Welcome to the Tuesday edition of The Mark Steyn Show, with another update from the Summer of Stupid, including Joe Biden at his rarest, Boris Johnson at his wettest, cocktail hour at the Politburo, a screen star self-silenced, the joys of looting (everything but the author's royalties), affordable castles, no corporal punishment for corporals, and Daddy Kinda Cool.
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The best part of this quarantine, equine, sh_t, is that we have dozens of hours of Mr. Steyn to listen to in the decades and centuries to follow. I tip my hat to you sir!
"Years of comfort have bread an awful, enervating ennui, and so made them hot for the frisson of revolution..."
"Enervating," "ennui," and "frisson" all in one succinct and biting summation of Wokeness. Classic Mark Steyn right there!!!
As well as Frenchness, the French believe in free speech - and are prepared to defend it - judging from the millions who protested in the wake of Charlie Hebdo.
And the cartoons are being republished as the murderous Mohammedans go to trial. #JeSuisCharlie.
https://www.steynonline.com/9975/the-ghosts-of-charlie-hebdo
... go *on* trial, that should be.
Douglas Murray: "I see that the BBC is back at its 'Prophet Mohammed' business when referring to the Charlie Hebdo affair. Because they always refer to the founder of Christianity as 'Jesus Christ, the Son of God' whenever he is referred to on the evening news."
The removal of monuments and statues is more than just the destruction of our nation's past. Plinths are one of the oldest platforms for expression and free speech that exists with the oldest may well be protesting in the streets. The left wants to control all platforms for speech and expression from the social media platforms, Hollywood, sports, news media, radio, and now protesting is being controlled. When someone like Trump uses "their" platform to send his message they call it being "political". What happened in Australia is essentially saying "You're not allowed to use our platform for change for yourself". They view these as "their platform" and only the woke are allowed to speak. Open debate becomes an echo chamber when they put up walls prohibiting what you can or can't say.
Yep.
Justin Trudeau will likely call an election following the throne speech on September 23. So there may be a prospect of positive change in Canada if the Conservatives take power. Long shot, but it has happened before.
Most of the news in Canada is American news via CBC and the Canadian networks. Fake News Regurgitated with a Canadian flavor. A Canadian election campaign, that may result in some real changes in the nature of Canadian policy and some new faces will be a welcome relief.
Dr. Leslyn Lewis, Michelle Rempel, and even the new Conservative leader Erin O'Toole will be fresh voices.
Mark Steyn on Tucker... welcome back!
That was such a nail biter the last couple months thinking Mark might've been kidnapped or holed up against his will in some Scottish fortress dungeon or wine cellar and it was his doppelgänger just checking in for the Corona opus shows. I must've been drifting off to The Prisoner of Windsor for a few weeks. I'm sure that's it. I finally had to go and get acrylics, something I never do. It's a weird sensation having instant fingernails again. Scratching mosquito itches was never so productive as well as peeling well stuck UPC codes off fruit not to mention the bandaid wrappers. Speaking of scratches! My grown son actually got cat scratch fever this week! I thought that was just the theme of a couple cat songs. He was walking across the lawn in front of his apartment when a friendly little kitty came up to say hello. He reached down to scratch its head and the cat lunged at him and scratched his arm up. He came down with a high fever aches and pains all over. I think he took something and eventually he was fine. Welcome back, Rudy, er, Mark.
The Hundred Years Ago show is loaded with foreshadowing; it's not just a fictional technique. Lots of cases of history not necessarily repeating itself, but certainly rhyming. I've come to expect the stories that begin "in the former Ottoman Empire..." as they always have a "Rest of the Story" punch line and that part of history intrigues me.
Diversity was the Ottoman's strength
...And managing their currency was not.
Dems are preparing for a Trump landslide victory by making our votes not mean anything through delays and legal battles. Votes only count when you're a Democrat and everyone else is a puppet of Putin. At least Putin didn't unleash the Wu Flu but then they may pin it on him as well.
Whose idea was it to hold a pandemic in an election year?
In an article on the increasing threat posed by China's "vast armed fishing militia", Jason Thomas notes how the CCP excels at plausible deniability:
~ "Plundering the resources of other economies and swarming into territorial waters are acts of aggression disguised as civilian activities and a cheaper alternative to conventional conflict for opponents of the US and its allies such as Australia. The future of conflict, as it always has been, will be based on the tactics of imaginative asymmetric warfare. The CCP's use of fishing mercenaries is a good use of imagination."
~ "The CCP assault is on all fronts: academe, media, critical infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, data, resources, intellectual property and now a virus. For the CCP there is no distinction between civilian and military. And none of it involved even throwing a rock, let alone a multi-million-dollar piece of military hardware."
~ "British security specialist Edward Lucas observed the predominant view of war in the West was that it "only occurs when formal or informal forces engage each other using kinetic force". Hard to believe we are still coming to terms with that concept." (The Australian - September 2, 2020.)
As Robert Bridges observed in the comments recently: "When is a war not a war? China unleashed biological warfare upon the world. The present course is the virus as a tool by Western pols to reshape the West into the functional image of the aggressor. We are taking casualties but its deck chair arranging time instead... many quietly happy that the CCP iceberg did its job."
Caught red-handed, yet China is getting away with murder. Meanwhile, Chairman Dan (Belt and Road, Victoria Division) is having pregnant mothers arrested for the crime of organising anti-lockdown protests on Facebook.
Kate I can't tell you how upset that video of the pregnant mom made me. Upset and angry. Shame on those disgusting, gutless cops. At some point a person of minimum character has to say no, not doing that. That they went along with "following orders" to arrest a pregnant mother in her PJs, when she also had a prenatal ultrasound to go to is reprehensible and disgusting and should explain to everyone with even half a brain how the Holocaust happened.
Laura, it's so disturbing and surreal that most people thought that video was staged, prior to official media confirmation of its authenticity. It's a "free" country, after all. Which is precisely why Dictator Dan wanted an extension of his "emergency powers" - into late 2021.
Yet most of the people he governs - under the world's hardest and longest lockdown outside Wuhan (to cover for his negligent mismanagement of overseas quarantine) - who think this is entirely ok: "It's the law".
Contrast with the Melbourne BLM event on June 6th, which breached restrictions: 10,000 people, and not a single arrest.
Hong Kong is looking freer than Victoria.
Wuhan is looking freer than most of the Western world.
Great post, K.
I was going to suggest that a coalition of nations from the free world invade Australia, overthrow the dictatorship and liberate it's people but then it dawned on me: The free world no longer exists because none of the countries that once made up the free world are still free.
~ Most warfare is asymmetric except long, bloody stalemates like the first 3/4 of WWI.
~ Starting to resemble modern Jihad, isn't it? I saw a headline today on one of the US Defense rags that China now has the world's largest navy...I didn't get to the details of how they were counting all the apples, oranges and bananas or if they've surpassed the number of "ships" in the US Army yet. What kind of businessman assaults his biggest customer? Seems from what I've been hearing in business news, if coronavirus is having the perverse side-effect of Americans saving at record rates, China's plot failed as cheap, non-necessities would be the first thing we quit buying.
~ I'd like to think we learned that lesson from how we economically isolated Japan in the run-up to WWII, but maybe not.
I don't know if "deck chair rearranging " is the right analogy. More likely, the Chinese tiger is getting ready to spring and the Democrat thinks he can run away to safety if he can just shoot the Republican in the kneecap with a small-caliber handgun first...(to mix a few metaphors and an old joke.)
The CCP has at least 350 naval vessels. We have less. We have more aircraft carriers than they have, but they've been working hard to develop an aircraft carrier destroying drone or something. Someone dropped the ball a lot time ago where the ccp is concerned
We don't need your invasion and there is no dictatorship.
We remain a free people.
Many talk but few know.
Saw the video too. They are making protests illegal for Conservatives. If you believe in free speech, the 2nd Amendment, protecting life in the womb, capitalism, protecting our nation's monuments and history, law and order, then you are a criminal. They want to control the narrative of what is allowed to be discussed in this country and in others. Mark is right when he said "We are becoming more like China" and if we don't stop this, we will have our own Tiananmen Square.
Thanks, S - the rest of the article is well worth reading. Also, good segments on Sky by Chris Kenny and Alan Jones re the VIC-stapo.
PS. Typo: "Yet most of the people he governs [*] think this is entirely ok: "It's the law".
*There was a stray "who" there.
Thanks... it's the thought that counts!
As they say, we're descended from convicts... and jailers. Many relish being the latter.
And among the prisoners, Stockholm syndrome is very prevalent. #DictatorDan #VicWankerCoppers
"Starting to resemble modern Jihad, isn't it?"
Indeed. And Rudy Giuliani was right about Ambassadors of Death boarding strategic flights out of Wuhan International in January.
Mark is so brilliant! I find myself wishing he were Press Secretary to the President. He'd be running circles around the msm. I miss him on Rush and Tucker. Is there some reason he's not there. My life has been particularly tumultuous lately, so I haven't had the chance to look at every offering on the Steyn Club.
Back during the democrat primaries kamala harris was the candidate the leftists were working hand over fist to promote to nominee. From a distance it looks like biden was chosen because kamala was not. If they can't get kamala in via the vote they'll get her in as biden's side kick.
No one should be surprised that NPR is promoting a 'woman/man' who's book extols the virtues of looting. NPR depends on looting the public purse on a regular basis for their very existence.
The crowd cheering the death of that poor Patriot Prayer man in Portland is giving a pass to the other side to see them the same way. If conservatives are just an enemy group, like NAZIs during WW II, nameless and worthy only of extermination by the morally superior leftists then the leftists will become the same thing to the regular Americans that they're targeting. Stay locked and loaded Patriots.
You got your wish, regarding Tucker!
Yes! :) Thank God Mark's home.
To be fair to him, Boris Johnson attempted a "literate Trump" moment in 2017 when, as Foreign Secretary, he visited the Shwedagon [Golden] Pagoda in Rangoon. He began quoting from "The Road to Mandalay" until promptly informed by the accompanying British Ambassador that this was "not appropriate".
Mark, I'm curious about the melody that starts at about 17:15 (after Lebanon). I was listening to my downloaded copy yesterday afternoon while driving home from the grandchildren's house. That tune sounds (to me)a lot like a 1970 tune "Yellow River." Of course, with only 12 notes to choose from, there's bound to be the occasional similarity. It also sounds like the Indians lining up along the ridge overlooking the wagon train.
Mark replies:
That's "In a Persian Market", Michael, composed by Albert Ketèlbey in 1920, a very popular piece of light music that had a second burst of life in the Forties as a big swinger for Larry Clinton and Billy May and the like.
And it is exactly the same melodic phrase as "Yellow River" - which is why "Yellow River" pops up five minutes before the end of the show. We're full of sly connections like that.
If memory serves, the Boston Pops did an orchestral version, late fifties or so.
Some fun stuff in todays show. I wonder if Robert Harron had upset a 1920's member of the Rodham family?
The eminently sensible suggestion by "Razors" Guinness for controlling the prison population is worthy of reappraisal.
Finally as a great fan of the gorgeous voice of Mary Hopkin, who was unfortunate to be in one of the better Eurovisions up against SteynOnline favourite Dana - an equally good singer with a better song, I will try to forget what I just heard.
There is a wonderful scene in The Highwaymen (Netflix) where Ranger Manny Gault (Woody Harrelson) describes a Texas Ranger raid led by his partner Captain Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) to curb cross border looting, killings, and rapes perpetrated by Mexican bandits. Look it up on YouTube (The Highwaymen manos arribas). It seems as if America can use some Frank Hamer style law officers to halt the nightly rioting, looting, arson, beatings, and murders in Democrat-run cities that have abjectly failed to protect the lives, liberty, and property of normal citizens. Outside these leftist enclaves this is the primary duty that gives government its legitimacy.
Mark,
A very minor correction regarding the sinking of S-5 and rescue of the crew off Cape Henelopen in September of 1920. Cape Henelopen is off the coast of southern Delaware and on Delaware Bay which is the mouth of the Delaware River, and not coastally near Pennsylvania. Strictly speaking, Pennsylvania's "coast" is along the Delaware River or on Lake Erie. I don't live southern Delaware for nuthin!
Enjoyed the show tremendously as usual. Many thumbs up!
Mark replies:
I blush, Garry. I should have caught that, but I was thousands of miles from Pennsylvania and not properly oriented.
This Vicky Osterweil person that NPR is promoting... didn't she used to be Willie Osterweil?
Yes, Osterweil is willie-less now.
Cymbal bash
And a rim shot...
Well played, Robert. Well played.
I'd about given up on seeing you on the telly with Tucker or hearing you on Rush. I think I know what's been keeping you away...you are perfecting your man bun or perhaps dreadlocks?
Mark was right when he said that the violence done to statuary would soon be visited upon people. Criminals do dry runs all the time; serial killers escalate from committing heinous acts on animals to preying on humans. As they get a taste for it, if they don't get caught or punished, they escalate their depravity.
So, what's next for the Anifa/BLM axis? How many buildings can you burn, how many Toshibas can you l**t, before the thrill is gone? I won't give them any ideas, as if they need any, but shooting an unarmed man wearing the wrong hat, is a turn for the worse.
I remember the voter intimidation case of 2008, when the New Black Panthers stationed operatives outside polling a station in Philadelphia. Self-styled King Samir Shabazz brandished a billy club and shouted racial slurs at the "crackers". Although the Bush Justice Department filed charges in the waning days of its time in office (not in power, as Mark reminds us, merely in office), the Obama Justice Department dismissed them entirely. After objections and inquiries, an exasperated Eric Holder shot back: "When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia--which was inappropriate, certainly that . . . to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people." Well. Sorry we brought the matter up.
I've followed King Samir over the years. He turned up just a few months later screaming at passersby on the streets: "You want freedom? You're gonna have to kill some crackers! You're gonna have to kill some of their babies!... I hate white people - all of them! Every last iota of a cracker, I hate 'em." A few years later, on the radio: "We gonna need preachers going into the cracker churches throwing hand grenades on early Sunday morning when the cracker got his hands up, 'please white Jesus!' Well we gonna throw a bomb in that God damn church, burn up the cracker, burn up the cracker Jesus, and burn up some cracker white supremacy." There have followed a few weapons arrests and, finally, in 2018, this: "The white man is the devil. Let's get right down to business. ... [A]ny negro coon lips and dares say all white people aren't bad should be sent to a psychiatric hospital and diagnosed with slavery syndrome or you should do the inevitable to yourself." Out: words. In: actions.
Sounds like he was a King slightly ahead of his time.
Sometimes we need a reminder of what this crowd of haters running amok in America really are about and how they think about their perceived enemies. So thanks Josh for driving this point home by focusing on King Samir.
BLM is full of these toxic racists who fully share Samir's viewpoints and our national media not only gives them a free pass but actively supports their movement as do the social media giants, the entertainment industry, our educational system and of course the Democratic Party. Not to worry though the mighty Republican Party will save the country. Yeah, things are really looking up in America 2020.
With you and J., R. These are early days yet, unfortunately.
Enjoyed the show: many thanks.
Not that anybody much cares, Boris Johnson was never going to disappoint me. That doesn't make me the kind of acolyte he'd prefer. Still, that may soon be the only kind he's left with.
There were some signs in half-ass French such as Defund La Police. I suspect many of the demonstrators were aboriginals from nearby reserves for whom French is a third language if at all.
The nearby Boer War Memorial was left standing probably because the demonstrators have no idea what the Boer War is.
So yesterday Trudeau finally got around to saying he is 'deeply disappointed' by the vandalism and today, like Biden, is blaming the right for division in the country.
Thanks for the clarification. I should've noted the college connection Mark mentioned because I have several friends who went to McGill who don't speak a word of French.
On the sex toys: So in Quebec sex toys in English are illegal and right across the border Kinder Eggs are illegal so I wish to combine the two and create the most illicit product conceived by man: A Kinder Egg containing a sex toy with the writing in English.
Can't. Stop. Laughing.
I have a question concerning something of which Mark is quite knowledgeable: immigration and birthright citizenship. I've been following some of the legal arguments surrounding whether Kamala Harris is allowed to become Vice President or even President, and it seems to me that on a strictly legal basis, the issue is not clear. Such questions were raised with McCain, Cruz, Obama and even Goldwater (!), but in at least the first 3 cases the candidates were definitely qualified by virtue of the fact that at least one parent was a US citizen. It matters not where any of them were born.
Although Harris was born in the US, the issue of her natural-born citizenship is not clear. Her parents were from Jamaica and India and Harris spent much of her formative years in Canada. Her parents were legal temporary residents, but were they under the jurisdiction of the US, as required by the 14th Amendment? I do not think this has ever been settled either in the courts or by legislation. Puerto Ricans and Native Americans only achieved citizenship via Congressional legislation. The courts have ruled that permanent residents are under the jurisdiction of the US, but I do not think that this is necessarily the case for tourists, students, or temporary visa holders. It is definitely not the case for foreign diplomats.
Having said all this, for practical political purposes, this is not really an issue. I have a feeling that having a US passport in her possession will be more than 9/10ths of the law. However, I see an interesting opportunity for the Republicans. They could draft a "Kamala Harris Citizenship" bill in the Senate and offer an olive branch to the Dems by making children born on US soil to some temporary visa holder parents "natural born citizens". It would also be cute to include the Trojan Horse of stating explicitly that tourists and undocumented aliens are not under US jurisdiction.
I suspect that this would be immediately rejected by the Dems, but it could make them squirm. At the very least, it would show that immigration and citizenship law desperately need clarification.
Harris is 100% a US citizen under US law, US Constitution & US court decisions. If this is not clear, it is because the issue has been made fuzzy by opponents of "anchor babies." There is no doubt that anchor babies are US citizens, nor can there be unless the 14th Amendment is changed. Whether is is a good idea is defferent from whether the law supports it. This argument has been around for over 30 years, and still is wrong. Its a waste of time to wish the law was different.
Citizenship Clause:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
Although in United States v. Wong Kim Ark it was ruled that permanent residents qualified for birthright citizenship, I don't think things are quite as clear cut as you imply for temporary or illegal residents. I agree that BCIS has acted that it is settled, but that's administrative fiat, not law. Are there other rulings on the 14th, or any additional federal laws. If things were so clear, why was it necessary to pass the Puerto Rico citizenship act?
I heard those arguments 35 years ago, and they failed then, too. Aside from the legal point that "subject to the jurisdiction of" means you can be arrested for violation of US law (so, e.g., diplomats and invading armies are excluded), there is zero chance that the practice of the past 150 years on this issue is going to change. Please move on to something useful.
You are correct that the idea of anchor babies is not something ever decided by the SCOTUS, nor intended by the 14th Amendment. I'll let Ann Coulter, an actual lawyer make the case: " The sole and exclusive purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to stop Democrats from nullifying the entire Civil War by continuing to deny citizenship rights to newly freed slaves.... In a widely ridiculed 1898 case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark , the Supreme Court ruled that the children born to legal immigrants in the United States were citizens. As the dissent, legal commentators, and the Yale Law Journal pointed out at the time, the majority opinion had based its ruling on British feudal law, forgetting America had pretty forcefully rejected Britain's ideas about a king. As ridiculous as it was for the Wong Kim Ark Court to grant citizenship to the children of legal immigrants, that's how the law stood for eighty-four years. And then, out of the blue, during the Reagan administration, Justice Brennan slipped a footnote into a 5–4 decision in Plyler v. Doe asserting that 'no plausible distinction' could be drawn 'between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.' I can think of a few 'plausible distinctions.' For one, there's the lawful versus unlawful part. Also, legal immigrants, in theory, have been looked over by the country's immigration officials and approved for permanent residency.". Left out of the analysis I quoted was Elk v. Wilkins (1884) where SCOTUS denied that a Native American was a citizen because his allegiance was to his tribe. This situation was not reversed by Congress until it passed the American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Also, footnotes in SCOTUS ruling are not binding as law like the ruling itself. But who knows how the matter would be decided in our time where partisan corruption always seems to "discover" that the Constitution's white space perpetually comes down on the side of what leftists want.
I am always amazed that there are wineries surviving in the Bekaa Valley. The whole of Lebanon is only the size of a postage stamp, anyway, and those wine-making areas are right next to the training grounds of hezbollah.
I bought a bottle or two of Chateau Musar once, just out of curiosity. It was okay, but I never bought any more. Now, I buy Israeli wine when I can.
I think that part of the problem with Poland's border with Lithuania was that Józef Piłsudski was born in Vilnius (Wilno in Polish) and that he was determined to incorporate Vilnius into newly independent Poland. According to Norman Davies, the premier historian of Poland in the English language, Polish-speakers probably did outnumber Lithuanian-speakers in Vilnius - and that was good enough for Piłsudski.
Why preach a "coordinated pushback?" It is already over.