Welcome to the Wednesday edition of The Mark Steyn Show, in which Mark attends to the state of play in the US "election" and in particular whether the globalists can get a twofer out of it. And, on this Veterans Day and Remembrance Day, he also looks back to Armistice Day one hundred years ago and to two songs from two wars. Also: a blistering evisceration of polite and passive American "conservatives" from an enraged non-American.
Click above to listen.
For that small brave band who prefer Steyn in visual formats, he'll be joining Tucker Carlson live across America tonight at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. On the other hand, if you prefer him in non-visual formats, he'll be back right here on Friday for another Clubland Q&A live around the planet.
If you're a Mark Steyn Club member and you'd like to submit a question for Mark to address on his next show, please leave it in the comments below. Do stay on topic - and no URLS, please, as they wreak havoc with our page formatting.
For Steyn Club members interested in using their personal podcast players to listen to The Mark Steyn Show or Tales for Our Time, we have an RSS feed here (and instructions here).
If you prefer to read your radio shows, Steyn Club members can find the transcripts here.
If you're just catching on to these audio diversions, we've done what we did with Mark's video shows and archived them in a Netflix-style tile format that makes it easy to catch up with ones you've missed. You'll find the audio Steyn Show home page here.
The Mark Steyn Show and Tales for Our Time are made with the support of members of The Mark Steyn Club. As Mark always says, Club membership isn't for everyone, but it if you're interested you can find more information here.
Comment on this item (members only)
Submission of reader comments is restricted to Mark Steyn Club members only. If you are not yet a member, please click here to join. If you are already a member, please log in here:
Member Login
83 Member Comments
My grandmother's older brothers fought in the Canadian military during WWII. Olin and Merrill McNeil came home without blemish their step mother, my great grandmother, having prayed for them in earnest throughout the war. But, when they came home they admitted that they had lost their faith. My Great grand mother was heartbroken. Their father was a Methodist minister. I honestly think the first world war was the beginning of the decline of western civilization. Olin married but never had children. Merrill never married. God rest their souls.
Here's my question. Whenever people say the virus wasn't Trump's fault, I say 'well that's not entirely accurate.' Like the military guy said to the President in Independence Day about Area 51.... In my view the virus was unleashed on us by the ChiComms for upsetting their apple cart, that his renegotiating the cushy deals they had previously, so angered Chairman Xi that he arranged for all this ruckus to punish Trump. And it worked. Tanked the record-setting economy, got him blamed for all the deaths and infections. Without that he'd have easily sailed to re-election in a landslide, now he's reduced to staking his future on lawsuits and recounts. They'll get their guy who they've invested so much in via Hunter's dealings and so forth. And on and on.
I have not seen or heard this theory anywhere else. My question is, how crazy am I to believe this? Stark raving lunatic mad, or just regular garden-variety insane...
Drew, various "conspiracy theories" about the ChiComs holding a pandemic to influence the US election have been circulating since before the first case was detected in the US, in late January: The nature of this biological attack has the benefit of plausible deniability, such that - with the help of the Democrat-Media Complex - the responsibility for domestic deaths and economic damage was sheeted home to Trump.
Also, the WEF/ Big Tech "Great Reset" aligns with China's global ambitions. There are other beneficiaries, too, in terms of the impact of the so-called Plandemic. There's an excellent article by Paul Collits (a MS Club member) on Convergent Opportunism at The Freedoms Project - November 1st.
PS. Don't worry, you're just garden-variety insane like the rest of us.
Dear Mark —
Lovely tribute to the fallen. May I recommend another song by a Canadian?
If Loreena McKennit's "Breaking of the Sword" leaves you with a dry eye, then patriotism died there long ago.
Give it a listen. Would love to here your insights.
My mistake. McKennitt is spelled with two t's.
I see that RCP has called PA for Harris, putting her over the 270 needed for electoral college victory, as if.
The Presidential election must be cancelled. It is null and void. Not that I don't like the result, but because the process was duly unlawful and cannot be allowed to stand, just as the thief does not get to keep the fruits of his crime. It is stolen goods. As I said a couple weeks ago, no need for voter enthusiasm when antifa counts the vote, which is pretty much what I saw coming and how it turned out.
Their keeping 'enemies lists?' Ha. Don't make me laugh. They voted for lawlessness, anarchy and chaos, and they're going to get it, good and hard. Those defunded police are not going to take their desperate calls, nor would I lift a finger to help them in their distress. As somebody else here said, I have two words for them and they aren't 'thank you.'
Thank you for your Remembrance Day tribute Mark. My dad was a WWII veteran, RCAF ex-POW. In July 1944 at 19years, he parachuted from a burning Lancaster over France and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, a better fate than the three crew in the plane who perished that night. He endured the forced march from Poland to Berlin in winter '45. Six feet tall, he weighed less than 120 pounds at war's end. For fifty years post-war, he attended Remembrance Day ceremonies but would not march in the parade or wear his medals: he said the day was to honour his fallen comrades, not himself. Over time Remembrance Day seemed to evolve into also recognizing those who served, and in old age he finally participated in the parade and wore his medals in public. While genuinely moved that his years of service were remembered, he always felt the day belonged to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
A few months after my dad's death in 2012, a memorial was held for veterans who had died that year. One speaker was an NDP MP - Joe Comartin - who used what should have been a poignant, thoughtful, non-partisan memorial to take cheap shots at then PM Stephen Harper. As he left, I told him I thought it was highly inappropriate that he would politicize a memorial for recently deceased veterans; he glared, turned his back to me and walked away. In more recent years in my hometown the parade has included police & firefighters, as if anyone in uniform is an appropriate substitute for our war veterans. How I miss my dad and the values of his generation.
Mark replies:
Your dad had a tough war. Thank you for sharing that. And I am not in the least bit surprised by Mr Comartin's behaviour.
The last point about anyone in uniform is interesting.
When events, groups, memberships should be dedicated and specific, they are (I'm sure there is a better word) "diluted". Boy Scouts, Whites, Men, Christians - all must be "inclusive" and contextualized.
But any sliced and diced demographic that can be leveraged for grievance and conflict must be elevated to revered status (and Capitalized).
"Diluted" is a good word Perry. No disrespect was intended towards police & firefighters. A date of recognition could be established for police & firefighters - but not November 11th. With the once large number of World War I and II vets now very small, there's certainly a place for current military & reservists to represent those who came before them. Maybe the inclusion of schoolchildren who researched someone in the military who died for our freedom and represent his/her memory - just asking for some connection to the original meaning of the day.
Bartholomew Chiaroscuro continued:
"You are mad for expecting electoral fraud to be investigated and for not immediately accepting it as non-existing, trivial or irrelevant.
You were mad for voting with your head and your heart as your conscience dictated and for expecting a free and fair election in which you have a say.
Everything now is designed to convince you, the American voter, and you, the audience of the entire world, that it is mad not to simply lie down, give up, and accept a verdict no matter how crooked, tainted, untrue and soiled that verdict is. It is the great gaslighting that follows the great crime. You have been beaten. Now, you are mad if you remember the low blows and the weights in the other man's gloves.
Everything now is designed to make you repeat a lie. Not to convince you. They don't need to convince you. They just need your submission to the lie. Biden is President. Biden is President. Biden is President. Repeat it, bitch. It's the abuser saying, 'tell me you love me', after he's put bruises all over his wife. That's how the media treat you. They want you too broken to speak or support truth. Too broken to even recognise the law and the due process, how things should actually be. It's madness to resist. You must forget and submit.
You are mad unless you think Biden (that product of the system steeped in 47 years of sleaze and filth, of compromised ethics, relentless graft, nepotism, swamp dwelling corruption, soulless advancement and buried sins) is a clean broom set to sweep the Oval Office free of Trump's boorish taint. The message is clear. Trump was a squatter who has ruined the place. The real owner is back.
But the people still know who showed them respect. They know, and they will remember, whatever happens. The people had a champion. If anything, if he is slain by deceit at the hands of the media, it will only make the populist idea stronger in their hearts. Hate remembers as well as love. The media don't know what they sow for their own future."
Sorry for such a long post, but I thought this was truly poetically brilliant, and a salve to all of us waking up to evermore disappointment these days. So well said. I'm heartened to know there are others, around the globe even, who see what I see so clearly.
Thank you, Mark for reading Bartholomew Chiaroscuro's comment on the show. I am the antipodean/American in question who merely passed his words on to Kate. I wish he were already a club member, and perhaps he will in fact, decide to join us.
Another gem:
So, there are firm grounds for legal challenge, and I think Trump will continue with this, despite enormous pressure to concede. He's not a guy who quits, although frankly, I wouldn't even blame him, given the hate and malice he's already endured for four years. How anyone keeps going and keeps fighting facing what he faces, I don't know. It's heroic. It's everything indomitable and human and noble, and it matters far more than crude words or crass presentation. The man is a sacred flame in a thug's body.
Tucker Carlson said that the big crowds in the small towns loved him because he was the only who loved them, listened to them, visited them, praised them, joked with them, noticed them with respect rather than disdain. He was right. Populism is not another word for fascism. It's another word for love. Love of a specific people in a specific place. Love of those who really are powerless, as opposed to the powerful pressure groups and vested interests that call themselves marginalised whilst receiving every handout and every genuflection you can imagine. It is love of the people.
Those crowds didn't think he was perfect. They knew that he was prickly and vain, boastful and bombastic, cruel to his enemies and blunt with his friends. They knew these faults just as well as the liberals and Trump haters who obsessed on them. But they could see the rest. They saw the man who sent money to strangers who had suffered to help them out, the man who wasn't afraid of anyone, the man who laid a clumsy but sincere hand on the shoulder of a bereaved soldier, the man who knew that the opinion of the waiter or the sergeant was often more accurate than that of the chef or the general.
The stage we are in now is the gaslighting. This is the stage in which you are told that you are mad.
You are mad for remembering the good policies and the improved economy. You are mad for knowing that there is still a legal challenge and a proper process to complete. You are mad for knowing that it is the Supreme Court or the Electoral College that confirms a winner, not the media and not foreign leaders.
Great post! "The stage we are in now is the gaslighting." This is the most important point to remember as we move forward. EVERYTHING coming out of the Dems, the Media and Big Tech is part of a psychological operation (PsyOp) meant to demoralize and neutralize the opposition. To think that the results in various states requires investigation has been declared crimethink (as defined in the novel 1984). On Twitter and on YouTube any time a person posts about the election little messages are appended to the posts indicating the "proper" context for the situation. The best thing any freedom loving, Trump supporting person can do is pay these messages no mind! Al Gore had the right to contest in 2000. Jill Stein had the right to contest in 2016. Donald Trump has the right to contest in 2020. Period!
But there's no way to recount the votes, due to the lawless way they were collected and counted, shutting out the Republicans from witnessing. For all we know the ballots voting for Trump have been destroyed. Just 6 key democrat-run, corrupt, hate-filled loser cities to decide the fate of the free world? Nope.
I'm not the least bit demoralized, thank you very much, and I plan to never be so. In fact I'm just getting started. This #Resist thing looks like it's going to be fun. LOL
The Jim Radford song and background story put me to tears Mark. So much we have lost for all we enjoy. Thank you.
Lovely and moving tribute to Veterans Day and "the war to end all wars". And the song from Jim Radford made me cry, although I'm feeling very weepy these days anyway. I actually liked the tune he sung, as it pairs well with a poem and reminded me of "Dublin in the Rare Old Times" and also other similar Irish songs.
Aly, Agree about the Irish feel to the song. I said to my wife, "He sounds Irish." I even looked him up and found out he was from Hull and a folk-singer. A very moving song and reminiscent of "Dublin.... ", one of our favorites.
On this Remembrance Day, perhaps I can add the sound of a dog not barking. You have not had a "last call" in the last two or three of your audio programs -- no notable musical voices stilled, no famous names falling to COVID, despite all the media hullabaloo over record cases. That's good news, I suppose. In my own little world, I have a radio show with a Last Call modelled on yours, and this Friday I'll follow your example twice, copping from your "Feline Groovy" album, since we buried 18-year-old Skittles this week, a cat with at least 9 lives. He once disappeared for six months at age 3, came back with multiple war wounds, no explanation, but never left again. I'll play the first four songs of your CD plus four more, including "Some Cats Know," and "All the Cats Join In" (Peggy Lee). R.I.P. Sergeant Skittles of the Forest Foreign Legion.
Mark, I work in retail and the next 6 weeks is when I make a significant portion of my yearly income and I am certain that in a week King Andrew of NY is going to impose a lockdown and screw me out of that income. I just want to say thank you for tearing that useless repulsive potentate slug (The one American politician who should have to answer for his criminal and negligent actions during this pandemic before a judge and jury) to ribbons on Tucker. Thank you (and Tucker) for standing up for people like me (and my co workers) when it feels like far too few people have the guts to do so.
that fellows comments widening the context of where we are in time
the rest just memories from my parents
another ditto from ww1
thank you again
My tears won't stop over the Shores of Normandy song. I think part of the welling of emotion is due to my deflation over the election events of the last week.
A very moving Remembrance Day tribute, and a reminder of the words of Mark's fellow Canadian, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, over a century ago: "Take up our quarrel with the foe..."
https://www.steynonline.com/8986/if-ye-break-faith-with-us-who-die
PS. Appreciate Mark's Mailbox reading of the comment by Bartholomew Chiaroscuro (via two degrees of Anglosphere separation). If there's a silver lining to recent events, it's seeing the many new names here at SteynOnline.
PPS. Along with Mark's reading of "In Flanders Fields", another must-see for anyone who hasn't is Jon Voight's 2 minute video message on Twitter, posted yesterday: "We all know the truth.... Let us fight this fight as if it is our last fight on Earth."
I have a story to tell you, K. - and anybody else who reads this, of course. This may be news to you or it may be old hat: I'd like your view either way. More importantly, I'd like your view as to whether this is a common tale or simply a one-off instance initiated in a toxic micro-environment. My beloved has a job with the civil service. (That's not her preference, but even before the 'flu came around, and was used as an excuse to lay waste to the private sector, the civil service was employing more white-collar workers that the entire private sector taken together where we live. That's not my news: merely to say that my beloved isn't really a freeloader at heart.)
She returned from work yesterday coloured a startling pink, so angry was she that she had been summoned to one of her department's regular compulsory-attendance functions in working time to hear a - well, I'll come to that. Before being cut loose on the generous taxpayer-funded snacks, the staff was required to stand to attention while a short paean to Australians who fell in diverse wars around the globe was read. This was followed, my beloved has assured me, with a rather more extensive apology to Australia's aboriginal peoples for a long list of itemised wrongs which had been done to them and concluded with an apology of the wrongs done to black peoples around the world and praise for "movements" (implicitly, albeit not explicitly Black Lives Matter) for their pursuit of "long-denied justice". My beloved formed the impression that the text was read from an official document.
Is this happening throughout the country? If it is, I'm over Poppy day for keeps. I know I needn't explain why, but let me say that I'm not a whole-hearted flag-waver at the best of times and I'm wholeheartedly and definitely not coprophagous. If the Australian civil service has engaged in the commission of wrongs to black people in the past, it has in my opinion no right to demand self-abasement from employees who were not complicit. My beloved has read more Australian history than most native Australians have, in my confident opinion, and she's not even sure that many of the specified wrongs ever were committed prior to her arrival here and she doubts that some of the others could possibly have occurred on a widespread scale. The concatenation of racial self-abasement with what used to be Poppy day reeks.
"Concatenation"? I mean "conflation". This senility lark gets me down some days. Sorry, K.
Yes, and whether it's Woke self-abasement or more benign "dilution" - such as remembering civilian casualties or the fallen of other nations - I agree with DMReaume, above "... just asking for some connection to the original meaning of the day".
You're always sensible, K. Thanks: makes for a better-balanced response.
Wonderful show Mark, very moving, especially the parts on the Unknown Soldier, or Warrior as the British call him. At the ceremony to inter him at Westminster Abbey in 1920, approximately 100 women were in attendance who had each lost their husband and all their sons during the war. God knows how any of those women were able to attend such an event, given the scale of their loss, but they were made of sterner stuff in those days I think. The last part of the inscription on the Warrior's tomb reads: "They buried him among the kings because he had done good toward God and toward his house." A beautiful sentiment and one that could not be placed on a memorial nowadays alas.
Speaking of kings, I must concur with Mark's condemnation of the ex-royal Harry Mountbatten-Windsor and his actress wife Rachel Meghan Markle. Harry was apparently denied the chance to have some proxy lay a personal wreath for him on Remembrance Day in Britain, I didn't think members of the royal family laid personal wreaths anyway, and therefore he and his wife were compelled to stage a photoshoot at a cemetery in LA, complete with po-faced hand holding and a new designer outfit for Meghan. Who are these people and have they no shame? I thought Harry and wife had been forced to leave the royal family because they craved privacy and the press, plus William and Kate, were being mean to Meghan? What happened to all that? I guess now they have the Netflix cash they can just cock a snook to everyone and openly court publicity, even on Remembrance Day. I have a lot of respect for the Queen but her strong sense of duty has not been passed down to a number of her family members. I just hope she can hang on for a few more years yet, I'm not ready for King Charles and Queen Camilla.
"Lost their husbands and all of their sons".
The Normandy song didn't make me cry, but Richard Van Emden's "Meeting the Enemy" did. At one point he recounted the tale of a British soldier in a German trench who encountered the bodies of two German soldiers, embracing in death. From their faces he could tell... they were father and son.
I could read no further and never finished the book, which I recommend wholeheartedly nonetheless.
Your mention of Belgium at the end of the war reminded me of a time when I happened to be traveling through Belgium with a number of fellow Army officers on official business and we spent an evening at a pub near Bastogne. We were eating and drinking in the pub in uniform when some local men approached us and inquired as to what we were doing in their little town. We explained that we were from a unit in Western Germany and just passing through. I wasn't sure where their inquiries were headed but they quickly informed us that we were their guests because they were so thrilled to meet American soldiers given the sacrifices that American soldiers had made in liberating Belgium. The Belgian men were boys during WWII and they told us stories about what it was like when the Americans came through back then. Quite a bit of beer was consumed, many laughs were had and it turned into a long evening.
Here's the point. Besides it being a fun evening it was also the first time that I truly understood what the sacrifices of WW II veterans meant to people who had to live under the rule of Nazi Germany. It was something you couldn't learn from a textbook or teacher on the subject. I'm not sure what's taught in schools today about WWII. As with many things I'm sure that the deep meaning of what happened then is not adequately conveyed. Perhaps that's why I truly appreciate the stories you've shared on the subject, including the one shared as part of today's somber Last Call. It seems to me that given all the sacrifices that have been made in the name of freedom both Veteran's Day and Memorial Day should be bigger, and quite different events, than they are in America today. But who's got room for that on the calendar with the ever expanding list of "pride" and "history" months that seek to honor all but those who put their lives on the line for everyone's pride and history? And so it goes.
Another great Veteran's Day show. I particularly liked the stories of the Unknown Soldiers. Thank You.
The Shores of Normandy sung by its author brought tears to me as I'm sure it did to others. Thank you for sharing and Remembering.
Here in Britain, the establishment has moved on, and those of us who aren't buying what the Dems are selling are slowly being forced to accept the lie.
It's the same in Australia, including the "conservative" Murdoch press. It's not journalism: it's media activism and propaganda.
The various news organisations are highly irresponsible, as they are setting the scene for more leftist violence.
Well said, K.
Because I'm that kind of person, I have never distinguished between journalism and media activism and propaganda, but that leads me straight to the same bottom line: the various news organisations are highly irresponsible, as they set the scene for more violence. At present, trendy leftism is the flavour du jour, so it is leftist violence which they incite. When Jack the ripper was doing his number in Whitechapel, it was plain old populist violence. When Czar Nicholas was presiding over a collapsing empire, it was revolutionary violence. Journalists have long behaved as if the public has wanted them to make history, and the public has supplied the gullible mobs to do it.
Nobody thought that "Pravda" really was a purveyor of the whole, unsullied eponymous truth. Happily, people are now becoming aware that the same applies to reputable organs like the New York Times and the BBC. In fact, using the term "reputable" for those organs has the flavour of a joke nowadays. It is not yet a joke universally enjoyed, but there is a little progress. Should I be ascribing what I and many others have long known to President Trump? Hell, if it took him to spread the news about the news, I'm all for giving him some credit.
This one left me in tears...good change from blazing anger.
And sad all the more for the mess we've made of things since then. God grant their service then, and ALL their service since, is not in vain.
Also appreciated observations from shy, anonymous club member from out of town.
I missed a "please" or two. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Mark, I think I hear you stifling laughter at that comment. It's brillian. I'm killing myself laughing. I've listened to that bit five times already. Thanks for sharing. Sharing is caring.
I laughed at the stifled laugh too, Laura!
Still catching up on last weeks Links, and looking forward to the new batch.
Help me, Obi-Mark Steynobi, you're my only hope.
[Trump to the Dems] "If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." (If only!)
"If you want to congratulate Biden, please F-off."
I'M DYING.
Thanks.
I like to think of myself as a tough old curmudgeon who lost the ability to cry a few decades back. But that song, on this day, proved that brag to be a lie. Just a little over 75 years on, and the posterity of that generation is on the cusp of ignorantly squandering the freedom for which those men sacrificed their lives in order to provide.
I've known for a long time that all glory is fleeting. I guess liberty is too.
I'm a younger curmudgeon and that song makes me weep. You're in good company.
A World Undone by G. J. Meyer is a very readable, gripping one-volume history of World War I.
Imagine Okinawa, from the Swiss border to the North Sea, for FOUR years. And that was just the Western Front.
WWI was Armageddon. It squashed Post-millennial optimism and theology like a bug.
And yet G. J. Meyer gives his book the most perfect ending imaginable for a book on WWI, with a recap of what happened to various of the major players after the war ended. He concludes by describing Churchill thusly: "From 1929 on he was consigned to what he called "the political wilderness," a has-been issuing warnings about the rearmament of Nazi Germany that few were prepared to take seriously. But that is another story."
Fortunately (in my humble opinion), Jim Radford has a lot of competition in the "youngest veteran" category:
1) US Navy Seaman Calvin Graham was 12 (twelve for those in Rio Linda..) when he earned a Bronze Star with Valor device and Purple Heart for his actions at the Battle of Santa Cruz and the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942 in World War II. (See TV Movie "Too Young the Hero")
2) My friend US Navy Sonarman Daniel Slade enlisted on June 4, 1942 at the tender age of 15 with a false birth certificate that his father had obtained from his pals at the Detroit Fire Department. In November 1942, the now 16 year old Slade drove a landing craft ashore during "Operation Torch" in Africa and then fought his way across the Pacific on a destroyer to Iwo Jima. At the ripe age of 76 and despite being 40 years my senior, he drank me under the table while we were belting out "This Land is Your Land" on my acoustic guitar. He lived to 85 (and didn't vote democrat.)
Where do we find such men...
One indication of fraud is that few voters will vote only for one office and leave the rest of the ballot blank, while ballot stuffers don't have time to fill out a complete ballot. In Georgia, with TWO hotly contested Senate races, along with a House race on every voter's ballot, you would expect few solitary ballots.
Keeping that in mind, here is a tweet from Sarah Huckabee:
In Georgia, ballots where the voter ONLY voted for President:
• Trump: 818
• Biden: 95,801
Ballots where the voter voted for President and at least one other race:
• Trump: 2,456,915
• Biden: 2,376,081
This is making me crazy. It's a veritable *confetti* of irregularities, impossibilities, implausibilities, and flat-out criminalities. Useless unless it's all brought together.
There has been a constant drum beat that since Blacks constitute only 13% of the population that they should be awarded 8 votes to use versus one for whites and other minorities. That is "equity" folks. They may well have achieved this in Georgia... and the other swing cities.
I have no basis for arguing with the conclusion which you draw, C., but if I despised both political alternatives equally and wished to support neither, but particularly wanted one of the candidates to come to grief, I think I might submit a blank ballot except for a vote against the candidate I particularly loathed - which unfortunately must perforce take the form of a vote for his rival. That is not to say for a moment that I'm a typical case.
Mark,
Thank you, thank you and more thank yous for a excellent and and wonderful show in this depressing time. You covered so many bases so well that it was a privilege to listen to it.
Mark is the one guy who never lies to me. Weird that others can't managev
Thank you so much, Mark. I hadn't expected anything today after your stint on Rush, what a bonus!
Mark replies:
Thank you, Diane. My pleasure.
A question for tomorrow:
It seems to me that the desire to burn down the past that we are now living through stems in part from disinterest in the future on the part of boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Millenials, and whatever we are calling the new kids (Gen Tens?). Do you think this disinterest is fed by the demographic death spiral? The fewer kids you have, the fewer grandkids, so the less you care about the world you leave behind for them.
I think it all ties into the demise of religion and Christianity in general. To most younger people there is no hereafter, no existence after this world so why care about a future because "In the long run we are all dead"? Many of my friends celebrate that they don't have the responsibility of having kids and seeing women and couples with a pram containing a small dog instead of a baby is a far too common and depressing sight. This also makes their substitute faith the Climate Cult even more bizarre: Even if they create a climate that is an Edenic state there will be nobody left to enjoy it.
I was just at the Veterans Day celebration in Woodstock VT. It was a bit sad. The speeches were filled with references to freedom while covered with a mask.
The music on today's show is lovely. I particularly like Jim Radford's "The Shores of Normandy" which brings a tear to my eye for its beauty and poignancy. May he rest in peace.
Wasn't that something? One of the most achingly beautiful things I've ever heard. And to think he was fifteen years old on that day. Unbelievable. Men like Radford were made of stronger stuff than I, that's for sure. RIP indeed.
an episode of Gilligan's Island did a spin once on the Harrigan song, in one of their dream sequences... G, I, double-L, I, G, A, N spells Gilligan!
I have not had a chance to listen yet but thank you to Mark and the other club members who've recognized Veterans Day 2020. My best wishes to all the veterans and their family members here at the Mark Steyn Club. I served in the Army during the Clinton years and it turned out that my base in Germany was chosen as the site for President Clinton to give a speech on the need to send U.S. peacekeeping troops to Bosnia. Prior to Bill's arrival Hillary (for some reason) showed up with pop singer Sheryl Crow in tow. Hillary wasn't necessarily popular with the troops but Ms. Crow was and thus I had my first realization of the culture's role in politics. Over the years Mark has helped me to cultivate that understanding through his books and commentary. So thanks to you Mark as well.
As far as I know, it was legal for Jim Radford to be sent into a war-zone with the Royal Navy. I've an idea that there was also an equally young USN rating who performed heroics in the aftermath of the pre-D-day Operation Tiger disaster.
My father was on the same beach as Jim Radford. He barely ever even hinted as to his wartime experiences, but he did once mention, out of the blue, how young an army was. He was all of twenty-three on D-day, but well aware that he was considered ancient by the men he commanded
Regarding the Canadian artillery, I believe a great-uncle of mine fought for them, but in the Other War.
One more question. I will probably be spending some time overseas if I survive this winter (always a roll of the dice, I suppose). What are your thoughts on Mitch McConnell, Defender of the Republic, taking stewardship of the free republic from a deposed Donald Trump after this travesty of an election plays out? Already talking to the professionals about surviving a Biden administration, but what are the chances of returning to smoking ruins in early 2022?
Thank you for the lovely memorial today. I am about to call the last remaining elderly veteran in our family and wish her a happy birthday and thank her for her service and caring for me when I was young and dangerous. Her husband and his brother did their best to keep me from mischief when I was too young to know better...both gone now and both veterans as well.
"What are the chances of returning to smoking ruins in early 2022?" I truly hope not. Faced with the fall of the Soviet Empire with its numerous near brushes with creating WWIII (Cuban Missile, NATO exercise under Reagan).. the Soviets chose to save the world from a last grasp for Communist "victory". Are the Dems and GOPe types that humane?
If worst comes to worst, the question is really what is built from the smoking ruins? Liberty or tyranny?
The president was a bull in the china shop of US government. The arrogant dimwits running the china shop were understandably horrified by the not so predictable results. I only wish he had gored more of them before they pulled him down. I hope he fights this election to the last, and strokes out more leftists on the way. One thing is certain, I will not unify with a criminal and a traitor, or those who enable Biden. It would be poetic justice for the Left to find out what real resistance looks like. I will, however, donate to a political party for the first time since Dole, if something particularly Trumpian comes along.
Loved the show and loved the submission from the MS member, Bartholomew, which really fired me up to stand up for the necessity for free and fair elections without which we have nothing to live for, nothing to die for, nothing to anticipate, nothing to strive for and nothing to be joyous about. A big fat nothing at all, just space holders. If there was something that could be done to help the cause I wish it be made known or a someone to mobilize the ground forces and say what is the next move. Someone courageous to run towards the chaos and confront it. I guess we still have a fighting Trump on our side for a few more months. God Bless the defenders of the free world. What remains of it.
Yes! I want to know what *I* can actually do that matters. My contribution is too small to be consequential on its own, and I don't want to waste it spitting into the wind.
Good discussion thread here, Fran... to be continued!
War is hell, Kate, but internal war where you watch those closest
to oneself start shutting you down the minute you open your mouth to speak is an especially wretched kind as well.
So hard to imagine. My dad said the first war was the worst. Grandad , so thin and coughing.
As a kid, I remember line after line of black on white marble.
Beautiful Kings Park, Perth
Les Roses de Picardie was the song of the French Communist Party for a time. Yves Montand who sang it was a Communist for a while until he renounced Stalinism.
I once went to a Russian restaurant in Montreal and asked them to play the song as my husband is from Beauvais in Picardy. They were affronted as they were anti Communist until I explained why I wanted the song.
So sad not to be able to go to a Remembrance Day ceremony. Trudeau has announced he is giving 20 million dollars to help Legions across Canada as they are going broke without their various fundraisers. Better than nothing I suppose.
He once famously said in reply to a soldier who lost his leg in Afghanistan why the government was fighting veterans in court: "Because they are asking for more than we are able to give right now," And he then gave millions away for overseas causes and trending charities.
And that leg was probably more than the soldier thought he could give. But wow. The millions we give away to foreign countries puzzled me even as a teenager. Now it just makes me angry.
"Post election crap", You called it, sir. Senators are so proud they embarrassed McCabe four years later, but heaven forbid they could defend the president from elected corruption they have winked at since my kin (real Irishmen) perfected it at Tammany Hall. At least most of kin were fairly honest, serious Irishmen who learned to survive North Dakota winters because the English and the French didn't want them in Canada.
I always found the word "shenanigans" sort of amusing, especially when my folks applied the term to my youthful activities, but now that shenanigans means "end of the republic" it's not so amusing.
Just a fine show yesterday, sir. Just watch your blood pressure. God bless.
God bless the veterans. past and future.
I have been wondering what comes next in America. I think it's time for the Trump supporters to follow the example of the Yellow Vest protesters in France. Block the roads, blockade government offices, make a racket in front of every lying TV crew until the stink from this election can be ignored no more.
My God what a heartbreakingly beautiful song by Jim Radford. Thanks for sharing, Mark. Happy Veterans Day and Remembrance Day everyone.
Mark, thank you for the very moving account of the honoring of the Unknowns. Where can I view in full the painting you attached to this post?
God bless Jim Radford and all his fellow-soldiers. I wrote this in a comment on the June 6, 1944 post last year: "God bless them all. God grant them peace, and a home among the Righteous Warriors, never again savaged by the dreams that men of war take to their deaths."
Mark replies:
The painting, Paul, is by a hugely popular artist of the day, Frank Salisbury, and done by Royal Command. I believe it's hanging in Buckingham Palace.
Have they removed all the sharp utensils from the Fox News cafeteria?
(Whether Cavuto qualifies as a sharp object, remains a topic for discussion..)
Where can I see the clip of Mark on Fox and Friends?
Mark replies:
You're missing the point, Tari. As I said on the show, the subjects were of no interest to me, so I declined their invitation.
Ohhh. Ha! I'm one of that brave band but I guess I was a little too eager this time, wasn't I? I would have enjoyed it, except to witness what appears to be the sinking ship that is Fox(?) Thanks anyway for all the Mark Steyn wit, wisdom, and entertainment!
Mark's very funny, but slightly off color and somewhat out of character comments regarding Fox And Friends provided some interesting insight into his state of mind in the wake of the ongoing vote counting debacle.
Right... Good for him for declining. I'd love for the Fox & Friends audience to hear him, but we don't want to make him crazy either.
May I say a word on behalf of the mega-firm Jones Day? I thought you were a bit quick to attribute misconduct to the firm based on an anonymously sourced propaganda article from the NYT. To be sure, the Times nomenklatura wants all of us to think the President can't rely even on his own lawyers, but that's a far cry from the story being accurate. All else being equal, I'm less inclined to think something true if it appeared in the Times and is unpleasant for our (re-elected) President.
Mark replies:
Jones Day are representing National Review in the Mann vs Steyn case, and their lead lawyer, Carvin, is, alas, a complete tosspot. I recommend bargepoles when you have truck with them.
Just what I needed this week and on this day—indeed this hour—in particular: a good cry. RIP, Mr. Radford. Share a joke and cadge a smoke with your old mates. Here's a Lucifer for your fag.
With you, Josh.
The moment you segued into Shananigan I knew what was coming. The quisling uk establishment led by the vile bbc is about to rediscover their fawning adulation of America, a love so strong they completely forgot about it for 4 years of the most Pro-UK President in anybody's lifetime.
No-one over here was ever in any doubt that the remainers (morphing into re-joiners once necessary) would not give up and if Irish â˜˜ï¸ Joe has anything to do with it they've finally got the weapon they needed. Boris will fold like a deck of cards, something he's got down to a fine art now, and in all probability breath a sigh of relief as his Brexit persona was never anything more than a means towards an end. His end of course, not the country he was elected to lead.
Well said, J.