Abie's Non-Irish Rose

SteynPost #20
September 5, 2017

https://www.steynonline.com/8083/abie-non-irish-rose

In this brand new SteynPost, Mark takes as his starting point a recent bit of Dutch municipal advertising and then explores some of the internal contradictions of multiculturalism. Click below to watch:

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18 Reader Comments

Katie van Schaijik • Sep 7, 2017 at 16:23

Speaking of Bella and Dutch sexual expression:The city nearest my husband's tiny North Brabant village has a large statue (or something) in honor of the birth control pill ornamenting its train station.
It's disconcerting.

Tony Allwright • Sep 6, 2017 at 07:03

Would be nice if you would incorporate under each comment a thumbs-up, thumbs-down facility or some such.

Tony Allwright • Sep 6, 2017 at 06:06

Your title, "Abie's Non-Irish Rose", is very confusing for anyone here in Ireland.

Here, Abie's Non-Irish Rose sounds just like any other lovely contestant of Irish heritage — such as the Donegal Rose, the Ohio Rose, the Limerick Rose, the Hong Kong Rose et al, albeit one who has had to pull out at short notice — in the fiercely-contended annual, international, kitschy competition to find the Rose of Tralee.

The requirement is that you can unearth an Irish granny somewhere, you show up looking nice-but-not-sexy, undergo an embarrassing on-stage interview and perform a "turn", ie a song or a magic trick or a dance or cooking an omelette (yes, really) or some other such demonstration of public skill.

The winner is decided by a small panel of local celebrities whose terms of reference and methods of reaching their conclusion are subject to a strict vow of omerta. No-one has a clue how to win, least of all the aspiring Roses.

This year's festival — amazingly the 58th — concluded only last month with the Offaly Rose, Jennifer Byrne, receiving winner's sash from last year's victor (victoria?) Maggie McEldowney, the Chicago Rose.
https://www.roseoftralee.ie/

As is traditional, the new Rose of Tralee was then serenaded by heartthrob Derek Ryan singing — of course — "The Rose of Tralee", which is the whole inspiration for the event.

Now THERE's a song, rich with material, to which, Mark, you could give your legendary weekly treatment one of these days.

As a footnote, your members may not be aware that Offaly is a county in Ireland. A claim to fame is that it produced the Taoiseach (prime minister) before last, Brian Cowan, a bruiser whose nickname was Biffo. Biffo stands for Big Ignorant F***er From Offaly.

David Sharp • Sep 6, 2017 at 05:22

In the 1980's wife and I would occasionally dump the kids with her mum and fly across the north sea to Amsterdam for the weekend. A schoolfriend of hers married a Dutch guy who had a business near the Damrak and after visiting them we did all the usual tourists bits including visiting the red light district near to the Oude Kirk. One Friday evening the Salvation Army band was playing outside the church and a lot of the "ladies" stood outside of their businesses singing along in Dutch to the hymns. Haven't been there for a long time, wife's school friend's husband closed his business because the Amsterdam tolerance of soft drugs led to hard drugs and he was fed up with daytime thefts and nighttime break ins. Amsterdam is another of many European cities I used to enjoy visiting but now not so much.

Barbara Heigl • Sep 5, 2017 at 23:09

So, will the statue of the prosititue outlast the church, or will the 800 year old church live to see another century? Or will a mosque replace them both in one fell swoop?

Roy Dobson

Barbara Heigl • Sep 6, 2017 at 14:21

As all the European 'Neros' are fiddling with their multiculturalism, the countdown has already started. The efficiency with which the Muslim men turned up when Mark was trying to initiate a friendly conversation as he mentioned in this post indicates how well organised they already are. They are just waiting for the 'numbers' all over Europe and there will be a synchronised uprising. It will be an easy win for the Muslims because, whilst the leaders of the European countries struggle with how to deal with the problem in today's terms, the Muslims are only focused on getting revenge for being driven out of Europe after the Crusades.

Sol Cranfill • Sep 5, 2017 at 21:59

Fascinating

Carl • Sep 5, 2017 at 19:19

Watched the Steynpost and the first half of Idiocracy on the train ride home today (it's odd how I entertain myself on the commute). Maybe it's the light beer talking but I'm seeing some connections. Did two world wars kill off so much of the best stock that they left a population more susceptible to creating/allowing/accepting the madness comrade Steyn describes? Guess that theory does not work so well east of the Elbe

Doug Lauder • Sep 5, 2017 at 16:00

A penetrating presentation of civilization rot , as a fall breeze tickles the leaves and a Brook babels in the backgound. Tip of cap to production team. The European psyche obvious to all but themselves. Mark at his best in long form chat . A half hour special on the right platform. Are you watching, Fox ?

Laura Rosen Cohen • Sep 5, 2017 at 14:27

Understatement of the Year Award goes to Mark Steyn in describing how rapey Europe is, and the little discussed phenomenon of the hordes "Muslim gangs all over Europe who don't quite understand, such as they are, European courtship rituals".

As much of a downer as it is, I agree with Mark that Europe will abandon the Religion of Sexual Expression/Gratification for the ROP. It is already happening. And some of the bravest people in Europe are the from within the LGBT community, especially ex-Muslims: https://twitter.com/exmuslimtv/status/905113761207513088?refsrc=email&s=11

It is certainly also true that Europe-as represented by that advertisement-has chosen the hijab-wearers versus the kippah-wearers. You can't really have both, for example: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/234976

And of course Germany is a lost cause. They made their choice to murder "their" Jews, and replace them with a community of equal opportunity Jew-haters. Now they are not "just" sacrificing their remaining or returned Jews, but also their own women and children-also very much like the Nazis did at the start of their murderous campaigns. Disabled German children were, of course, the first victims of Nazi murders. When a society turns a blind eye to the murder of "its" Jews, nothing good follows. Child sacrifice and complete civilizational suicide is really only a stone's throw away.

https://www.thelocal.de/20170904/police-criticized-for-reaction-to-brutal-rape-of-jogger-in-leipzig

And Mark's point about the poolside throat slitting pantomime-I suspect the message was both that if you dare chat up a Muslim woman, you're taking your life in your hands, and if she speaks to an infidel jovially-that fate would await her as well.

Alas, it's so very difficult to discuss the glories of multiculturalism when your head is separated from your neck. As Theo Van Gogh learned, no-we actually cannot talk about this and that's precisely what the Europeans desire.

PK33 • Sep 5, 2017 at 13:43

I'm in Germany on business for two weeks. One down one to go. Many more hijabs and niqabs in Munchen/Munich compared to my last time here, about five years ago. Most women wearing them are pushing strollers with one or two babies and a toddler besides. Often a man is walking along, the husband I presume. Obviously neither adult is working a day job. Also incongruous, those same men dressed in the latest fashions, women fully covered in clothing appropriate for desert sandstorm.

PK33 • Sep 5, 2017 at 13:35

Great post Mark. Appreciate the sartorial nod to the Netherlands with the orange tie.

P. Gao • Sep 5, 2017 at 13:15

So true! The progressive culture amazingly manages to make sex dreary and empty by taking the life out of it. Sex is at its core for making new life. The progressives make it about self-imposed barrenness, sterility and death with a lot of cleaning required up afterward. If it requires a mop, disinfectant and trash cans, then it's just another chore. It becomes useless, worse - an actually profoundly negative effect on the person's psyche. Of course progressive left manages to make everything it touches dreary and empty - education, art, science... In this context it's not actual Christianity that is being confronted, but materialistic pagan resurgence - the return of the old shrine prostitutes and ritualized debauchery that has always been common throughout human history - what humans always do when left to their own grubby devices. A core commitment to something multi-definitionally vague like 'celebrate diversity' evaporates instantly when it's 'submit or die.' With no sense of an eternal existence or greater purpose than moment-to-moment physical gratification, one clings desperately to hold on to this short, brutish one, as if a life without meaning and soul is worth clinging to, so 'submit' will be common. The wild card is how many people are already laying low, already invisible in their daily avoiding of the the progressive culture that always pretends to be the majority by its domination of the media. The population that hasn't built their houses on sand, not counted in all these cynical calculations.

Matthew McWilliams

P. Gao • Sep 5, 2017 at 17:11

Hi Gao,

Another excellent post. We have a saying in America; you can't beat something with nothing. Eventually, a culture based on physical gratification is a big nothing. Such cultures lack a sense of transcendence, without which they inevitably fall into a sense of ennui, which is where your average Dutchman appears to be. It is inevitable because the body becomes desensitized to physical stimulation when access to it is unrestricted. With nothing to fall back on people simply become bored. I also believe that your average Islamist lacks a sense of transcendence since their brand of Islam seems to be based on temporal domination rather than a sense of a higher purpose. Even their conception of eternal reward smacks of Earthly indulgence. What they have on your average European is that they have not yet reached that level of sexual license that leads to the cultural downfall. For this reason alone they are now ascendant. However, I think any Islamic domination of Europe will be short lived since they too will eventually fall into the same cultural ennui as Europeans.

P. Gao

Matthew McWilliams • Sep 5, 2017 at 19:56

Dear M.McW.
Cheers, and off again to add to your thoughts.
Trying to say this well so it's clear, but my thinking and writing get tangled sometimes. The apparent conflict is ostensibly western vs eastern. But the fallacy in the set-up is that the progressive hedonists are the loud example/voice of 'western civilization.' In the big scheme of things around the world, the overwhelming majority of people no matter what culture are repulsed by an anything-goes libertine lifestyle. Most people want that romance, the marriage and the family. Because it's nice and social and not lonely. Wrinkled Elders don't need botox because their wrinkles are proof of long, important experience; they become 'honored' and 'wise' and babies are wanted to carry on the family line and besides they're cute and their too cuteness in everything makes even the most stern and important people laugh and do silly things like make goofy faces just to make a wee baby smile. That makes everyone smile. The Netherlands has a lonely problem, and instead of bringing people out of empty lonely little flats to be part of a busy, social group – people love to help other people – the socialist 'experts' 'helpfully' encourage them to 'off' themselves. Bah. Here's the trap though – Muslims inform the women, look at that disgusting empty hedonistic life, that's western civilization. It's not the truth of western civilization nor is it an attractive alternative, but with nothing apparently in-between. So Muslim women accept (grudgingly or otherwise) the idea that they are better off with what they're told is their lot in life, including getting beaten and that everything bad that happens to them is their fault. But this false 'other' is needed because in particular Muslim women have a lot of important questions they want answered to know about Christ and the Bible. It's the real threat to the status quo. Even without anyone believing anything, the declarations as recorded in the Bible are revolutionary. The individual's intrinsic dignity is not from man, but is a gift of God. Particularly how much dignity every woman is given by God through Christ, that God rebukes men for 'abandoning the wife of their youth,' that a man takes one wife... very interesting concepts... that since woman was taken out of man then a man beating a woman is beating his own flesh, i.e. sinning against himself - don't do it. Hmm! Muslim women do ask – very very very privately and discreetly of someone they trust to not rat them out, and they like what they hear. It's wildly radical and incredibly affirming of their individual dignity in the eyes of God. Is there any higher honor in any religion on earth that women were permitted to see the risen Christ first, before anyone else and that the men were personally admonished by Christ because they didn't believe the women's testimony? How does that sound to a Muslim woman who has been told that her testimony is so inferior that it requires two women per one man in court? This confrontation with 'mere' Christianity as C.S. Lewis called it, is actually to be avoided at all costs. Muslims point to the hedonists as examples of the competition, because they can't afford to let women discover that the Lord God is more generous and gentle with them than their polygamous husbands who actually spend time discussing and making erudite videos on the best way to batter their wives to keep them in line without endangering the wives' abilities to deliver a properly cooked breakfast and dinner. (But many have servants for that – who can also be beaten.) The women are the mothers – the hands that rock the cradles that hold the next generation. Beating women, covering them up and locking them down aren't the actions of confidence and security, but of fear and insecurity.

Barbara Heigl

P. Gao • Sep 5, 2017 at 23:17

The socialist experts helpfully encourage them to "off" themselves....

This is a very insightful observation. I never connected euthanasia to the decline of society. That combined with abortion shows that the West doesn't need to be conquered. It's taking itself out.

Catherine • Sep 5, 2017 at 12:48

Very sad. The destruction of civilization grinds on.

Robert Allison • Sep 5, 2017 at 10:29

Mark:

Brilliant. On a side-note to "Abie's Irish Rose," Leonard Bernstein wanted to do a musical about Boston's Jews and Irish clashing--realized it had been done, so instead wrote about native New Yorkers and Puerto Ricans in "West Side Story."