Canadian writer
Mark Steyn (born December 8, 1959) is a Canadian journalist, broadcaster, columnist, and film and theatre critic.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
We are witnessing the end of the late 20th-century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad. The Western Muslim’s pan-Islamic identity is merely the first great cause in a world where globalized pathologies are taking the place of old-school nationalism.
"As one is always obliged to explain when tiptoeing around this territory, I am not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture — rule of law, universal suffrage — is preferable to Arab culture. That's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic. I support immigration, but with assimilation.
We're told the old-school imperialists were racists, that they thought of the wogs as inferior. But, if so, they at least considered them capable of improvement. The multiculturalists are just as racist. The only difference is they think the wogs can never reform: good heavens, you can't expect a Muslim in Norway not to go about raping the womenfolk! Much better just to get used to it.
As I understand it, the benefits of multiculturalism are that the sterile white-bread cultures of Britain, Canada and Australia get some great ethnic restaurants and a Commonwealth Games opening ceremony that lasts until two in the morning. But in the case of those Muslim ghettoes — in Sydney, in Oslo, in Paris, Copenhagen and Manchester — multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture — the subjugation of women — combine with the worst attributes of Western culture — licence and self-gratification. Tattoed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of Northern England are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort at Rideau Hall. Yet even in the face of the crudest assaults on its most cherished causes — women's rights and gay rights — the political elite turns squeamishly away.
The principle underpinning the EU is not "We, the people" but "We know better than the people" — not just on capital punishment and the single currency, but on pretty much anything that comes to mind. Not so long ago, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, France's Defence Minister at the time, insisted that the United States was dedicated to the "organized cretinization of our people." As a dismissal of American pop culture — MTV, Disney — this statement is not without its appeal, though it sounds better if you've never had the misfortune to sit through a weekend of continental television. But the reality is that nobody is as dedicated to the proposition that the people are cretins than M. Chevenement and the panjandrums of the new 'Europe.' The EU is organized on this assumption. If, like the Danes and now the Irish, they're impertinent enough to tick the wrong box in referenda on deeper European integration, we'll just keep asking and re-asking the question until they get it right.
To London's Europhiles, Britain is obviously "part of" Europe. But, in the age of jet travel, cellphones, wire transfers and the internet, we are less bound by physical proximity than ever. Yet Britain for the first time in history has chosen to be imprisoned by geography and to disconnect itself from its own culture.
Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
I find myself at odds with virtually the entire politico-media class in my reaction to the "storming" of the US Capitol... I was surprised that even politicians and pundits could utter all that eyewash about "the citadel of democracy" and "a light to the world" with a straight face. It's a citadel of crap, and the lights went out long ago: ask anyone who needs that $600 "relief".