Welcome to the eleventh day of Christmastide, and another episode of my ongoing audio adaptation of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. This weekend Venezuela has excited another round of vigorous sniping between the pros and cons of splendid isolation versus "globohomo" "neoconnery". Yet the fatal misconception of the 2001 Bush-Cheney "war on terror" is slightly subtler than that: as I have said for a sod-bollocking decade-and-a-half, its fatal flaw was to prioritise a twenty-year fight for some of the most worthless sod on the planet (Helmand province, the Sunni Triangle) and surrender without any fight at all some of the most valuable real estate on earth (London, Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Stockholm, even the now thoroughly sod-bollocked Minneapolis).
After yesterday's column, a commenter commented that he was glad to see me "back on the news beat". Sorry. But I don't do "the news beat". Because it's ninety-nine per cent bollocks. Nothing interests me less, including ice-dancing and professional darts. True, I did a bit of "news" a long time ago, when I passed the late Nineties sloughing off Clinton fellatio gags and Al Gore inventing-the-Internet jokes. What can I say? It's easy money. Too easy. I gave up returning Fox News's calls after being invited on to do shtick about Andrew - or was it Chris? - Cuomo's dog. In Britain for the last months of 2025, the biggest story on "the news beat", even as the country is dying before your eyes, was what Nigel Farage may or may not have said back when he was in the Remove of Dulwich College in 1968, or 1953, or 1937 or whenever it was. In America there is less mainstream "news" about the Somali annexation of Minnesota than about the alleged Maga split prompted by Ben's disagreement with Megyn over Candace. "News" is what you were watching while you lost your country and your entire sodding civilisation.
Which brings us to today's episode of our ongoing audio adaptation of my ancient bestseller:
In December 2002, I was asked to take part in a symposium on Europe and began with the observation that 'I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark.' At the time, this was taken by the left as confirmation of my descent into insanity: Europe was still regarded as a bastion of progress. By 2006, it was the right who were querying the thesis, arguing that the Bush Doctrine is a crock: How can liberty save the Muslim world when Muslims are jeopardizing liberty in Europe?
Well, they're not contradictory positions.... About six months after 9/11, I went on a grand tour of the Continent's Muslim ghettoes, and then flew on to the Middle East. The Muslims I met in Europe were, almost to a man, more alienated and angrier than the ones back in Araby. Don't take my word for it. It was a Hamburg cell that pulled off 9/11, a British subject who was the shoebomber, a London School of Economics graduate who had Daniel Pearl executed...
That's true. It's seeding Islam throughout the west that has made it an existential threat. Islam in Hoogivsastan is a problem for Hoogivsastan but not, generally, for the civilised world.
The Continent isn't multicultural so much as bicultural. You have hitherto homogeneous Scandinavian societies whose cities have become forty per cent Muslim in the space of a generation... Bicultural societies are among the least stable in the world, especially once it's no longer quite clear who's the majority and who's the minority – a situation that much of Europe is fast approaching, as you can see by visiting any French, Austrian, Belgian or Dutch maternity ward.
Fortunately for those easily distracted by the bollocks of "news", this is the time of year when you don't have to go hang around the maternity ward, because the newspapers in the early days of January actually have a smidgeonette of real news. That's to say, they're full of heartwarming stories about the first babies of 2026. So who's the first newborn in, say, Malmö, Sweden? Ingrid? Björn? Britt?
Er, no - Hafsa; the daughter of Atiq and Nadja Sahill:
Ah, lovely. How about Glasgow?
Glasgow's first baby of the year was born at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital. Parents Mr and Mrs Kausar welcomed their 7lb 12oz little girl at 12.27am, but haven't decided on a name yet.
But, given that Kausar is an Arab Muslim moniker, I don't think the wee bonnie bairn is gonna be Isla or Morag.
Or western France...
That would be Asmaa Bouza with her New Year bébé Yasmine.
Or County Meath - a part of Ireland I know well and where members of my own family live. Meet the new Meath:
The first New Year baby born in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda was Baby Mustafa, born to proud mum, Ifrah Mir from Navan.
That photo is Europe's future: Nine women and the only one with a baby is the Muslima. But they're all born in hospitals named after Our Lady of Lourdes or the Royal Family. As I tried to explain in America Alone, I'm not in the speculative projections game: who's in your maternity ward right now is not a prediction - it's who you'll be a generation hence.
As I've said, we are now in the last fifteen years (if that) of anything reecognisable as "the western world". But it's not part of "the news beat", so Andrew Cuomo's pooch is more important.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Eighteen of America Alone simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
~If you prefer more fictional fancies of a weekend, there are spy thrillers, comedy classics, tales of horror and historical romance and much more, all over at our Tales for Our Time home page. If you've a friend who might be partial to our more than six dozen cracking capers, we have a special Gift Membership that, aside from audio capers, also includes video poetry, live music and more. And I'll be doing a live-performance Tale for Our Time at sea on the next Mark Steyn Cruise - sailing aboard the Queen Mary 2.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to America Alone but to over seventy-five cracking audio adventures in Tales for Our Time. Please join me next weekend for Part Nineteen of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
