Mark Steyn's Blog, page 6

Political Asylum

The federal bureaucracy, per President Obama's executive order, is as a matter of policy not enforcing the nation's immigration laws. Nevertheless, midst all the various activities of Undocumented-Americans to which the government remains indifferent (vehicular homicide, drug dealing, etc.), there are some national-security threats that are too serious to ignore -- such as home schooling. So the feds have spared no expense in hunting down a handful of foreigners they're determined to deport:

A German family fleeing persecution from a Nazi law.

Wonderful Copenhagen

Someone ought to re-edit the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Copenhagen's most famous author, for the new Denmark.

The other day my friend Lars Hedegaard survived an assassination attempt at the hands of the jihad crowd. As he notes here:

I was visibly touched when I read the editorials in Politiken and Ekstra Bladet - at least the first few paragraphs where emotional words described the inalienable right to freedom of expression and how wrong it was to try and kill me.

But I did not need very many Kleenexes to wipe my eyes. It turned out that the newspaper editors used the assassination attempt to reiterate to their readers what a miserable and racist creep I am. And when I was done reading about my case, I almost came to the conclusion that it would probably have been for the best of the country and for the future of humanity if the gunman had had better aim.

Lars has spent the last few years as Andersen's lonely little boy pointing out that the muliticultural emperor has no clothes. Unlike the Andersen story, every time he does so, he gets clubbed to a pulp by an enraged mob of bien-pensants.

Next comes this sad headline:

Dozens protest anti-Semitic bullying at Danish school

"Dozens"? Be glad they could muster that many:

The protesters at Saturday’s rally outside the Radmandsgades elementary school in Norrebro, a suburb north of Copenhagen, held up Israeli flags and signs reading “Today we are all Jews.”

The demonstration was in response to recent statements by Lise Egholm, a retiring headmistress of the Radmandsgades school, who said the bullying of Jewish children by Arab classmates forced her to advise Jewish parents not to enroll their children in the school.

“We have had some unfortunate incidents, which means that I have had to say to some parents it can be hard to have Jewish children in this area because there are many Palestinians,” Egholm told Dansk Radio.

There's an inspiring tale for celebrating diversity.

There once was an ugly duckling

With feathers all stubby and brown

And the other birds

In so many words

Said we have had some unfortunate incidents so I have had to say

Get out of town...

Maybe Headmistress Egholm's plan will work, for a bit. As long as you're sure it's just the Jews these guys object to...

Such a Cold Finger . . .

I don't want to complain like the grouchy old Oscar Madisons below. Seth MacFarlane was fine: At least he can do stuff -- sing ’n’ dance and whatnot. And, at the risk of sounding so gay I get bounced from CPAC, it was great to see Dame Shirl giving it some wellie on "Goldfinger," and Barbra doing a rather tender and understated "Way We Were" for dear old Marvin Hamlisch. (My daughter said she'd like to have seen Shirley do "Skyfall" and Adele do "Goldfinger," which would have been fun.)

But, honestly, the 007 50th-anniversary montage that preceded Bassey is everything that's wrong with the Oscars. It was technically very accomplished. Someone had taken the Bond theme and the faintly cheesy instrumental bit from Live And Let Die and brilliantly edited to them a half-century of shootouts and explosions so seamlessly that one could scarce tell Roger Moore from Pierce Brosnan. In doing so, they completely missed the point of 007. The Bond franchise has been running for near half the length of the entire history of motion pictures. If it had been just been about scary bangs and car chases it would have ended 45 years ago, like every other series that blazes for its moment and then dies. Where were all the non-explosive conventions -- the quips to Moneypenny et al.? The montage took 50 years of Bond, and drained all the wit and style out of it. Bond formula got clobbered by Oscar formula, which isn't as good.

(P.S. My own salute to 007 can be found here.)

Score-Settled Science

Since being sued by fantasy Nobel Laureate and global warm-monger Michael E Mann for mocking his hockey stick, I've taken a greater than usual interest in the conformity enforcers of the settled-science crowd. So I was interested to read this tidbit from Roger Pielke, Jr, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. He's no climate "denier", merely a little bit too independent-minded for the movement's tastes. Hence:

Five days ago I critiqued a shoddy paper by Brysse et al. 2013 which appeared in the journal Global Environmental Change. Today I received notice from the GEC editor-in chief and executive editor that I have been asked to "step down from the Editorial Board." They say that it is to "give other scientists the chance to gain experience of editorial duties."

Over the past 20 years I have served on the editorial boards of about a dozen or so academic journals. I have rolled off some when my term was up, and continued for many years with others. I have never received a mid-term request to step down from any journal.

Hmm. A few months ago, when Michael Mann sued NR for the hitherto unknown crime of "defamation of a Nobel Prize recipient", Professor Pielke wrote:

Mann's claim is what might be called an embellishment -- he has, to use the definition found at the top of this post, "made (a statement or story) more interesting or entertaining by adding extra details, esp. ones that are not true..." Instead of being a "Nobel Peace Prize Winner" Mann was one of 2,000 or so scientists who made a contribution to an organization which won the Nobel Peace Prize...

The embellishment is only an issue because Mann has invoked it as a source of authority is a legal dispute. It would seem common sense that having such an embellishment within a complaint predicated on alleged misrepresentations may not sit well with a judge or jury.

This situation provides a nice illustration of what is wrong with a some aspects of climate science today -- a few scientists motivated by a desire to influence political debates over climate change have embellished claims, such as related to disasters, which then risks credibility when the claims are exposed as embellishments. To make matters worse, these politically motivated scientists have fallen in with fellow travelers in the media, activist organizations and in the blogosphere who are willing not only to look past such embellishments, but to amplify them and attack those who push back. These dynamics are reinforcing and have led small but vocal parts of the climate scientific community to deviate significantly from widely-held norms of scientific practice.

Very true. And now Professor Pielke, expelled by the palace guard of climate conformism, appears to have been felled by the very pathology he identified.

Re: 'Jihad Seeker's Allowance'

Nathaniel, re Anjem Choudary urging his followers to claim "Jihad Seeker's Allowance", seven years ago in my book America Alone (2006) I wrote:

Muhammed Metin Kaplan used his time on welfare in Germany to set up his Islamist group, Caliphate State; the so-called “caliph of Cologne” was subsequently extradited to Turkey for planning to fly a plane into the mausoleum of Kemal Ataturk. Ahmed Ressam, arrested in Washington State en route to blow up Los Angeles International Airport, hatched his plot while on welfare in Montreal. Abdul Nacer Benbrika, leader of a group of Australian Islamists, lived in Melbourne for ten years and never did a day’s work; now he’s been jailed for terrorism-related activities, and taxpayers are ponying up $50,000 a year in benefits to his wife. Abu Hamza became Britain’s most famous fire-breathing imam while on welfare in London and, after being charged with incitement to murder and sent to jail, sued the government for extra benefits on top of the £1,000 a week his family already received. Abu Qatada, a leading al-Qaeda recruiter, became an Islamist bigshot while on welfare in Britain, and only when he was discovered to have £150,000 in his bank account did the Department for Work and Pensions turn off the spigot. Oh, and here’s an item from The Times of London:

"Police are investigating allegations that the four suspected July 21 bombers collected more than £500,000 in benefits payments in Britain."

I’m not saying every benefit recipient is a terrorist welfare queen. I am saying that the US should declare European welfare systems a national security threat.

Seven years later, Mr Choudary has come clean:

"The normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar [non-believers].

“So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance. You need to get support.”

He went on to tell a 30-strong crowd: “We are going to take England — the Muslims are coming.”

Lenin said "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Islam has gone the Commies one better: The modern western welfare state gives them the money to buy the rope with which they will hang us.

Re: Presidential Modesty

Peter, with regard to President Obama's clarification that "I'm not the emperor of the United States", in my weekend column I compare him with Charles the Bald, regnant 840-877 and Holy Roman Emperor for the last chunk thereof. Unfavorably, I'm afraid.

By the way, I dislike these protestations from humble citizen-executives that they're not the emperor. In my book, I quote Tocqueville on the matter:

There was a time in Europe in which the law, as well as the consent of the people, clothed kings with a power almost without limits. But almost never did it happen that they made use of it...

Although the entire government of the empire was concentrated in the hands of the emperor alone, and although he remained, in time of need, the arbiter of all things, the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.

Not now. For the advanced democratic state, no "detail of social life and of individual existence" - from light bulbs to "tooth-level surveillance" - is too minute to escape its control.

Achieve Ye This Goal

‘I’m also issuing a new goal for America,” declared President Obama at his State of the Union on Tuesday. We’ll come to the particular “goal” he “issued” momentarily, but before we do, consider that formulation: Did you know the president of the United States is now in the business of “issuing goals” for his subjects to live up to?

Strange how the monarchical urge persists even in a republic two-and-a-third centuries old. Many commentators have pointed out that the modern State of the Union is in fairly obvious mimicry of the Speech from the Throne that precedes a new legislative session in British Commonwealth countries and continental monarchies, but this is to miss the key difference. When the Queen or her viceroy reads a Throne Speech in Westminster, Ottawa, or Canberra, it’s usually the work of a government with a Parliamentary majority: In other words, the stuff she’s announcing is actually going to happen. That’s why, lest any enthusiasm for this or that legislative proposal be detected, the apolitical monarch overcompensates by reading everything in as flat and unexpressive a monotone as possible. Underneath the ancient rituals -- the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod getting the door of the House of Commons slammed in his face three times -- it’s actually a very workmanlike affair.#ad#

The State of the Union is the opposite. The president gives a performance, extremely animatedly, head swiveling from left-side prompter to right-side prompter, continually urging action now: “Let’s start right away. We can get this done.#...#We can fix this.#...#Now is the time to do it. Now is the time to get it done.” And at the end of the speech, nothing gets done, and nothing gets fixed, and, after a few days’ shadowboxing between admirers and detractors willing to pretend it’s some sort of serious legislative agenda, every single word of it is forgotten until the next one.

In that sense, like Beyoncé lip-synching the National Anthem at the inauguration, the State of the Union embodies the decay of America’s political institutions into a simulacrum of responsible government rather than the real thing, and a simulacrum ever more divorced from the real issues facing the country. “Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion,” said the president. Really? Who knew? “Now we need to finish the job.” Just one more push is all it’ll take.

What’s he on about? The annual “deficit” has been over a trillion for every year of Obama’s presidency. The cumulative deficits have, in fact (to use a quaint expression), increased the national debt by $6 trillion. Yet Obama claims Washington has “reduced the deficit” by $2.5 trillion and all we need to do is “finish the job.” Presumably this is a reference to allegedly agreed deficit reductions over the next decade, or quarter-century, or whatever. In other words, Obama has saved $2.5 trillion of Magical Fairyland money, which happily frees him up to talk about the really critical issues like high-speed rail and green-energy solutions. These concepts, too, exist mainly in Magical Fairyland: If you think Obama-approved taxpayer-funded “high-speed rail” means you’ll be able to board a train that goes at French or Japanese speeds, I’ve a high-speed rail bridge to Brooklyn to sell you.

Take, for example, the “goal” Obama “issued”: “Let’s cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next 20 years.” What does that even mean? How would you even know when you’ve accomplished that “goal”? What percentage of energy used by my home and business is “wasted”? In what sense? Who says? Who determines that? Is it 37 percent? Twenty-three percent? So we’re going to cut it down to 18.5 per cent or 11.5 percent by 2033, is that the “goal”?

Barack Obama is not the first president to “issue” “goals.” John F. Kennedy also did, although he was more mindful of the constitutional niceties:

“This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

That’s a goal! No wiggle room. A monkey on the moon won’t count, nor an unmanned drone. We need an actual living American standing on the surface of the moon holding Old Glory by December 31, 1969.

Whoever’s writing Obama’s speeches these days either has a tin ear -- you don’t “issue” goals, you set them -- or he has a very refined sense of the ersatz nature of contemporary political discourse. Old-school monarchs issued “edicts.” One thinks of King Charles the Bald in his Edict of Pistres in a.d. 864, announcing among other things that henceforth selling a horse to a Viking would be punishable by death. No doubt the odd equine transaction slipped through the regulatory net, but historians seem to agree that the sale of mounts to Norsemen certainly diminished. And more to the point his courtiers would have thought Charles the Bald was an even bigger schmuck than they already did if, instead of an edict, he was issuing a new goal to reduce the sale of horses to Vikings by 50 percent by the year 884.#page#

These days, the edicts are issued by commissars deep in the bowels of the hyper-regulatory state, and most of them are, like King Charles, a little too bald in their assumptions of government power to be bandied in polite society. So, in public, the modern ruler issues goals, orders dreams, commands unicorns. People seem to like this sort of thing. No accounting for taste, but there we are. “America moves forward only when we do so together,” declared the president. I dunno. Maybe it’s just me, but the whole joint seems to be seizing up these days: The more “activist” Big Government gets, the more inactive the nation at large.

But the president’s sonorous, gaseous banalities did serve notice that the Republicans don’t want to get too far behind on his “goals.” He’s right that Washington “moves forward” like a pantomime horse lurching awkwardly across the stage and with the Republicans always playing the rear end. A “bipartisan” agreement means that the Democrats get what they want now and Republicans at some distant far-off date. Try it: New taxes and government programs now, alleged deficit reduction of $2.5 trillion a decade hence. Illegal-immigrant amnesty now, alleged rigorous border enforcement the day after tomorrow. Washington has settled into a comfortable pattern: instant gratification for spending binges that do nothing for any of the problems they purport to be solving assuaged by meaningless commitments to start the twelve-step program next year, or next decade, or next century. No other big spender among the advanced democracies lies to itself about the gulf between its appetites and its self-discipline.#ad#

“Tonight, let’s declare,” declared the president, “that in the wealthiest nation on earth#...#” Whoa, hold it right there. The “wealthiest nation on earth” is actually the Brokest Nation in History. But don’t worry: “Nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime.”

“Should”? Consciously or not, the president is telling us his State of the Union show is a crock, and he knows it. Under Magical Fairyland budgeting, Obama-sized government “shouldn’t” increase our debt. Yet mysteriously it does. Every time. Because, in a political culture institutionally incapable of course correction, that’s just the way it is.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn

Rock ’n’ Dole is Here to Stay

Yesterday, I marked the tragic demise of the taxpayer-funded Shania Twain Centre. Phillip MacHarg tweeted back:

At least rock 'n roll "Hall" isn't gov subsidized. Or is it?

Not so fast. As I wrote nine years ago in the Irish Times (massive subscription required, alas):

Never mind the president's sudden generosity toward the National Endowment for the Arts, an agency Republicans once dreamed of abolishing. Did you know that a couple of weeks ago the president signed an $820 billion appropriations bill that, among other boondoggles, puts the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on the public dime? That's right: rock 'n' roll -- the most ruthlessly corporate industry in the world -- apparently requires the tax dollars of America's widows and spinsters. If every rock star donated just 1 percent of what he's spent on drugs since 1966, you could have the most lavish Hall of Fame in the world. But he won't, so you have to pay up instead....

If rock 'n' roll requires federal funding, we might as well give up.

Still, the big-spending GOP reaching out to subsidize all those gnarled old rockers certainly made the music industry think differently of the Republican party, right?

Water Difference a Day Makes

Jonah, the media have long understood that Republicans use drinking water as a racist code. See this gripping headline re the man Romney tapped for his veep:

Paul Ryan Stays Hydrated

And this one of a notorious presidential candidate going full water broad:

Michele Bachmann Served Drinks at Tonight's Republican Debate

Washington crossed the Delaware. Rubio drank it. It's over.

Man! I Feel Like a Government Subsidy

Sad news. The Shania Twain Centre in Timmins, Ontario, is to be demolished. It will now become an open-pit gold mine, instead of a bottomless-pit subsidy sucker. Amidst the tears, this account of the brief life of Timmins' No, 1 tourist attraction is a thing of beauty:

For those of you who are not up on their Ontario geography, the city of Timmins is located about seven and a half hours north of Toronto. It has a population of 43,165 and the current temperature is -34 celsius. I don't even want to know what the windchill is...

Who the hell is going to travel hundreds of miles to visit a museum about a country music singer? They do that for Elvis. But Elvis is Elvis and Graceland is in Memphis. Timmins is not Memphis. There are other things to do in Memphis. In Timmins it's the Shania Twain Centre and then it's the open pit gold mine.. . . . Yes, I know Shania Twain is huge. But if Jesus had been born in Timmins I doubt the crowds would have been much larger. Say what you will, but at least Bethlehem is warm.

I spent the best part of a winter in Timmins many years ago. It's conveniently situated for, er, Cochrane. You can catch the Polar Bear Express to Moosonee at Hudson's Bay. The first weekend I was there, the temperature hit –43. I can't remember whether that was Fahrenheit or Celsius, and indeed, if I recall correctly, that's somewhere around the point where they cross over anyway, so who cares? My point is that, had the Shania Twain Centre existed back then, I'd still have checked as to the proximity of the parking lot before venturing out.

Mr. Anderson above makes a more general observation on the nature of government: Why would you let the same people who think a tourist attraction in Timmins makes sense run your health-care and education system?