Islam into the Breach: Another Great Mark Steyn Article

“Think globally, act locally” works for environmentalism and jihad --Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn nails the stand-for-nothing PC secularists who encourage jihadis on Western soil. These dangerously misguided liberals apologize for Western Civilization and denigrate Christianity and Judaism while aiding and abetting illiberal Muslim chauvinism.

Secular progressives and triumphant Muslims join forces to tear down Europe's great cathedrals. The Muslims construct mosques while the intellectually clapped out Western apologists build altars to Gaia. (BTW enviros, all that global warming crap is out the window when the Muslims gain electoral plurality in Europe. No way are they bowing to a strange god, especially a female one.)

Here are some excerpts from Steyn's excellent article:

And so in much of the post-Christian West “a pluralist society” has subsided into a vast gaping nullity too weak to have any purchase on large numbers of the citizenry. In practice, the “secularist and liberal defense” is the vacuum in which a resurgent globalized Islam has incubated.

It is only human to wish to belong to something larger than oneself, and thereby give one’s life meaning. For most of history, this need was satisfied by tribe and then nation, and religion. But the Church is in steep decline in Europe, and the nation-state is all but wholly discredited as the font of racism, imperialism, and all the other ills.

So some (not all) third-generation Britons of Pakistani descent look elsewhere for their identity, and find the new globalized Islam. And some (not all) 30th-generation Britons of old Anglo-Saxon stock also look elsewhere, and find global warming.

Progressive Multiculturalism is a One Way Street

To progressive opinion, it’s taken as read that “multiculturalism” is a one-way street: It seems entirely reasonable for a Wahhabist to say an Anglican church in Riyadh would seem, gee, I dunno, just somehow kinda un-Saudi, whereas it is entirely unacceptable for Heidi’s grandfather to say a Deobandi mosque in Lucerne is un-Swiss.

Everybody's gotta believe in something, and you can't replace something with nothing

Jesus told us 2000 years ago that nature abhors a vacuum:

"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first." -- Luke 11:24-26

That goes for removing good stuff as well. You can't just sweep the house clean and expect it to remain empty. You've got to fill it with good things, or evil spirits will swoop in to fill the emptiness.

And a few verses before this passage, Jesus reminded us that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Are you hollowed-out Westerners listening?

Why I Love Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn puts a humorous, wry twist on his conservative observations of our politics and culture.  The guy knows how to write!

About Obama administration lefties such as Anita Dunn:

A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he'd been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of Leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don't know why he'd be surprised.

When a man has spent his entire adult life in the "community organized" precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category.

Anita Dunn, the Communications Director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history: In Mao's China, everyone wore the same clothes.

So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite "political philosopher".

The liberal press attacked Rush Limbaugh over fake quotes, then shrugged at Anita Dunn praising a Communist Dictator who murdered 40-70 million people.  That ridiculous dichotomy inspired this beautiful piece of Steynian high parody:

The White House now says that Anita Dunn was "joking." Anyone tempted to buy that spin should look at the tape: If this is her Friars Club routine, she needs to work on her delivery. But, for the sake of argument, try a thought experiment:


Midway through Bush's second term, press secretary Tony Snow goes along to Chester A. Arthur High School to give a graduation speech.


"I know it looks tough right now. You're young, you're full of zip, but the odds seem hopeless. Let me tell you about another young man facing tough choices 80 years ago. It's last orders at the Munich beer garden – gee, your principal won't thank me for mentioning that – and all the natural blonds are saying, 'But Adolf, see reason. The Weimar Republic's here to stay, and, besides, the international Jewry control everything.'


And young Adolf Hitler puts down his foaming stein and stands on the table and sings a medley of 'I Gotta Be Me', '(Learning To Love Yourself Is) The Greatest Love Of All' and 'The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow.' And by the end of that night there wasn't a Jewish greengrocer's anywhere in town with glass in its windows.


Don't play by the other side's rules; make your own kind of music. And always remember: You've gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?"

Anyone think he'd still have a job?

It's not what you say.  It's not even how you say it.  It's who says it that matters to the chattering left.  And when Mark Steyn says it, the left is stripped of any and all pretense of reason.

It's Out of Our Hands

Do the disappearing 401Ks discredit personal retirement accounts?

Mark Steyn reports that the two big accomplishments of the G20 Summit were to close global tax loopholes and to impose impose European-style regulation on the global economy. This will spread sclerotic, European-style (non) growth across the globe, guaranteeing inadequate returns on private retirement fund in perpetuity.

He then wrote about why so many people have become investors:

Let it be said that in recent years in America, the United Kingdom, and certain other countries the “financial sector” grew too big. In The Atlantic, Simon Johnson points out that, between 1973 and 1985, it was responsible for about 16 percent of U.S. corporate profits. By this decade, it was up to 41 percent.

That’s higher than healthy, but it wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near that high if government didn’t annex so much of your wealth — through everything from income tax to small-business regulation — that it’s become increasingly difficult to improve your lot by working hard, making stuff, and selling it. Instead, in order to fund a more comfortable retirement and much else, large numbers of people became “investors” — albeit not as the term is traditionally understood:

Instead, you work for some company and they put some money on your behalf in some sort of account that somebody on the 12th floor pools together with all the others and gives to somebody else in New York to disperse among various corporations hither and yon. You’ve no idea what you’re “investing” in, but it keeps going up, so why do you care?

Yes! I thought. I heard some guy on the radio talking about how 401K's have turned into 1K's, leaving many boomers with a quarter of what they expected for retirement. "That's a real kick in the pants," I thought impassively. I'm still to far away from retirement to be worrying over this stuff.

Mark provides the answer to the man who rightly laments over the sorrowful state of so many nest eggs: Confiscatory government policies drove us to this point.

Our Grandparents Knew Better

How did my grandparents, who were not rich at all, end up with money in the bank when they hit their 60's? Working class people didn't have exotic financial instruments that earned 15% per year back then. Ordinary people stuck their money in a bank or in US Savings Bonds, and earned 3.5% interest per annum.

According to Dinkytown's Saving Calculator, here's how Grandma and Grandpa ended up with a little over $100,000 at age 60: By putting $100 per month in a bank account over 40 years accruing 3.5% interest. $50 per month over the same period yields just over $50,000. They also may have bought a piece of property along the way.

Steyn's argument in a nutshell is that when government takes less from you, you are better able to care for yourself, and in turn you don't need the government as much. Yes, people were not rampant consumers back then, and there weren't so many McMansions and electronic goodies to temp them, but who's putting a gun to your head now?

Our grandparents understood the value of frugality, and government understood its limits, but that's all out the window now.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTNlZjcxOGZmMjA0YjU2OTE5ZjJmN2FkNmYyYzI3MjQ=&w=MQ==