UPDATE! Thanks to everyone who tuned in. You can hear Tuesday's show here.
Today, Tuesday, I'll be back behind the Golden EIB Microphone for three hours of substitute-host-level Excellence In Broadcasting on America's Number One radio show beginning at 12 noon Eastern/9am Pacific. I hope you'll dial us up either via the iHeart Radio app or on one of over 600 stations across the fruited plain, such as our old friends at WNTK New Hampshire, where you can listen to the full show from anywhere on the planet right here.
The St Louis stand-off - with Mr and Mrs McCloskey facing down the mob - will likely feature, as will the alleged Russian bounty on American heads in Afghanistan, and its fallout in Washington. We may also get some Supreme Court decisions - oh, and then there's the supposedly #NeverTrump "Lincoln Project" run by scaredypants wanker Rick Wilson and Kellyanne Conway's weird vicious husband, which has now moved on from targeting Trump to targeting Republican senators. So we seem set for another fast-moving news day, and, in Rush's absence, we will do our best to stay on top of it.
~We had a busy weekend at SteynOnline, bookended by the Friday and Monday editions of The Mark Steyn Show. For our Saturday movie date, Kathy Shaidle picked a David Niven classic A Matter of Life and Death, and our Sunday song selection doubled down on "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" now that Disney has no further need of it. Our marquee presentation was my latest Tale for Our Time - C M Kornbluth's dystopian novella The Marching Morons. Click for Part One, Part Two and Part Three - or for a good old binge-listen go here. If you've been tied up looting and statue-toppling in recent days, I hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing.
The concluding episode of The Marching Morons airs tonight, a few hours after Rush.
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Hey Mark, listening to your guest host show today for Rush, near to last bit of hour 3 the indigenous language thing came up. Libs would be doing the exact thing that killed off American Indian progress prior to Westernization of America, they all didn't speak the same language. Unlike the Roman guy that the Britons want to topple he could walk from one end of Italy to the other and order a Slurpee at any 7 11 and the proprietor would know exactly what he wanted because they all spoke the same language. So if they want their liberal world to die quickly speak and unusable language, unless the rest of the world wants to speak Algonquin or whichever one they pick it won't do them much good. I can see it now, the new "present" Liberal Constitution written in Alqonquin.
Why don't the Republicans come out and grow a spine as Laura brought to mind last week, and state where they stand on a police -free country and give the country some clarity and reassurance that they're not just going to continually move Left as the Democrats move Left just to stay "in the conversation," just to stay relevant! This is what's wrong, the Republicans don't have anything else to offer us but that they want to keep their power by reacting like little ants and scramble to whatever shocking new proposal the Democrats have. We the People are fed up!
How can any politician ever expect any voters to support them when the politicians can't seem to get behind the people when they need them most?
The citizens are in great distress; some reasons, like a global virus nobody seems to fully understand, may be out of their control, may even be out of the average politician's control, But, when we see a couple on the front steps of their home needing to brandish firearms to keep an irrational mob away with nobody coming to their defense and one head of some think tank calling to beat their brains in, please someone tell me why any citizen should feel compelled to rush to the polls this November to vote for anyone!
I would offer the McCloskey's some sincere advice. To the Mrs., don't wave your pistol around or point it in any direction except the ground. You can get in a lot of trouble just for brandishing a pistol. To Mr., have a spare magazine tucked into your pants to show you mean business. I've seen guards all over the world with only the magazine in their rifle and it makes me suspect that you didn't take the time to fill the magazine before you came out to defend your house.
Don't wear a pastel pink shirt. I am not saying you need camo, I know you were in a hurry. A subdued earth tone would have been nice, just not pink. Most importantly, do not go barefoot. Stepping on hot, expended brass will leave a mark and dancing will undermine your fierce facade.
To be honest the only time I listen to Rush's show is when you-know-who is subbing. Nothing against Rush. But there's no voice like Mark's in the world today. Having said that, Mark's breathless urging to push back against mob rule by the rest of us is all for naught. Unless I quit my job, sell my home and live off my savings I can't do it. The mob is not populated with middle aged, gray-haired crackers who worry day in and day out about paying their bills. They are populated largely with young white chicks who have never even so much paid an electric bill or picked up a restaurant check in their empty lives. Someone else, probably parents, provide shelter, clothing, food, college tuition and transportation for them. They certainly don't own the businesses they are burning to the ground. They are not the ones being cancelled. How feasible would it be to organize the grown ups to go marching after sundown night after night for weeks on end demanding whatever it is WE want while egging on the police to fire off pepper spray and tear gas? Even if we did that the media would either not cover it or would spin it to make it look like a resurgence of the Nazi Brown Shirts. Voting won't do it. There's so much fraud in our election system it would make Venezuela blush. I don't have a solution. It is the March of the Morons and there doesn't seem to be anything can be done about it. Mainly because the political class perceives value in caving. And why wouldn't they? Look at what happens to people who don't.
Robert,
I understand what you're saying. What are we doing? A little, admittedly but... We check each of the companies we have ordered from on their websites, the "news" tab or somewhere else. Are they on board with BLM and apologizing for their past "transgressions"? If so, we unsubscribe and let them know we won't be ordering from them again - after 40 years we've made our last LL Bean purchase. Ditto a small company called Pact. We'll look elsewhere - Lands' End? J. Crew? Sierra Trading?- we'll check them out. We'll keep searching - Egard watches, for instance, support both men and Country. We'll pay more for some local company who doesn't have a woke Board of Directors.
And another idea - we often are too busy to get involved in local politics. But we can let them know what we think. Our local city is ready to support BLM and yet our police department is one of the best. Let your city councilors know your thoughts - email, phone, and in person. The leftist emote at city council meetings while the rest of us are relaxing after a day of work. Then the council gives in to the mob.
I agree on the voting fraud and if they win the presidency and senate, our Republic is gone. It can get depressing.
If you take the time to read about the origins of the slave trade you will see that its an ancient business, going back to the Vikings and picked up in the 1400's by the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. The Brits and French were late to the game, but made up for lost time in that lucrative trade. By the Revolutionary war much of the North were abolitionists but it took more than 80 years to finally outlaw the practice...at great human cost. Americans did that, not Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, French or British. Unfortunately, there's still slavery and a lot of it comes across our southern border in women and children as involuntary sex workers. I don't think that BLM is aware of this history (oops, bad word, history).
Janet, none of that matters. Like Mark says this is a bad faith movement. They have a goal and that's all that matters. They don't want to debate things like this. They want you and me and everyone else to drop dead. That's all. They are not interested in explanations. They will not concede anything. They are moving the ball farther and farther down the field. Sorry. I wish reason was a tool that society can use to turn this around. But it isn't.
Janet, the slave trade, or whatever we want to call it, predates Christian and now non-Christian Europe, the ancient Greeks, for all their philosophy, mathematics, epics in drama and comedy were a slave holding cluster of City States, the Spartans prob best known for enslaving an entire neighboring people (heolots) purely to free then males from any occupation other than prep for war, in Athens, that bastion of democracy, at the height of its Golden era, c 410bc, for every 4 people you saw 3 were owned by the one, a free male who owned his female relatives, including his wife, his children, slaves of both sexes, the 'barbarians' as the Greeks and then Romans referred to all peoples outside their cocoon of civilized society - which was pretty much all of the Germanic and Celtic tribes, were scorned and degraded for their lack of a written language, but they made for excellent slaves - as Roman dominated vast sections of Europe, North Africa, all the way to north India and even the wastelands of what we call today Great (?) Britain every tribe Roman absorbed - cough - if peacefully - became the Tripp's of the legions - if not peacefully, or tricked into surrendering at Legion gates (not uncommon) the women and children became slaves and the men and boys either killed, if deemed too aggressive to use in the mines or aboard galleys, the stupidity of Rome was not simply deceiving these Germanic tribes but basing their entire society on slavery with the top layer of Senators (ahem like our Congress) who were perpetually unable to see past their own greed to the enemy they created - Christianity did not condone slavery but then the first centuries of Christians were essentially 'underground' - even with Constantine's act of tolerance - mentioned today by Mark, slavery was so well indoctrinated throughout the world that it would take centuries for Christian efforts to denounce and remove it - not that anyone knows history beyond this morning's coffee
Sad, but true. And the crisis is compounded by the generational shift taking place: hyper-Woke Gen Zs are now working and voting (when they're not preoccupied with the Burn-Loot-Murder schedule).
About the self-defending St. Louis couple: Their bad!
If the Left wins in November 2020. Leftists must disarm civilians for the same reasons as they took the grain from peasants in Russia and China. Millions die, so what? Small change to an elite.
My view: It's not the marching morons with degrees who are the problem. It is the elected and appointed representatives who allow it all.
Where are the Catholic bishops tearing their cassocks in front of legislatures over insults offered to statues erected to enable the veneration of saints --- so as to enable the adoption of their way of life?
No! The bishops are blathering about "social justice," betraying the saints' legacy.
At one time, certainly in my part of the world, no one would have dared deface a statue of Mary, mother of Jesus.
Do you know why? Not because the police would come. Yes, they probably would. But a crew of Irish Catholic bricklayers might get there first... That was the big worry.
Civilization is much easier to destroy than create.
"My view: It's not the marching morons with degrees who are the problem. It is the elected and appointed representatives who allow it all."
In which case, it is ultimately the fault of the people foolish enough to have voted them into power.And even those who didn't vote for them, but shrug their shoulders and hope things will magically improve. As Hannah Arendt famously put it, The only thing necessary for evil to triumph, is for good people to do nothing.
The creation of America in the eyes of the Left, is tantamount to the Palestinian naqba, their labeling of the creation of Israel, as Catastrophe Day.
As for the McCloskeys, if a wealthy and presumably connected couple like them call 911 and get no response, Joe Average is truly screwed, as far as relying on the cavalry coming to the rescue against the marauders.
Re: your comment about the U.S. becoming like Latin America, where we're all on our own, it's actually worse...the police aren't there to help you against the criminals, but are likely there to arrest you after you've helped yourself. Combined with Leftist prosecutors to charge you to the max, to placate the enraged mobs.
Very troubling times indeed.
"...if a wealthy and presumably connected couple like them call 911 and get no response, Joe Average is truly screwed...."
They probably thought they'd found themselves in the middle of an old Charles Bronson movie.
Mark, your mention of train songs reminded me that I have, among my father's tools, a cross-pein hammer that has the initials A.,T. & S.F. Ry., (standing for Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway) stamped on the head, and acquired in the days when he'd been liaised by General Electric to Union Pacific to install and test the new diesel turbine engines built by G.E.
John Roberts is the Alfred E. Newman of Supreme Court justices. He makes no pretense whatever of having arrived at his decisions through careful examination of the laws or the Constitution. What a contemptible man.
Agreed, Justice Roberts does appear to have that "what, me worry?" smirk in his photographs. It appears he votes on the side that assures him of the least worry about his personal and family safety. Look what happened to Justice Scalia. But I digress into conspiracy theory. The most likely explanation is that he has an unshakeable commitment to flakiness.
Nicholas, I am convinced that his only operating principle is, "How will this make me look?" to those who represent the current Zeitgeist.