there was no danger of "demographic explosion", but there was a very predictable risk, once the one-child policy was in place, of extreme sex-selection, which has now resulted in the most gender-distorted peacetime demographic cohort in history.
And finally conspiracy theories: They don't indicate a "mistrust" of government so much as an absurd belief in it as all-powerful entity. To argue that an institution that can't even run the Department of Motor Vehicles semi-competently is capable of abducting the 9/11 aircraft in mid-flight, replacing them with unmanned drones, faking cellphone calls back to loved ones and disposing of the bodies over the Atlantic is part of the same misguided faith in the unbounded powers of government as afflicts the nanny statists.
DITHERING ON THE BRINK
There is nothing more insane than to refuse to look insanity in the face. We are dithering in the face of death.
Ezra Marsh
BaltimoreWHAT’S NOT TO LIKE?
Re: "As I often say, there's no precedent for increasing prosperity on declining human capital."
I think you are very wrong there. And I cite the 15th century as a contrary example. Europe's population had cratered due to the Black Death in the 1300s, and both marriage and fertility rates remained very low so the loss was not made up for until centuries had passed. Yet the people of 15th century Europe enjoyed a standard of living not seen again until the 1700s, their decimated
culture hosted the Renaissance, saw the birth of modern capitalism and the first stirrings of modern science, embarked on the early voyages of discovery. That alone should disprove your theory that cultural vibrancy cannot exist in a low-fertility population.
On a slightly different note an older society may be a more conservative society, not one rushing heedlessly after every latest fad and folly. What's not to like?
Jon Frazier
THE SICK MEN OF EUROPE
Your comments on the Hewitt show about Muslims in Europe "loathing the society they are living in" made me immediately think of Agent Smith 's chat with Morpheus in the Matrix. I wonder if they look on Europeans as a virus?
I guess the difference is that there will not likely be a happy ending in this story.
Rob
Re: The ideologues have it
NAME THAT CONFLICT
I agree with you on the inefficacy of the "War on Terror" label.. How do you feel about the proposed Pentagon alternative, The Long War?
Theodore M. Cooperstein
Fort Pierce, Florida
Re: The will to inflict defeat
HOW TO END A WAR
My old Political Theory lecturer (he refused to call it Political Science because he thought there was no science in politics) always emphasised the need to finish a major war by "bombing the bullshit" out of the enemy. He claimed that the failure to do so in 1918 led directly to 1939. Before we had the great bomber forces, that meant inflicting much destruction and imposing an occupation force.
And he taught that it was not just the Japanese militarists or the German Nazis that needed to be discredited but the "good" Germans and Japanese who allowed such things.
As A.J.P. Taylor wrote in The Course of German History, "… the rest of the world had to pay the penalty for the political incompetence and timidity of the German middle class. The failure of the “good Germans”, not the ranting of the 'bad ones', was the real crime of Germany against European civilisation." Ditto, Japan.
David Revelman
Melbourne, Australia
IRISH HATE MAIL
Follow-up to the original column
Great to read your Nagasaki column in the Irish Times again, but why didn't you include the trio of irate letters that followed two days later. You can still append them for some added spice.
To remind you, here they are again.
Personally, I loved the column - almost as much as the letters.
Tony Allwright
Dublin, Ireland
Re: Oceans Apart
FRANK’S PAD AS I KNEW IT
Great piece! I'm a first-timer. Never read your stuff before.
Not sure if you are/were a fan of F A S ... or maybe just a fan of his ring-a-ding lifestyle. I have visited his Palm Springs home ("the compound") a few times since he sold the property to a Canadian businessman.
The Canadian has done a masterful job of maintaining it. Four side-by-side lots on Frank Sinatra Blvd. in Rancho Mirage, two pools/tennis court/16 bedrooms and 32 bathrooms plus a home-theatre/bar/lounge that's exactly the way it was when he was entertaining the Yul Brynners or Gregory Pecks.
The new owner bought the property as-is and that included all of the original, tasteful furnishings and, from memory, about 35 original, Impressionist oil paintings, personally signed and dated by the artist. The circular garden area near "Chicago", the name he gave to his renovated, real
train-caboose-car, is really beautiful ... manicured lemon trees, orange trees and a million flowers. And, best of all, is non-stop Sinatra on the property's hidden-in-the-gardens sound system - from morning till night - outstanding!
While there, drinking in the atmosphere - sensing the Boss's aura, it never occurred to me to say, "When".
Michael Travers
Mississauga, Ontario
Re: Pas un choix de Heather
LOOKING FOR STEYN IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
Last Boxing Day, or sometime shortly after Xmas (I realize some of your left wing critics prefer Winterfest, but I'll stick with Xmas, even after it's outlawed) I set out to buy America Alone, and several other books with the Chapters/Indigo card thoughtfully given to me a day or two earlier. I won't go into all the details of my all day, criss-cross journey across Vancouver, in the vain hope of purchasing a copy of America Alone. Suffice to say I was met with a series of put-out, eye rolling, book sellers clearly annoyed at my attempts to get my hands on a book not on the “approved list.” Eventually, begrudgingly, one clerk at the North Vancouver Indigo store did agree to order in a copy.
Recently I've noticed Chapters/Indigo have a new selection in some of their stores, under the geopolitical section, which are labeled “approved books.” Naomi Klein's latest sci fi thriller is of course foremost among them.
Books that might provide an alternative to the Klein/Chomsky worldview are nowhere to be found. But then how silly of me to think Canada's near monopoly book seller (protected under government aegis) should feel compelled to foster diversity of thought and constructive debate.
Alan Forsythe
British Columbia, Canada
Re: Song of the Week
MISSING INFORMATION
While your insight is interesting it omits an angle that no less an authority than the E Entertainment network surfaced in a two hour long review of the life and works of Dolly Parton. To wit, that Col. Tom Parker approached Dolly about having Elvis record 'I will always love you' - which would have been very, very attractive to Dolly back in the mid seventies time frame - but the catch was that the Presley side insisted, as was their wont, on 50% of the publishing rights. Dolly declined, and years later made a bazillion off of the Whitney Houston recording.
David Maughan
White Plains, New York
FAUX VITAE
A very funny paragraph on his faux vitae (and their consequences to his final resting place), and the historical signage at the Del of the phony historical events. Thanks,
Steve Wilder
San Diego, California
DON’T YOU FANCY JOLENE?
Great column on Porter Wagoner and, of course, Dolly Parton's formerly great song.
I'd be interested in your take on Jack White's version of another of Dolly's great songs from the same album -- Jolene.
Maybe you could post that sometime?
Pete Scholtens
WHO’S HUGH?
Enjoyed your column on the song “I Will Always Love You” but you missed a very subtle yet crucial nuance in Whitney Houston¹s delivery. For some reason she is unable to belt out the word “you” and clearly says “hugh” in its place. Whether that¹s just a bit of bombastic phrasing or a thinly disguised expression of her crush on Hugh Hewitt is open to interpretation, but the words are clear. She will always love Hugh.
David Miles
NOT THAT CHEAP
Re: I will always love you, by Dolly Parton.
You may know.... I heard her interviewed a few years ago and she said that Elvis Presley wanted to do the song but demanded ownership of composition rights and credits. She declined even though she said she could have used the money..."because it costs a lot to look this cheap."
Richard Skinner
Montara, California
RUMINATIONS ON BING
I lost respect for Bing when I saw one of his sons crying on a talk show...doing the Daddy Dearest tour. How could the awful things he said about his crooning pop not be at least partly true?
Normally I dismiss such things, but I bought it about Bing. I started to see him as a small town tough made good....farting through silk.
Heddy Lemarr (was it Heddy Lemarr) said in her autobiography that his singing style was just a trick...as though you can fake the reverberations from the bottom of an oak barrel.
For my money, HOAGY is the first cool white man. What was the name of that Dadaist joint he hung out in college?
And, I think the real reason 'Thanks For The Memory' lives in a memory sinkhole is problems with the song itself..not that it was a theme song. It's a great concept and a great tune and there are all time great lines in it...I particularly love the cheerio, and toodleoo..line which is heartbreaking and beautiful...but the bridge is weak....
And a song cannot survive such a weakness...
Many's the time that we feasted
And many's the time that we fasted
It just meanders at that point. The ass falls off. I think that's why it didn't catch on and hold on deep in the group mind or wherever it is that songs burrow.
Tom St. Louis
Dundas-ish, Ontario
IT’S ALL LINDA RONDSTADT’S FAULT
Regarding your column on the passing of Porter Waggoner, I too have always found the abuse of a tender and delicate ballad by the full forces of Whitney Houston's "INCREDIBLE PIPES! HAVE YOU EVER HEARD ANYONE BELT ONE OUT LIKE SHE CAN? WHAT A TALENT!!" production people - she herself being held blameless, spending her time between takes in a trailer snorting God-knows-what with Bobby Brown - a tragedy.
Sadly, Parton has never completely overcome the big-hair-and-gigantic-breasts image for which Porter Waggoner is most to blame. In her first appearances on Waggoners' show, she wore a simple blue dress, stood in front of a few bales of straw and performed beautifully, a simple girl from a minuscule Tennessee town smiling shyly at the cameras. In a short period of time, Waggoner was trotting her out with those enormous, twice-as-big-as-your-head hairdos and in enough sequins to supply Barnum and Bailey for a year. She completely entrusted her career and image to him, and he turned her into a female version of himself.
Although over time, and particularly with her performance (in a brilliant piece of casting) in Nine to Five she overcame, somewhat, the image that Waggoner created for her all those years before, but it has always overshadowed her songwriting and, what's worse, an incredible and unique vocal instrument.
In the case of I Will Always Love You , the genesis of which you note, the real crime was not the Houston performance. She was more or less reflecting the Ronstadt version, and Houston, who didn't exactly have "country roots" and surely wouldn't know Porter Waggoner from Adam, and/or her producers, had likely never heard it the way it was originally written and performed.
Linda Ronstadt, on the other hand, knew good and well what she was doing; she was part of the uncomfortable synthesis of country and rock in the mid-seventies which was highlighted by The Eagles, but she herself had grown up with country (as well as Tejano) influences and she certainly had seen Waggoner's show and was familiar with Parton and the song's original intent.
But by the time she recorded the Parton balled, she had moved past her earlier, Stone Ponys' influenced performances and had become a sort of musical Vegematic, ricing, dicing and slicing whatever song she performed into a "see how loud I can sing and still be heard over the wildly overblown orchestral arrangements blaring behind me" mode. It was the beginning of the end for her career. By the time she got around to butchering songs like Heat Wave, nobody was really paying attention any more.
But Ronstadt had always known better. In the Autumn of her career, after self-indulgent work like "Songs My Father Sang" and a surprisingly good but completely ignored three album review of American Standards, some of which is remarkable (her Funny Valentine is maybe the best performance I've ever heard of a very difficult song) she then did a series of duets with other famous voices.
She once commented that it was intimidating to perform with the likes of Parton and Aaron Neville, but that she quickly realized that she couldn't - and shouldn't - try and compete with or even match their unique vocal brilliance. Instead, she said, her goal in the duets she did with both of them was to be consistent, add no flourishes and, mostly, "stay out of their way".
Ronstadt was no dummy; she knew well enough what she was doing when she allowed her producers to have her beat I Will Always Love You into the kind of pointless mush which allowed it to be used as an all-purpose background song. Houston was only following her lead. She didn't know any better.
But Ronstadt did.
Anyway, I enjoy your work immensely. Thanks for all that you do.
Bill Archer
Uniontown, Ohio
Re: Bourne to run, and run, and run ….
THE CONSPIRACY CONSPIRACY
It's part of the American character to portray government officials as sinister creepy guys. Traditionally, Americans don't like government much. I'm all for Hollywood showcasing government as awful, but there is a danger to this. The more Hollywood portrays government with the intelligence and capability of creating tsunamis and mega-conspiracies, the more Americans and the world will assume government is god-like. The makers of South Park got this down pat. In one episode, Cartman and gang discover that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are actually a conspiracy theory concocted by Bush so that people will think government has omnipotent power and learn to fear it. Hollywood would best serve its desire to trash government officials by portraying them as clumsy fools, a more realistic portrait, rather than brilliant madmen.
JK
Chicago
NOT FALLING FOR THAT
What a scam!
Citizen Kane is a perfect example of a horrible film we're all told is stellar, and if you disagree that means you're an idiot. James Joyce's Ulysses is tooted as the greatest novel ever written. It's total gibberish, and if you say so all the "scholars" insist you're ignorant. Who's falling for that!? I think the high falootin types are playing games with us. Shit that passes as high art today isn't
worth wiping my ass with. I can't be fooled. Excuse my language, but f*** that shit!
Joe
Alaska
Re: Mailbox Extra
HORRIFIED
I am horrified at the comments you receive and disgusted there is no technical process that would reject such messages. No one should be subjected to such vulgar impulses.
I appreciate your writings and your appearances on TV. You are, almost, alone out there.
Gloria Gibson
Falls Church, Virginia
ARE THEY FOR REAL?
You made them up, right? Those letters with all the bowel references and/or ill wishes for you personally?
If they really came from individual IP addresses, would you please provide a tally that indicates -
Total number of writers responding to your Frost remarks
Number who responded negatively
Number of negative comments with anatomical or bowel references and ill will
Please tell me there are not many Americans writing letters like that.
By the way, are those who do so terrified of catastrophic illness and the high price of family health insurance that they won't look at all the options for reducing these costs? What makes S-CHIP the holy grail? (Or the ultimate chocolate chip cookie?)
Cat
http://www.britsattheirbest.com/
IT’S NOT COMPASSION
Please help me understand why so many people see this (and other government wealth transfers) as having something to do with compassion. If someone takes my property and gives it to someone else, no matter how needy the receiver, there is no compassion on the part of the taker because it cost him nothing. If these people are so compassionate, why are they waiting for the federal government, instead of directly helping the people in need?
Mark A. Holmes
Wilmington, North Carolina
THE DEPTHS OF THE LEFT
You are definitely one of my favorite Canadians. You fall behind my Wife and Brother in law but way ahead of my Mother in law.
I cannot believe the depth to which the left will sink (their latest display of child abuse, does the "Schip Kid" purposely resemble Harry Potter or is that just a coincidence). When you catch them in a lie, (which isn't difficult really) they fain righteous indignation! I particularly liked the self professed atheist that was sorry there would be no torment for you in the after life because of course there isn't an after-life!
Keep holding their collective feet to the fire (the only collective I'm for by the way!).
Donald Johns
Syracuse, New York
THEY HATE MICHELLE MORE
I enjoyed reading your hate-mail, though it's not as good as Michelle Malkin's.
Keep up the good work. You're obviously doing something right.
Jamie Young
A CARING LIBERAL WRITES
Children dying from no health care in America! Why are you so hateful and want to watch children die?? You belong in America with all the other fat jew loving faggots who love to watch children
die! Don't come back to Canada you scum!
Jesse
Toronto, Ontario
jlratpack402@lycos.com
MARK REPLIES: "All the other fat jew loving faggots who love to watch children die..." Is that a formal organization like the Elks or the Ladies Aid? Do we have an annual parade? And, if so, would you like to come down and watch?
STRANGE FANTASIES
We have corresponded before. (I am "Not the Shadow Home Sec from Lancashire!)
It came as a shock to realise quite how virulently you are hated, by what would otherwise pass in the street for normal people - many of whom, it is evident, harbour strange fantasies. Do they decide to vote democrat (I presume?) because of these, or does engendering them make them vote for the destruction of the US as a side-effect?
I think you should do some research and write a piece!
Keep buggering on! (as Churchill used to say in 1941...I think it's where we are right now.)
David Davis
Lancashire, England
DEAD SOON ANYWAY
Health care sob stories --boo hoo!
After reading all those sob stories about people who have to file for bankruptcy due to a major medical condition, I still ask: Why should I foot the bill? It's not that I'm heartless. I actually volunteer a few hours a week at a retirement home. But I have to admit, lately I've been wondering why my tax money is paying for a 95-year-old woman's hip replacement surgery when she'll probably be dead in a few months anyway. Regardless, I don't understand why society increasingly expects ME to foot the bill for their bad health. Last year I was in Vegas and I watched for several minutes a woman in her 70s playing quarter slots while chain smoking and hooked up to an oxygen tank. Staring at her I thought, I have to some day use my hard-earned income to extend her life?? Hell no, not if I can help it. If people don't expect you to buy their 60-inch plasma TVs for them, then why do they expect something as important as health care to be taken care of for them? I would think the more important something is, the more one would save for it, or, be willing to pay for it even if it means bankruptcy. The letter writer whose father had to come out of retirement to pay for the health care of a son no one liked would be damned proud for being responsible. Why should I have to take care of his lush of a son? More importantly, I don't expect ANYONE to pay for my health care, so I wish not to pay for theirs.
Am I a cold, heartless bitch? Probably. But the flip side to my bitchiness is the retaining of a capitalist, entrepreneurial, state-of-the-art health care system that brings in even people from Germany for treatment. Researchers in the U.S. receive Nobel Prizes in medicine more than in any nation--and there's a reason for that. We DO NOT have socialized medicine. The public is going to have to learn you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you want high-end medical care or you want it cheap, and we all know you get what you pay for. Health care is expensive in the United States precisely because it’s state of the art. And unlike other industries, there's no need to mass produce MRI machines to bring down the cost because 90% of the public will never need it, unlike your big ass TVs. We have medical technology you can’t get anywhere else. You surely can’t find it growing on trees. We have the drugs and the technology in the US that isn't available even in Canada and Europe. Why? Because it's too costly f or the public sector. Even in countries with socialized medicine it comes down to costs. Here in the USA cancer drugs are available that have been refused in the EU not because of effectiveness or side-effects but because of costs. How humane is that? Is cutting costs worth dying for? I would rather mortgage my house and live than exist in a false socialist Utopia where my chance of surviving prostate cancer is a mere 45%, as in Britain today. (The survival rate for prostate cancer in the US is 85%.) You might be interested in reading a wonderful piece in Britain's Spectator magazine comparing health care in the US and Britain. It's called "Die in Britain, Survive in the U.S.":
Bitch
USA
THE BILE-SPITTER’S BILE SPITTERS
I've just read all the various comments in your Mailbox Extra section relating to the schip business. Very entertaining stuff - it never ceases to amaze me how many foul-mouthed bile-spitting individuals write to you accusing you of spitting bile by way of your foul mouth!!
Perhaps you should stop publishing your columns under your own name and in future "ghost-write" the columns for some 12-year old. As kids are clearly untouchable in the minds of some, irrespective of how blatantly they are being employed politically, it would mean that you could continue to make your much-needed common sense observations without having to receive threats of beatings or being wished dead by some individuals with their twisted notions of moral superiority.
Keep up the good work!!
Tony Ryan
Dublin, Ireland
THE PRETEXT FOR SOCIALISED MEDICINE
I just read your last mailbox regarding the S-CHIP program. I failed to find any actual arguments in favor of funding health insurance for middle income families. Denial and uninventive name calling are not arguments. We taxpayers already generously fund Medicaid for low income people. Why should my neighbors have to foot the health insurance bill for my grandchildren? Either there are no good arguments to support the program or the supportive arguments are unpalatable to the general voting population and cannot be stated in public. This is why the Democrats presented a gross misrepresentation of need with the example of the Frost family. I once was a Democrat when they were the anti-abortion party and the Republicans were the pro-abortion party.
The real argument that can’t be stated by the Democrats is that the S-CHIP program is just an incremental step to socialized medicine and children are being used as the pretext to support that. I have been a government bureaucrat and regulator for seven years. Anyone who thinks government can totally regulate or run the medical sector is either insane or a government employee who has never worked in the private sector. My own first hand experience of government regulation is that on our very best day we could rise to the level of mediocrity. Generally, government regulations punish the good, decent, law-abiding citizens and have little effect on the scofflaws.
Why do the Democrats want to ruin our medical system just when me and millions of other baby boomers are reaching an age when we will have more need to use it? Where would the rich Canadians go to get knee replacements and cancer treatments? I suppose their only answers to these questions have something to do with my anus.
Stephen McGovern
La Crosse, Wisconsin
WAITING OUT THEIR LIFE EXPECTANCY
In the Slavonic lands, the pushers of the “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” had it so easy what with the dumb peasantry, and centuries of oppressive rulers. But not in America, the land where freedom and and common sense rule, I always thought. How wrong could one be? Having read some of the responses to Mark Steyn's “Brother, could you spare a CHIP” I am now convinced that the pseudo-liberal fruitcakes could pull it off. In the first phase of the communist creed inspired system they should look to Britain, where the waiting times stretch often beyond the life expectancy of the sick, and those lucky to be hospitalised drop dead because of infections picked inside.
Boris Nenn
United Kingdom
PS: Mark, I used to be with you on the dangers of the multi-culti. No longer. The sooner the followers of Allah take over the better, I reckon. That will teach the meretricious 'useful idiots' of the loony Left.
A FREE RIDE IN THE SAFETY NET
It looks to me like you really got to some people with your comments about the Frost family. Some of those people are pretty disturbed judging by their remarks. I probably shouldn't comment as I live (for the moment) in the UK. However Tom Brosz made a good point regarding social medicine "It's about maximizing the dependency of Americans on the State so the State becomes
indispensable."
I personally feel that's the way things have gone in Britain. Governments of both left and right have since WW2 increasingly made the populace dependant on the State. As you have rightly pointed out one reason they do this because it keeps them in power. The past ten years in Britain there have been supposedly 2.7 million new jobs of which 40% have been filled by immigrants. Yet there is a vast army of unemployed natives existing on benefits, not to mention those "incapable of work". Not that all of them are work shy, but when there is no carrot and stick why bother getting out of bed? The State for far too many people is indispensable. I had a disagreement with a colleague recently. I was of the opinion that benefits should be in the form of food stamps, not cash which is used for things like cigarettes and beer. His attitude was that many of the people dependant on benefits are too ignorant to micro manage their lives. As I see it if you never give them the opportunity how will you know?
I have lived in the US and personally I can see the point of a health safety net, but where do you draw the line? In Britain we have thousands of health tourists and heavily pregnant women turn up for a free ride. They supposedly have a department in the NHS to chase these people up for the cost of their treatment, but my guess is they are rather less than successful. As time goes on and more and more of us become "oldies" it will become increasingly unaffordable. Blair when he was elected charged Frank Field with sorting out the welfare mess. Field came back with one or two good suggestions, but they were too unpalatable for the socialists so Field got the sack. Postpone the harsh choices to a future day and they become increasingly unpalatable. Sooner or later we will all have to cough up and the longer we put this off the more pain there will be. I just hope by that time I am no longer living in Europe!
Lee Taylor.
Re: China dolls
GAH-GAH FOR AMERICAN GUYS
I have to agree with the letter writer who says that Asians have a thing for Westerners. He was referrring to Asian women going gah-gah for American men. I'm gay, but I can claim that gay and bi Asian men also go nuts for us studly American men. While I was in Southeast Asia two years ago: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, the men in the "gay establishments" we encountered literally fault over us. If you ever get the chance to see a couple of 5'2" 85-pound Vietnamese men cat fight, it's something to behold. And unlike in Europe, we did not first get an earful of how evil we are before everyone fault over who got to take us home. Ireland was the worst. At least the Asians keep politics out of their sexual pursuits and are less hypocritical. Let's face it, Americans are the world's rock stars. Kiss my ass, baby!
D. Papaccio
Chicago
Re: I have returned
ALMOST AS UGLY AS THE BRITISH
Canadians hot??? Hell no!
I don't really understand how anyone could think Canadians are hot. First of all there is no such thing as a Canadian race anymore than there is an American race. If Canadians are hot then it must be of a particular breeding, like a mixture of Scandinavian and southern european (which is more common in the States). But most Canadians look like they are inbred from Poles and Brits, which is a very ugly race. The hottest people I've ever seen on earth are in Hungary and Nebraska (the guys anyway, the women are all fat). Another good mix is Black and Asian. You see a lot
of that in California. So up yours, you commie loving Canuck!
Demi D'Amatto
San Francisco, Kalifornia
IN AGREEMENT AT LAST
"The Bush war was a con, a fiction, merely a racket got up by the Bushitler and the neocons to impose a permanent security state on the nation in which your library books and non-local phone calls are monitored 24/7 in order to protect us from an enemy that doesn’t exist."
I never thought I'd agree with you on anything - but you actually got that one right!
Chris Leeder
TRUE GREATNESS
Re: King Juan Carlos of Spain reprimanding the child-king Hugo Chavez to shut up and stop interrupting all the adults - we had the opportunity in 1993 at St.Bonaventure University to have the good King speak as our commencement speaker. It was the biggest get in our small university's history. Our idiotic university president decided to stop the invitation because he didn't want to offend the Jewish people.
Wait for it . . . because a previous King and Queen of Spain in 1492 expelled the Jews from Spain.
I guess the fact that Juan Carlos was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing democracy to Spain - peacefully no less - simply can't stamp out the sins of other people's ancient past.
If these giants of liberty can't get the respect of college presidents and spoiled celebrities - we should make that a central piece of evidence that they have true greatness in them.
Scott Salvato
Valley Stream, New York
IT’S OK IF IT’S NO FUN
"Anyone know of any Sunni insurgents with a transvestite Jessica Simpson routine on the side?"
Not quite, but the official/cultural standard seems to be that sodomy is OK as long as you don't like it or your partner(s) too much ...
Brian Hall
GIULIANI JIVE
”Anyone know of any Sunni insurgents with a transvestite Jessica Simpson routine on the side?
Other than the occasional male suicide bomber who dresses in an abaya to avoid scrutiny from male American soldiers manning checkpoints, no. But, I do know one Republican Presidential contender and NRO cover boy who has a very good drag act,,,,
Chester Tapley
TORTURED BY TEDDY
Ted Kennedy claims he is opposed to torture, but he has been torturing America for over 40 years now. Based on all the damage he has inflicted on this country, I'd say torture works.
John Fagan
Lemoyne, Pennsylvania
NASTY DETAILS
Your pal who writes like a dream does not seem aware of the torture known as water boarding -Please explain all the nasty details to her
K Bridel
BRITAIN GROVELS
We've been honoured here in Blighty recently with a state visit from King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud. Her Majesty the Queen has devoted her life to her people by going through the motions on such occasions and is surely the finest example of a constitutional head of state anywhere.
King Abdullah is surely the finest example of a non constitutional head of a corrupt diseased dynasty of desert dwellers anywhere. The funniest thing about the whole ghastly charade of the visit was the Saudi assertion that the UK is not doing enough to combat Islamic terrorism. I love that. It's like telling a turkey it's not doing enough to celebrate Christmas. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas and neither, it seems, does our PM's favourite think tank Civitas which has just announced that we should move away from the cultural emphasis on Christmas and have equal regard for other religious holy days. Her Majesty might as well cut out the middle man have the Welsh Guards currently holding the keys to the Kingdom at the Tower of Londonistan hand them over to King Abdullah right now.
Adrian St-Clair BurkeCONRAD BLACK’S TRUE CHARACTER
This comment may be dated, but not for long.
By dint of chance I ran across Mark Steyn's comments in the Maclean's blog, regarding Conrad Black's true character. Good for Mr Steyn.
I first met Conrad Black in Saigon in 1970. He was 25 years old, the publisher of the Sherbrooke newspaper; I was just a little older, a freelance newspaper reporter from Alaska, trying to ferret out stories with local interest from a place where nobody wanted to be the last one to die. Conrad and I became friends by happenstance, over drinks at the Continental Palace, of Graham Greene fame, when I came into town from Quang Tri or Cam Lo to file stories for an inattentive audience. It was a hazardous calling on several levels. But here was this young Canadian who knew all sorts of things, and in considerable depth. He knew why Charlie Goodnight's life defined Texas, could tell you why Soviet aircraft were difficult for the North Vietnamese to fly, and which English kings were intelligent and which ones were stupid. That was impressive enough, but not nearly so impressive as his colorful and erudite political opinions. I grew up in the South at a time before television, when conversation was an art form. I appreciated such finely drawn commentaries. I don't know whether I agreed with them or not; it never came to mind.
Conrad abruptly left Saigon in the fall of that year, after the murder of Minister Pierre Laporte by Quebec terrorists. That was a more important story than Vietnam, if you happened to be the publisher of a Quebec newspaper. But years later, when I was Governor of Alaska (a Democrat, though not the kind they have in Massachusetts) during the Exxon Valdez spill, I got a letter from
Conrad inquiring whether I was the same Steve Cowper he used to drink with sixteen years before, in a place now called Ho Chi Minh City . Yup, I was. Would I be coming to London soon? Yup, I would be, on the way to look at the oil terminal in the Shetlands. Would I meet him for dinner? Wouldn't miss it for anything. Conrad wheeled up in an enormous Rolls and off we went to the Connaught or its equivalent. Had he come to Fairbanks, say to buy the Daily News-Miner, we would have driven my old pickup to somebody's house to cut up a haunch of moose on a big cable spool. Everybody would bring beer and a buck knife to eat with. You know what? He would have enjoyed it. Later I read that he had become a Lord, of which we had a severe shortage in Fairbanks. So what? He had class. He had a lot to contribute, and he did not exactly hide his light under a bushel basket. If he wanted to be a Lord, it was OK with me.
Then came the Hollinger meltdown. Being the chairman of a public company these days (a really small one), I know you have to watch everything you do or say, and maybe think, and have lawyers perched on your shoulder like buzzards looking for road kill. I can imagine what Conrad Black thought of that, but I'm not going to mention it lest it be quoted at his sentencing.
So I appreciate Mr Steyn's contrarian views. It's about time somebody stood up for this fundamentally good man. I didn't have time to follow his trial in detail, but I know a thing or two about federal prosecutions, and I know what that massive apparatus can do to a large sitting target, especially one with a reputation for arrogance, given a loosely worded criminal statute and a vengeful prosecutor. Well, Mr.Prosecutor, that wasn't arrogance. That was style.
Conrad's sentencing comes up next month. I don't know what will become of him, but this I can say with some confidence: they'll say he deserves it, but they'll be wrong. Whatever the result, I'm his friend for life. Even if I do eat moose meat in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Steve Cowper
BRING ON THE ATTORNEYS
13-year-old gets detention for hugging friends
Do you think the Mascoutah, Illinois Middle School student who was suspended for two days for hugging her friends good-bye has grounds for a law suit? I do. I find the Mascoutah school board's policy which bans public displays of affection on school grounds to be not only moronic, but blatantly racist. There are many ethnicities in the United States for which overt displays of affection between friends and family is a normal part of their culture. Isn't this similar to France's law which forbids students from wearing head scarves? The Mascoutah school board wouldn't be disparaging Latinos, would it? Perhaps a law suit would clarify things.
Mario Sanchez
Chicago, Illinois
NUMBER TWO FAN?
Seems just when I'm once again feeling comfy my with self-anointed status as Mark's No.1 fan, I read another piece by Jay Nordlinger...and my lofty illusions are shattered. I mean....when a "colleague" of Mark's - a man who knows Mark better than I EVER will - is such a fan, how can an outsider like me even compete. I hereby FORMALLY capitulate...but to Nordlinger ONLY. The rest o' yas are in for a fight still.
John Gross
Beloeil, Quebec
BLAIR FLAIR
We've been having some fun with your Dr. Weinberg over at Tim Blair's. Here's my entry.
Love your essays. Keep up the good fight.
Paco
STEYN IN BOSTON
Re: Outsourcing the future. Enjoyed meeting you last night (my comments/review) and enjoyed your lecture greatly. I was happy to have been able to introduce your work and thoughts to my wife and a friend. I wish you the best of luck and Godspeed.
Any thoughts on my thoughts, listed above, would be appreciated greatly, as would any linkage from your site.
Randall S. Bock, M. D.
Revere, Massachusetts
MY TWO CENTS
I also attended the lecture, it was excellent and hilarious. My two cents here.
"He's a cross between Jean Kirkpatrick and Mel Brooks"
Mary Beth (aka Miss Kelly)
Boston, Massachusetts
CONSERVATIVE ALONE
I had the pleasure of hearing you speak last night at Temple Emmanuel in Newton and of course you were great, funny and no doubt provocative for many in the Newton audience who rarely hear a conservative speak. I am a long time fan who marvels at your witty and fluid writing but most of all, your output.
I too am a blogger with two blogs: Business of Life and Legacy Matters
While I rarely write about politics except for posts about the decline of Western Civilization, on the occasion of the death of Paul Tibbets, I did post an amazing story by Charles McCarry, my favorite political and espionage writer, who, when he was hiking with his wife in the Japan Alps was invited to lunch to meet the head man of a Japanese village who had never met an American, but wanted to thank one.
Since I share your love of well-written obituaries especially those from the London Telegraph and often share excerpts on my Legacy Matters blog, I've just ordered Passing Parade to catch up on all the ones you've written that I've missed. My new favorite quote which could have been written by you is Money has replaced sex as a driving force, death has replaced sex as a taboo, and sex has replaced bridge as a social event for mixed foursomes, Reginald Perrin.
Thank you for all your hard work entertaining your many readers and my sympathies to your wife. With three little kids, she never gets to accompany you on all your jaunts.
Jill Fallon
LAST WORD
Mark, It was great to finally see you in person at your presentation in Newton this Wednesday evening. Too bad that we here in NH do not give you similar opportunities. Also thank you for answering my question about the 2008 election. My wife and I greatly enjoyed your observations and humor.
One more thing... I am sure that all those who send you emails that threaten to "do something with your bottom" have no idea that you could easily kick their ass. They all assume that you are a twerp similar to themselves. Not even close.
Jim Andrus
Bow, New Hampshire
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