One of the more fascinating divides that's become apparent in the era of Donald Trump and Brexit has been the clash between populism and globalism. This was front and center aboard the inaugural Mark Steyn Cruise last year, which featured among its special guests Michele Bachmann and John O'Sullivan.
Michele holds the honor of being Mark's favorite presidential candidate (not to mention part of the two-person Crow's Nest rock group Bachman-Bachmann Overdrive), while his favorite editor John served as a speechwriter and advisor to the late Baroness Thatcher in the United Kingdom.
They appeared with Mark individually on the cruise, as well as together. The latest episode of The Mark Steyn Show is a compilation of these three segments, throughout which a common thread emerged, as you'll see.
Mark, John and Michele unpack the global populist trends that continue to grow, and look at Minnesota as a case study on what unfettered immigration can do to a society.
The Mark Steyn Show is made possible by the support of members of the Mark Steyn Club, benefits of which are laid out here. Commenting is one of the privileges reserved for Club members, so do let us know what you think of this episode. If you like what John and Michele have to say, you may enjoy sailing with them aboard the 2020 Mark Steyn Cruise. Cabins are still available though are likely to sell out, so best to book soon.
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I know globalism and populism are both pejorative terms depending on where you're coming from. But the omnipresent double standard of the Left seems to be attached to this as much as anything else. Populism is supposed to conjure the image of toothless peasants with torches and pitchforks who don't know or understand anything. To me a populist could be anyone who believes in cultural and social norms that should command our loyalty and be upheld. A populist believes the Constitution, in it's plain language and intent, is the framework in which government should function. A populist believes unalienable rights are real and should not be transgressed. A populist believes the judicial system should be impartial and actually just. A populist does not regard economic activity as a political "ism", but as the ordinary, natural enterprises of building a prosperous society. Maybe I've misunderstood the definition, but this doesn't seem like low-brow knuckle dragging to me. I'm just so sick of these double standards. I just had to get that out of my system before this discussion passed into the archives.
Very sharp piece Todd - This is certainly as things should be but unfortunately it is the hard left that dictates cultural and social 'norms' in today's America and Europe. Lose the culture and you lose the country is one of the more reliable axioms. This toxic process begins at the bottom and gradually percolates upward which is why virtual total control of the educational system and the entertainment industry was so critical for the left. Mission accomplished. Conservatives could do little about Hollywood which has always been far left but they could have fought for our kids decades ago but stood by and did nothing. Now of course the hard left has almost total control of broadcast and print media along with the social media giants. Sorry but I don't see how this can possibly end well.
A very good video. Thoroughly enjoyed it. It covers all the bases in the immigration issue.
Off subject, Mark, but the theme music for your show is the best ever! Is it available for purchase anywhere?
Mark replies:
Not in a non-vocal version, James, but maybe we will release it. That's Kevin Amos, my longtime musical director, conducting some of the best musicians on the planet.
Michelle Bachmann's exposition of the Minnesota Somali rorts regarding childcare and carers allowances are here in Australia with recent prosecutions of fraudulent Sudanese and Somali childcare centres - just as Michelle said, bogus centres set up in each other's homes staffed by each others families etc - begging the question as to how they could get so much taxpayer money (millions) with so little oversight - when taxpaying Australians would be investigated forensically by our Tax Office over a dry-cleaning claim. In Victoria, new legislation will soon criminalise any mention of ethnicity of crime gangs as "hate speech". As Michelle said,
she could not have given her shipboard views on land in Minnesota without risking similar prosecution. This is where we are heading here.
Regarding John's comment about a Western post-Christian society still being "kind of a Christian society" and such a society still being preferable to a Muslim society, I posit that a post-Christian society is a dead society in the process of becoming ripe for the taking by the Islamists.
A post-Christian West is merely biding its time until it self destructs under the weight of multiple delusional subjective relativisms. When the concept of inalienable rights is lost and replaced with subjective rights subjectively determined by those who have acquired enough power to determine that society's rights it is time to begin preparing that society's epitaph.
Islamists have proven very good at filling the vacuum created by the lack of Christ-centered convictions and Western Europe is the canary in the mineshaft.
Great to see the replay of the live sessions. Very perceptive insights by Michele Bachmann and John O'Sullivan (both of whom are delightful and down-to-earth as well).
Big fan of Michele's ever since her interview with Mark a couple of years ago:
https://www.steynonline.com/8768/dawn-early-light-eighteen-months-on
The lefties, particularly the enviro lefties, like to protest. Not only vocally but taking all sorts of actions. But they assume that they are correct and that they can dictate to everyone. And they expect no protests to occur and no actions to be taken against them and they enforce that in a very draconian manner. However the right may not particularly want to protest but they can take all sorts of subtle, inventive and highly effective actions. What comes around can quite easily be made to go around if done right.
Re Somalis in Minnesota, Ilhan Omar is a poster child for the enormous fraudulence in our "refugee" programs. (I use the quotation marks advisedly.) To see what I mean, read the second half of this VDARE piece I wrote: https://vdare.com/posts/the-116th-congress-ocasio-cortez-elected-from-rotten-borough-refugee-ilhan-omar-visits-somalia
This is aside from the particular flagrant illegality of Omar herself (tax fraud, marriage to a brother to enable immigration fraud), as covered by PowerLine's Scott Johnson and colleagues: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/07/david-steinberg-tying-up-loose-threads-in-the-curious-case.php
Listening to Michelle Bachmann talking about the Childcare fraud being perpetrated by Somali's in Minnesota, it sounds remarkably similar to what is happening in Australia. It's refreshing to hear a politician call it out rather than the usual, 'nothing to see here, move on'.
There must be a financial jihad instruction manual (international edition). The $5 million fraud exposed a couple of months ago was as elaborate as it was brazen:
"Red Roses Family Day Care allegedly filed claims for children who never existed and investigators NSW Police are now pursuing up to 150 parents who allegedly sold their children's identities to help the company qualify for the subsidies. The ABC understands the business existed on paper, but no child ever went into care at any of the properties." (9/5/19 - Mark Reddie, ABC)
The Mark Steyn Shows are a wonderful melding of Firing Line, Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson. If the mainstream media hadn't been so corrupted it would be a hit niche show on some channel. Thank God for the internet and talented geniuses like MS!
I hope we will no longer self censor our language to refer to the left as liberals. They do not resemble anything liberal. The left wins by conflating their evils with traditional goods. Clarity is our friend, as Prager points out.
Very much looking forward to weekend viewing including the presidential candidate, the prime-ministerial speechwriter, and the one-man global content provider.
The biggest anti-semite organisation in the world is the BBC.
I can tell you that personally. Not only anti-semite, but anti-American.
They are also the biggest tax avoiders in the UK.
They also are now trying to tax over 75s. They are repulsive.
One thing I will say to anyone when they come to your door. Don't say anything. They are absolutely not the police.
They are salesman. Don't speak to them. If they try to read your rights. Say, are you a constable. They are not ignore them.
The BBC are anti-semite, anti-British, anti-America racists. They are definitely NOT the police.
Question for Michele; what did the country of Australia and the woman's family do about her death? What could they do if the officer was protected..just accept it and fly her body home? Are they equally afraid in Australia of holding persons of color accountable?
This whole case simply faded away and I always wondered what the outcome was.
Janet, the police officer was recently convicted of third-degree murder (acquitted of second-degree murder) and sentenced to 12 years - and has appealed.
Mohamed Noor was convicted of 3rd degree murder in the fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk and sentenced to 12.5 years. The Somali community in Minneapolis believes Noor is the victim of discrimination. Diversity is our strength.
Did not cooperate with investigation. Finally convicted of a lesser crime and did receive a small prison sentence of about 5/7 years if my memory serves but you would have to check records. Product of white guilt and innocents death was due to white guilt. Wholly unsuited to immigrate to this country and wholly unsuited for US police work. Poor thing had to ride home in cargo. Shameful indeed.
That child daycare fraud occurring in Minnesota mentioned by Michelle is also widespread here in Australia in our capital cities.
Nothing against Somalis, but Somalia hasn't had a functioning government since the early Nineties. So Rep Omar, before you go trashing the US... Racist! Racist! Alert! ...That's about as far as a discussion can get before you've appeared as a racist, as I just did. So, good for Trump for breaching that idiocy. Fake racism is a bubble due to burst. Walk towards the fire - but circumspectly, not needlessly hazardously.
It is marvelous to listen to such clear thinking and articulate people as Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Bachmann. They made so many good points that would be worth commenting on. I am particularly pleased that Michele pointed out that faith is essentially the basis upon which a culture or a civilization operates and coheres. Secularists seem to think, based on recent comments I have made, that this is simplistic, but I don't think they understand the rudiments of human nature and the processes of rational thought very well. Culture is a reflection of the faith of a people. I fully recognize that people are in different places within that context, but it is still absolutely definitive. Christianity can certainly govern a culture even if everyone is not a genuine believer. This is precisely what the "peaceable kingdom" prophecies in Isaiah 11 and 65 mean.
I also think it is high time we unequivocally recognize that anything that could be called civilization has ended on the left, if it ever existed there at all. If you can't tell the truth about anything you have absolutely no claim to being civilized. If you reduce everything to hate motivated identity politics, what semblance of civilization can exist in that. When you politicize everything in order to set everyone against each other, how is that civilization. The politicization of everything effectively means you have abolished the truth. Can we please admit to ourselves that leftism is nothing more than unbridled barbarism, even if it appears on TV in designer clothes. Let us not give it any credit for that which it is not.
Though I am neither a gun owner nor much of a believer, I am grateful to live in the penumbra of safety and civilization provided by those who are. Much as that would pain my late hero, Christopher Hitchens, I think he won every battle (debate) in that conflict, and lost the war.
Somalia has no shortage of gun owners nor a shortage of believers, but I doubt that you, I, or Ms Omar would feel safer there.
The big problem with identity politics is that the current forms force people into superficial categories for the sole purpose of making the population easier to manipulate. There is nothing wrong with politics based on identity per se, if that identity is genuine, rooted, and meaningful. Somalia is uncivilized because Somali politics are dominated by unstable interactions between tribalism and Islamism, not because the proportion of Somalis who are gun owners and believers are too few or too many.
What I like about Christianity is that it makes people both more civilized and more difficult to govern
I suppose you're correct on Somalia, Andrew. But I was thinking of the USA (and any other countries that permit both private gun ownership and religious faith). I also agree with you on Christianity.
"What I like about Christianity is that it makes people both more civilized and more difficult to govern."
Great observation, Andrew!
There was a comment made about self-governance a few days ago; sovereignty of the mind is certainly very central to Christianity.
Kate,
The word is "subsidiarity", one of the fundamental principles of Christian civilization and governance, which hardly anyone in the political or business world has ever heard of, or much less practice. It is creeping back into the world of manufacturing under different names such as "Kanban", but few even among its most ardent practitioners know its true origin.
Exactly.
"It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry." (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno, 79)
The most basic - and most precious - unit of governance being the nuclear family, which is why authoritarians of all stripes are determined to destroy it.
I must be missing something. The Minnesota that sent that great American patriot, Michele Bachman, to Congress can't be the same Minnesota that also sent that great Al Qaeda patriot, Ilhan Omar. There must be a South Minnesota or a West Minnesota among the 50 states that we had all forgotten (with good reason, we now see). Unless Minnesotans have been drinking Flint, Michigan's water, it just can't be the same place. I guess I'm just jealous. I live in Massachusetts, where the last decent Congressman we sent to Washington was John Quincy Adams. Oh, they're good for a laugh—Barney Frank, a coven of Kennedys—but pride in country, or sound of morals? That must be in North Massachusetts, cuz it sure as hell ain't here.
Muslims tend to relocate in a single geographic area which provides enough clout to swing a congressional house seat as in Minn. The same is happening in Maine as they settle in huge numbers in the greater Portland area. I'd like to believe that most Somalians appreciate what America has given them unlike Ms. Omar or whatever her real name is. Her apparent tax fraud crimes and other illegal acts to obtain citizenship are far more serious than anything Roger Stone is facing. Which one do you suppose will end up serving time? Were Omar a republican she would have already been forced to resign her seat and be facing serious federal charges. Playing the race and Islamophobia cards works wonders in 2019 America.
According to Sharia, when a Muslim is faced with the decision to attend one Mosque over another, he or she is required to attend the larger, more populated, or more prestigious Mosque. Over time, this protocol has the effect of concentrating Muslim communities wherever in the world they may take root.
Regardless of whether most Muslims appreciate America or whether most Muslims do not, the protocols of Islamification are well established and have followed the same predictable pattern for 1400 years.
As a military manual it is a work of genius. The bridgeheads established everywhere are closely disciplined and receive a constant stream of fresh blood. I could go on.
There are not enough public figures in today's political scene that can exhibit the common sense thoughts and ideas which Michele Bachman so easily discusses in this video. If there were more like her the country would be operating far more efficiently for everyone.
The idea that we are a nation of generous spirits being fleeced by Somalians scamming one of many American compassionate systems in place to provide for impoverished young children in day care centers while at the same time we have to listen to the fraudulent Congresswoman Omar haranguing us all about what a racist and mean-spirited country we are for separating children from parents at the border and a spectrum of other issues on which she disagrees is capitally rich and quite disgusting.
Where does the solution to the tragedy rest? Governmental policies need to have a major seismic shift back towards taking care of our own. We must solve our own homeless and drug epidemic first then we can start helping destitute and illiterate immigrants. Where is one single Democratic candidate on this topic? I never hear an utterance about it. Why is the CDC not out on a daily basis getting clean up done in the tent cities? What is the purpose of this government agency if they are not at the forefront of this problem while diseases are clearly spreading in the neighborhoods and streets around these tent cities? What are they waiting for?
The most compassionate thing needed is to welcome our own citizens back into their country by getting them out of tents and back to having a roof over their heads, provide proper sanitation and mental health treatment so they can have the first shot at being productive members of our own society. Our national priorities are completely upside down.