Recently in MARK STEYN Category

In Montreal they are calling the Jews dogs, in London they are rioting and calling the police cowards, in Paris they're burning synagogues and in Fort Lauderdale they calling for bigger ovens to fit all the Jews in.

Mark Steyn observes:

The west's deluded multiculti progressives should understand: In the end, this isn't about Gaza, this isn't about Jews. It's about you.

For all of Mark's comment, click here.

Need I say who "they" are?

That Mark Steyn is brilliant, we know.

Putting the pieces together as he does in his words about the pathology of Jew hatred is brilliant. Hatred corrupts the haters and nowhere is that shown more clearly than by the Palestinians and their Muslim brethren worldwide.

Through the centuries it is estimated that in its expansionary wars Islam has killed 270 million people, including 80 million Hindus. Jews have always been at the top of the list to be killed, following Mohammad's example.

With 1.2 billion Muslims now in the world it must be frustrating to true believer Muslims that they are somehow dominated by 14 million Jews whom they cannot exterminate.

The ‘Oldest Hatred’

It didn’t get that way without an ability to adapt.

By Mark Steyn
National Review Online
January 10, 2009

In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell “You are the brothers of pigs!”, and a protester complains to his interviewer that “Hitler didn’t do a good job.”

In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need!”

In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, “Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!”

In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year’s Day. The channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from January 1st 2009 but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas, France-2 says the footage was broadcast “accidentally.”

In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews;” in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die.”

In Helsingborg, the congregation at a Swedish synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in; in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store; in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a Belgian synagogue; in Antwerp, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel, “youths” attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.

In London, the police advise British Jews to review their security procedures because of potential revenge attacks. The Sun reports “fears” that “Islamic extremists” are drawing up a “hit list” of prominent Jews, including the Foreign Secretary, Amy Winehouse’s record producer, and the late Princess of Wales’s divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Islamic non-extremists from the British Muslim Forum, the Islamic Foundation and other impeccably respectable “moderate” groups have warned the government that the Israelis’ “disproportionate force” in Gaza risks inflaming British Muslims, “reviving extremist groups,” and provoking “UK terrorist attacks” — not against Amy Winehouse’s record producer and other sinister members of the International Jewish Conspiracy but against targets of, ah, more general interest.

Forget, for the moment, Gaza. Forget that the Palestinian people are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth. For the past sixty years they have been entrusted to the care of the United Nations, the Arab League, the PLO, Hamas and the “global community” — and the results are pretty much what you’d expect. You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for Israeli-bound rockets, and to the UN refugee agency that turns a blind eye to it. And, even if you don’t deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the “Palestinian Authority” has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian “nationalist movement” has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long ago.

Mark Steyn wonders what the Age of Obama will do to America. Will it accelerate us down the path to the weakness bred by totalitarian "daddy knows best" government offering handouts instead of encouraging opportunity?

All inspired by a Christmas song by American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson.

December 27, 2008, 9:00 a.m.

Grow Up!
An Obamafied American Idol Christmas.

By Mark Steyn

I was at the mall two days before Christmas, and it was strangely quiet. So quiet that, sadly, I was able to hear every word of Kelly Clarkson bellowing over the sound system “My Grown-Up Christmas List.” Don’t get me wrong — I love seasonal songs. “Winter Wonderland” — I dig it. “Rudolph” — man, he’s cool, albeit not as literally as Frosty. But “Grown-Up Christmas List” is one of those overwrought ballads of melismatic bombast made for the American Idol crowd. It’s all about how the singer now eschews asking Santa for materialist goodies — beribboned trinkets and gaudy novelties — in favor of selfless grown-up stuff like world peace.

Which is an odd sentiment to hear at a shopping mall.

But it seems to have done the trick. “Retail Sales Plummet,” read the Christmas headline in the Wall Street Journal. “Sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending.”

Hey, that’s great news, isn’t it? After all, everyone knows Americans consume too much. What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? “We can’t just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world’s resources with just 4 percent of the world’s population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we’ll be fine.”

And boy, we took the great man’s words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home’s thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama’s logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world’s resources. And in these last few months we’ve made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.

And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn’t seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He’s proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar “stimulus” package or whatever it is now to “stimulate” it back into its bad old ways.

And how does the rest of the world, of whose tender sensibilities then Senator Obama was so mindful, feel about the collapse of American consumer excess? They’re aghast, they’re terrified, they’re on a one-way express elevator down to Sub-Basement Level 37 of the abyss with no hope of putting on the brakes unless the global economy can restore aggregate demand. What does all that mumbo-jumbo about “aggregate demand” mean? Well, that’s a fancy term for you — yes, you, Joe Lardbutt, the bloated disgusting embodiment of American excess, driving around in your Chevy Behemoth, getting two blocks to the gallon as you shear the roof off the drive-thru lane to pick up your $7.93 decaf gingersnap-mocha-pepperoni-zebra mussel frappuccino, which makes for a wonderful cool refreshing thirst-quencher after you’ve been working up a sweat watching the plasma TV in your rec room all morning with the thermostat set to 87. The message from the European political class couldn’t be more straightforward: If you crass, vulgar Americans don’t ramp up the demand, we’re kaput. Unless you get back to previous levels of planet-devastating consumption, the planet is screwed.

“Much of the load will fall on the US,” wrote Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, “largely because the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert, too complacent, or too weak.” The European Union has 500 million people, compared with America’s 300 million. Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain are advanced economies whose combined population adds up to that of the United States. Many EU members have enjoyed for decades the enlightened progressive policies Americans won’t be getting until January 20th. Why then are they so “inert” that their economic fortunes depend on the despised moronic Yanks?

Ah, well. To return to Kelly Clarkson — and Barbra Streisand and Michael Buble and Amy Grant — the striking thing about their “Grown-Up Christmas List” is how childish it is. The concerned vocalist tells Santa that what she wants for Christmas is:

“No more lives torn apart,
That wars would never start…”

Whether wars start depends on the intended target’s ability to deter. As to “lives torn apart,” that, too, is a matter of being on the receiving end. If you’re in an African dictatorship, your life can be torn apart. If you’re in a society that values individual liberty, you’ll at least get a shot at tearing your own life apart — you’ll make bad choices, marry a ne’er-do-well, blow your savings, lose your job — but these are ultimately within your power to correct. The passivity of the lyric — the “lives” that get “torn apart” is very revealing. A state in which lives aren’t torn apart will be, by definition, totalitarian: As in The Stepford Wives or The Invasion Of the Body Snatchers, we’ll all be wandering around in glassy-eyed conformity. “Lives” will no longer be “torn apart” because they’re no longer lives, but simply the husks of a centrally controlled tyranny. To live is messy but liberating: Free societies enable the citizenry to fulfill their potential — to innovate, to create, to accumulate — while recognizing that some of their number will fail. But to attempt to insulate free peoples from moral hazard is debilitating and ultimately fatal. To Martin Wolf’s list of a Europe “too inert, too complacent, too weak,” we might add “too old”: Healthy societies recharge their batteries by the aged and wealthy lending their savings to the young and eager. But Germany is a population of prosperous seniors with no grandchildren to lend to. Japan is a society of great invention with insufficient youth to provide a domestic market. That’s why if you’re Sony or Ikea or any other great global brand, you want access to America for your product. That’s why economic recovery will be driven by the U.S., and not by Euro-Japanese entities long marinated in Obamanomics.

One final thought on “My Grown-Up Christmas List.” The first two lines always give me a chuckle:

“Do you remember me?
I sat upon your knee…”

When was the last time you saw a child sit upon a Santa’s knee? Rod Liddle in the British Spectator reports that at a top London department store Santa sits at one end of the bench while a large “X” directs the moppet to a place down the other end, well out of arm’s reach. For even Santa Claus is just another pedophile in waiting. Naughty or nice? Who really knows? Best not to take any chances. That’s another way societies seize up — by obsessing on phantom threats rather than real ones.

Are free peoples now merely vulnerable infants in need of protection from the pedophile Santa of global capitalism? This is the issue that will determine the future: Euro-style state-directed protectionist sclerosis vs. individual liberty in all its messiness. I know what I want on my “Grown-Up Christmas List.”

From NRO's The Corner yesterday, November 28th:

Both of the above [Mark Steyn]

Andy [McCarty] wrote yesterday about our confused thinking re events in Bombay:

The obsession over whether al Qaeda or its endless jumble of affiliates pulled off the operation is a misguided attempt to mimimize the challenge. The bin Laden network is not unimportant, but it is tapping into something that is much bigger than itself.

We're reluctant to address that "bigger than itself" elephant. All jihad is local: If rockets are fired at Israel, it's a failure to settle the Palestinian question. If an NHS doctor drives a flaming Cherokee into the check-in desk at Glasgow Airport, it must be Tony Blair's foreign policy. The Jerusalem Post's headline writer poses the question:

Homegrown Terror Or International Jihad?

False choice. The answer is: Homegrown terror in the service of international jihad. Clearly, India has had a Muslim problem to one degree or another in the 60 years since partition, but increasingly those locally driven grievances have been absorbed within the global pan-Islamic ideology. What strikes you, as the dust clears in Bombay, is that one assault provided an umbrella for manifestations of almost every strain of Muslim grievance.

There's the local element - the fatal shooting of the city's anti-terror squad, and other prominent officials. There's the crusader element - the targeting of British and American passport holders. There's the Jew-hating element - the Munich massacre nesting within the more general carnage.

And there are the more ironic nuances of jihad: British subjects were to be found not just among the victims but among the perpetrators.

To pose the question as that Jerusalem Post headline is to miss the point. Moreover, the global ideologues correctly see our determination to attribute every attack to purely local phenomena unconnected to any bigger picture as a sign of weakness.

This can't be said often enough:

In so many of the reports about Islamic terrorist attacks the media wonders what the connection to Osama Bin Laden might be. The answer is simple: In all cases the connection is the Koran. All Islamic true believers are doing what the Koran says and Mohammad commanded: Wage unrelenting war against the infidels untiil Islam rules supreme over the world.

Islamic supremacism is mandated by the Koran and Mohammad, the "perfect man" as Muslims call him, whose example provides all the latitude for violence one can imagine. As Muslims learn more about their core ideology, more true believers who become a danger to the world are born. At heart, Islam is a political ideology carrying a religious banner to justify its expansionism by whatever means work, including murder. Conquering the world today requires such things as instilling fear to force submission, damaging if not destroying economies, assassinating leaders and undermining the values of targeted civilizations, be it Europe's or that of the United States.

Among the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world are many good people who simply believe in one god and live good lives. They probably have never read the Koran or the Hadith (the sayings and doings of Mohammad). It's when they do that problems can arise. Saudi Arabia has spent and is spending tens of billions around the world to "educate" those who are in ignorance.

When more than half the population is getting handouts and paying no taxes, a tipping point will have been reached. On current trend, hastened along by the Obama "tax cut" program to take money from taxpayers and give it to those who don't pay income taxes, that point will be reached by 2012 with a majority getting federal welfare. (That's assuming that today's slim majority of taxpayers will not be able to keep Congress from rubberstamping Obama's welfare plan.)

Mark Steyn sees the U.S. inexorably slipping down the European unsustainable welfare black hole.

The Death of the American Idea

An electorate living high off the entitlement hog.

By Mark Steyn

‘Give me liberty or give me death!”

“Live free or die!”

What's that? Oh, don't mind me. I'm just trying out slogans for the 2012 campaign and seeing which one would get the biggest laughs.