Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human-rights activist. That’s to say, his latest book, After America (2011), is a top-five bestseller in the U.S. and a number-one bestseller in Canada; “A Marshmallow World,” his Christmas single with Jessica Martin, reached number seven on Amazon’s easy-listening bestsellers, and number 41 on Amazon’s main pop chart; and, as for being a leading Canadian human-rights activist, he is actively trying to destroy the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission, for reasons he explains in his book Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West. Mark is also a visiting fellow of Hillsdale Collegeand is a popular guest host of America’s number-one radio show, The Rush Limbaugh Program, and America’s number-two cable show,Hannity. In addition, his writing on politics, arts, and culture can be read each week throughout much of the English-speaking world.
In the United States, he serves as National Review’s Happy Warrior. In Canada, he is a contributing editor to Maclean’s, the Dominion’s oldest and biggest-selling news weekly. Mark also chips in at The Corner, writes a syndicated column, and appears each week on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.
Mark’s other books include America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller in the U.S. and a number-one bestseller in Canada, A Song For the Season, Mark Steyn’s Passing Parade, Mark Steyn From Head to Toe, and The Face of the Tiger. His personal view of musical theatre, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight, was published to critical acclaim in London, and to somewhat sniffier notices in New York.
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A propos the big campaign here to fight off Michael Mann’s assault on free speech, several readers have asked me directly and also inquired in comments on NR’s fundraising post below what the appeals court judges’ ruling actually ... -
The Age of Intolerance
Last week, following the public apology of an English comedian and the arrest of a fellow British subject both for making somewhat feeble Mandela gags, I noted that supposedly free societies were increasingly perilous places for those who make an ... -
Government by Mere Mortals
Not everyone at the Mandela jamboree was doing selfies with the Danish pastry. One reader passed along this photograph: No sign of Barack buddy David Cameron, but here are three of the Queen’s other prime ministers – Australia’s Tony ... -
If You Like Your Checking Account, You Can Keep Your Checking Account
Looks like the government may have found a way to pay down all that debt: Shannon Bruner of Indianola logged on to her checking account Monday morning, and found she was almost 800 dollars in the negative. “The first thing I ... -
Acing the Background Check
In my weekend column, I salute Thamsanqa Jantjie, the game but incompetent sign-language interpreter who translated the Mandela funeral dignitaries’ speeches into utter gibberish for the bargain rate of $4.20 per world leader: How heartening, as one watches the viral video ... -
Cruising for Jihad
Jonah, re mandatory sodomy for martyrdom operations, I’m no bigshot imam but Abdallah al-Khilaf may be on to something with his friends-with-benefits approach to jihad: Casual-sex partners who self-detonate afterwards. Who isn’t looking for that? -
Not Kuster's Last Stand, Alas
The Democrats had a very good night in New Hampshire in November 2012, and swept away, among many others, my congressman. Charlie Bass was nobody’s idea of a rock-ribbed conservative, but he wasn’t an idiot. By contrast, look at ... -
Celebrate Diversity (Nation-Building Edition)
The Toronto Star has an interview with the last Jew in Afghanistan: However resolute Simintov remains about practising his faith, he is embittered — even enraged — by misfortune and by the failure of the U.S-led NATO force to create conditions ... -
Vice-Regal Page-Turner
Andrew, I read William Galbraith’s book on John Buchan on a visit to Calgary last month, and have had it on my nightstand dipping into it back and forth ever since. It is a very fine work, indeed. In ... -
Unarmed Man Goes On Shooting Rampage
A mentally disturbed man is wandering through traffic outside New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. Naturally, the NYPD open fire. They miss the guy. However, the sidewalks being full of people, they manage to hit two female pedestrians, one ... -
War on Women, Deluxe Edition
Munir Akash, lately a professor of world languages and cultural studies at Boston’s Suffolk University, tells Lebanon’s ANB TV that John P. Holdren, Obama’s director of science and technology issues, is behind a White House plan to ... -
The Times They Are A-Changin' (For the Worse)
Whenever people express misgivings about my Christmas album (still available), I usually respond, “Have you heard Bob Dylan’s?” Nevertheless, there are times when we seasonal warblers must stick together, and this is one of them. Dylan is being sued ... -
Talked Out
A longtime Canadian reader writes to say that “your recent column ’Surrender in Geneva’ I find to be flaccid.” He says: Israel should have attacked Iran two years ago. That failing, it should have attacked Iran one year ago. That ... -
Surrender in Geneva
‘Iran, U.S. Set to Establish Joint Chamber of Commerce within Month,” reports Agence-France Presse. Government official Abolfazi Hejazi tells the English-language newspaper Iran Daily that the Islamic Republic will shortly commence direct flights to America. Passenger jets, not ICBMs, ... -
Canada vs Kerry
The last red line in the western world is made of maple leaves: Striking a distinctly harsher tone than its closest allies, Canada is balking at lifting any of its sanctions against Iran until the Islamic regime fully abandons its ... -
Knockouts High and Low
On November 22, 1963, two other notable men died, and got relegated to the foot of page 37 — the British authors C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. Lewis endures because of the Narnia books (and films), but there’s a lot more in ... -
The Presidential Assassination Songbook
Rick, re “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere” (which, notwithstanding the tune and lyrics, is a helluva title): There were several mournful ballads written in honor of the assassinated McKinley but they didn’t have a monopoly of musical memorials. One that ... -
The Language of Liberty
In my book, the formal plugging of which I shall eschew, although it makes a fine Christmas gift, I mention en passant: There has always been a distinction between the “English-speaking peoples” and the rest of “the West”, and at ... -
Thus Spake Obama
It is a condition of my admission to this great land that I am not allowed to foment the overthrow of the United States government. Oh, I signed it airily enough, but you’d be surprised, as the years go ... -
If You Like Your Clam, You Can Keep Your Clam
Climate scientists find world’s oldest creature — and then kill him trying to determine his age. -
What's New, Pussycat?
I may have picked the wrong day to issue my defense of Rob Ford’s verbal infelicities. This morning, the Toronto mayor effortlessly beat his previous best for Soundbite of the Day – in his first ten minutes at City Hall: ... -
A Ford, Not a Lincoln. Big Deal.
I opened up The Corner this morning, saw the sweaty, porcine features of beleaguered Toronto Conservative Rob Ford, the most famous Canadian politician in America since Pierre Trudeau, at the top of the page, and naturally clicked. I must say ... -
Not Tonight, Josephine
On this November 11th, a thought for the day: The only thing standing between the western world and World War III are the French. And French socialists to boot: Western and Iranian negotiators were putting the finishing touches on a ... -
And So It Begins . . .
My old colleague Mark Urban reports for the BBC: Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight. While the kingdom’s quest ... -
Virginia is for Warmers
I was blessedly out of the country on Tuesday, so I’m belatedly catching up on post-election analysis. But I see that self-proclaimed Nobel laureate Michael Mann is hailing Virginia’s gubernatorial race as a referendum on climate science. To ... -
There's Nothing Funny About Obama
. . . and don’t you forget it: HOPKINSVILLE, KY. — A picture of a Jennie Stuart Medical Center employee wearing a President Barack Obama mask and straitjacket at the hospital’s annual costume party has stirred debate. “Stirred debate” isn’t exactly ... -
There's a Sukuk Born Every Minute
The British government announced today that it will be the first non-Muslim government to issue a sharia-compliant bond. On the other hand, how “non-Muslim” is Her Britannic Majesty’s Government anyway? David Cameron’s Arabic is coming along in leaps ... -
Uighurs in Limbo
It isn’t just the big things (like governmentalizing one-sixth of the economy) that Obama screws up, but the small things, too. In 2009, he sprung four Uighurs (Chinese Muslims) from Gitmo, originally captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2001. The ... -
Politics Makes Strange Ted Fellows
As the next Senator from New Hampshire, I’m on record as favoring Canuckalyptic Ted Cruz heading an all-maple ticket on the grounds that we Canadians could hardly make a bigger mess of things than you Americans have. But, if ... -
The Melancholy, Long, Withdrawing ...Silence
Re what Benjamin below refers to as the “fight for faith” by persecuted Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, one reason why it’s not getting much play in the western media is that in the heart of ... -
Undocumented Outreach
The most important aspect of any public-policy issue is how it’s “framed.” In the US, illegal immigration is generally framed as a victims’-rights issue (see that bipartisan rally on the National Mall a week or two back) — hence, ... -
Everyone's an Inmate
At an exhibition in the East End of London, a work by the pseudonymous artist Ego Leonard shows a map of German concentration camps and superimposed thereon three Lego-figure victims in camp uniforms: a Jew, a gay, and a Muslim. ... -
You'll Wonder Where the Yasser Went
. . . when you brush your teeth with Mossadent: Did Mossad Kill Arafat with Radioactive Poison on His Toothbrush? According to the medical journal The Lancet, the widow Arafat also claims to have found polonium in the old monster’s panties. -
Hockey Sticks and Stones
Readers have asked me how self-proclaimed Nobel laureate Dr Michael Mann’s suit against me and National Review is proceeding. I have a few words about it, in a piece on free speech, in today’s National Post of Canada: ... -
Let's Roll . . . Some Orange Cones Across The Entrance
On September 11 2001, America’s big bloated money-no-object bureaucracy and its obsolete brain-dead 1970s hijacking procedures utterly failed the people of this country. Nevertheless, on Flight 93 brave freeborn citizens acted as an ad hoc militia and did the job their government ... -
Madonna è mobile
Kaballah gal Madonna is moving on: I am building schools for girls in Islamic countries and studying the Qur’an… As life goes on (and thank goodness it has), the idea of being daring has become the norm for me. ... -
The Play's The Thing
A week ago, I wrote about the decline of government into mere simulacrum thereof – a shutdown that isn’t a shutdown over a rollout that isn’t a rollout and a debt ceiling that isn’t a ceiling. But even ... -
Fake Nobel Laureate to Give Speech
I see Dr Michael Mann, currently suing me and National Review for “defamation”, is still passing himself off as a Nobel Laureate, despite having been told by both the Nobel Institute and the International Panel for Climate Change to cut ... -
'Sir, You Are Recreating'
Sterling, re that Eagle-Tribune story about the National Park Service expanding its role as the paramilitary wing of the DNC, this passage is worth quoting in full: The bus stopped along a road when a large herd of bison passed ... -
The Glamor That Was Camelot
JFK dated Helen Thomas. (Better photograph here.) -
Obama Furloughs the Sea
In my weekend column, I wrote re the feds’ determination to “close” large areas of open space by barricading them: One would not be altogether surprised to find the feds stringing yellow police tape along the Rio Grande, the 49th ... -
Working Blue Over Red Lines
I gotta say Face The Nation and Meet The Press would benefit from a little of this. Syrian pundit Dr. Akram Makkana and Free Syrian Army political coordinator Luay al-Miqdad discuss the Assad chemical-weapons deal on ... -
The Waive Heard Around the World
The IRS has graciously granted U.S. citizens overseas a waiver of the individual mandate: 12. Are US citizens living abroad subject to the individual shared responsibility provision? Yes. However, U.S. citizens who live abroad for a calendar year (or ... -
The Resolutionary War
Further to my post below on the specific point of the power of the purse, it’s worth noting more generally that government-by-continuing-resolution is a real banana-republic racket entirely unbecoming to any mature society. Robert Stacy McCain in The American ... -
Time to Get Your Hockey Stick Tied
I’ve been laughing the socks off my carbon feetprint at the climate crowd belatedly climbing off Michael Mann’s hockey stick, so I’m distressed to see some chaps aren’t taking it as well: A meteorologist who has ... -
The Times Climbs Off the Hockey Stick
Rich notes below Richard Muller’s New York Times piece on how the world “mistakenly took the hockey stick seriously.” The boss is too discreet to mention that NR’s lawyers are in court this very morn over the discovery ... -
Thomas Friedman in the Pink
A year or two down the road, they’ll be teaching Thomas L Friedman’s New York Times column at Columbia Journalism School. It has a killer opening: I was at a conference in Bern, Switzerland, last week and struggling ... -
The Price of Non-Victory
There’s a detail deep in this Washington Post story that deserves to be more widely known: As it intensifies its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. military is being forced to fly massive amounts of gear and equipment out ... -
Cover Version
The Miss World contest is being held in Indonesia this weekend, and the usual excitable chappies are not happy about it: Protestors from the Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia demonstrated in the central Java city of Yogyakarta with its spokeswoman ... -
The World Turns
A few moments ago, Kevin Rudd conceded, so, in a day or two, after the usual prompt eviction that occurs under the Westminster system, Tony Abbott will become Australia’s Prime Minister. I’d like to second John O’Sullivan’...
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Re-Education Camp
Having leaned on A&E to suspend their biggest star, GLAAD has now moved on to Stage Two: “We believe the next step is to use this as an opportunity for Phil to sit down with gay families in Louisiana ... -
A Useful Chap in a Foxhole
The lads at Mother Jones have noticed we’re having a bit of a fundraising drive over the legal bills from fraudulent Nobel laureate Michael Mann’s lawsuit against us. Kevin Drum comments: A judge recently ruled that Mann’s ... -
Peter O'Toole, R.I.P.
Peter O’Toole died in London yesterday. He was one of the few actors I was happy to watch in any role. He improved almost anything he was in, although I wish there had been more late-career stuff after his ... -
Thought for the Day
It’s come to this: So I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised to learn that the most economically free state in North America isn’t a state. It’s a Canadian province. -
Funeral Spice
‘I don’t want to be emotional but this is one of the greatest moments of my life,” declared Nelson Mandela upon meeting the Spice Girls in 1997. So I like to think he would have appreciated the livelier aspects of ... -
The Office (Congressional Edition)
I wrote below about Annie Kuster, member of the House of Representatives for the N.H. second district (where I happen to live), and her appearance before the Jewish Federation in Manchester, at which she refused to answer a question ... -
Quivering in Place
Further to the unarmed man who went on a shooting rampage, we now have the schoolboy suspended for bringing an imaginary weapon to school: A fifth grader in Pennsylvania has been suspended for shooting an imaginary arrow at a classmate. ... -
If You Like Your PIN, You Can Keep Your PIN
When Ted Cruz suggested that “Nigerian email scammers” built the Obamacare websites, the Nigerian Ambassador demanded he apologize. However: New problems emerged on Friday, with a Capitol Hill source drawing attention to an apparent scam in the system. The source ... -
The Post-Work Economy
One consequence of the botched launch of Obamacare is that it has, judging from his plummeting numbers with “Millennials,” diminished Barack Obama’s cool. It’s not merely that the website isn’t state-of-the-art but that the art it’s ... -
The Demographic Challenges Ate My Homework
I don’t quite buy Jason Richwine’s insouciance about the wretched U.S. scores on international education rankings: While the U.S. gets mediocre scores, it also has demographic and socioeconomic challenges that the more homogeneous European and East ... -
Tiger Beat... White House Beat... Who Can Tell?
These have been tough times for the Obammysoxers of the US media. So many mean-spirited right-wing extremists want to blow up out of all proportion one itsy-bitsy website and a few million bad-apple health insurance cancelations. But fortunately there are ... -
Ice Everywhere, But No Hockey Sticks
News from Santa’s Grotto: Global warming hysterics at the BBC warned us in 2007 that by summer 2013, the Arctic would be ice-free. As with so many other doomsday predictions by warmists, the results turn out to be quite the opposite. ... -
Dissent Is the Highest Form of Tax Bracket
In Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger, the eponymous Auric Goldfinger observes: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it’s enemy action. That may be overly generous. A couple of weeks back, cancer patient Bill Elliot, in a defiant appearance ... -
All's Well That's Gladwell
So I was reading John Gray’s piece in The New Republic about Malcolm Gladwell’s new book and, among other things, its offhand stupidity about Northern Ireland and Vichy France, when it all started to sound vaguely familiar: If ... -
Cry 'Havoc!' and Let Slip the Dogs...
This is either a cute doggie story, or a disturbing glimpse into the poor security of the Obamacare exchanges: A Fort Collins, Colorado man got the surprise of his life after he signed up for an Obamacare account last month: ... -
The Ghosts of November
Aside from the music, I haven’t anything to say about the Kennedy anniversary I haven’t said on previous anniversaries. A decade ago, I wrote: History is selective. We remember moments, and, because that moment in Dallas blazes so ... -
Showstopper!
John J. Miller’s post below did such a good job of putting me off James McAuley’s Kennedy observances in the New York Times that it wasn’t until I happened to catch this arresting headline that I clicked ... -
The Quick Fix
My weekend column is about Obamacare. So’s everybody else’s. Democrats seem to think it can be “fixed”, and we can then move on to talking about “comprehensive immigration reform”, and the next train wreck. I think not. Here’... -
My New Friends
Fake Nobel laureate Michael Mann’s lawsuit against National Review took an interesting turn yesterday. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the National Press Club, and a bunch of Big Media organizations (including Dow Jones, the Los Angeles ... -
If You Like Your Head, You Can Keep Your Head
Al-Qaeda affiliate apologizes for decapitating the wrong guy. -
Picture of Health
The identity of the “Obamacare Girl”, whose stock-photo loveliness was the least non-functioning part of the website, has been uncovered: Journalists called her the “enigmatic Mona Lisa of health care” and devoted time and resources to tracking her down. But ... -
Render unto Seizure
In the year 1215, Magna Carta provided a freeman of England with the right to a trial in a fixed, local law court, and protected him from being “amerced [fined] for a slight offence, except in accordance with the degree of ... -
The Silence of the Hams
Since I found myself conscripted into the battle for free speech in Canada and elsewhere, I’ve often had cause to comment on one of the most dismal features of the scene: The “bold, transgressive” contrarians of the arts world ... -
The Drift toward Despotism
At a time when over 4 million people have had their health insurance canceled, it’s good to know that some Americans can still access prompt medical treatment, even if they don’t want it. David Eckert was pulled over by ... -
Crying Uncle
I missed this story the other day, but truly this sentence may be one of the most poignant glimpses of the burdens of celebrity that I have ever read: Pals say the pressure of being Vice President Joe Biden’s ... -
A Phalanx of Lies
CNN has been pondering what they call “a particularly tough few days at the White House.” “Four out of five Americans have little or no trust in their government to do anything right,” says chief political analyst Gloria Borger. “And ... -
A Fate Worse Than Canada
With respect to the great Suzanne Somers, I think her column in the Wall Street Journal is a little behind the curve. A few years back, I too was retailing horror stories from Canadian (and British) health care — wait times, ... -
Tales from the Virtual Waiting Room
In my weekend column on Obamacare, I mentioned CGI’s involvement with the Canadian Government’s most notorious flop of recent years – the national firearms registry. The database simply could not be fixed, to the point where CGI were commissioned ... -
Obamacare’s Magical Thinkers
If you’re looking for an epitaph for the republic (and these days who isn’t?) try this — from August 2010 and TechCrunch’s delirious preview of Healthcare.gov: “We were working in a very very nimble hyper-consumer-focused way,” explained Todd ... -
Glatter Operator
Michael Mann’s climate-change hockey stick continues its bad case of brewer’s droop. As part of its call for a new climate policy, the prestigious German weekly Wirtschaftswoche lists Dr. Mann’s stick as No. 2 on its ... -
For Meaningful Bicameralism
Further to Andy’s excellent column and his note below: the question of which house ought to have responsibility for “money bills” (which we batted around in these parts a few days back) is not a highfalutin abstraction but directly ... -
Potemkin Parliament
The least dispiriting moment of another grim week in Washington was the sight of ornery veterans tearing down the Barrycades around the war memorials on the National Mall, dragging them up the street, and dumping them outside the White House. ... -
Koch Zero
The litigiously insecure name-caller Dr. Michael E. Mann likes to insist that evil Koch Brothers money is behind all those who disagree with him: Is #AnthonyWatts really the best front man the #KochBrothers can buy? http://t.co/mPmi0nBkrh #... -
Bison Is No Rino
I like the cut of this bison’s jib, and, if he were to form an exploratory committee, would gladly support him in 2016. -
Le Centre, C'est Moi
I got a laugh out of this headline from Agence-France Presse: Mainstream Baffled As French Turn To Far Right France’s mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (... -
Chicken Supreme
My weekend column was headlined “Park Service Paramilitaries.” Just to prove the point they showed up today in riot gear. Meanwhile, as part of our continuing series on the paramilitarized bureaucracy, following Seal Team Six I’ve tipped my hat ... -
Park Service Paramilitaries
If a government shuts down in the forest and nobody hears it, that’s the sound of liberty dying. The so-called shutdown is, as noted last week, mostly baloney: Eighty-three percent of the supposedly defunded government is carrying on as ... -
America, Your Vacation Wonderland!
On his radio show yesterday, our pal Michael Graham spoke to one of the tourists held under house arrest (or hotel arrest) by the National Park Service geyser stasi at Yellowstone Park. Here’s part of the interview: There was ... -
Canuckalypse Now!
As one Canadian to another, I was struck by this passage from Maureen Dowd’s latest New York Times column: “Well, son, they knew there was something creepy about the ringleader, Ted Cruz,” the man replies. “His face ... -
Song of the National Park Service
Further to Kate’s post below, I’ve never had much use for that old Commie Woody Guthrie, and I’ve always resisted suggestions that his ghastly jingle be upgraded to official status. But, after the sheer vindictive pettiness of ... -
Banana Splits
Our friend Daniel Hannan is talking up the Anglosphere, but Yahya Jammeh, leader of the Gambia, isn’t buying: In its statement, The Gambian government said it had “withdrawn its membership of the British Commonwealth”. It said it had “decided ... -
Shutdown Simulacrum
Way back in January, when it emerged that Beyoncé had treated us to the first ever lip-synched national anthem at a presidential inauguration, I suggested in this space that this strange pseudo-performance embodied the decay of America’s political institutions ... -
School Days
The other day, members of Boko Haram, a group of (surprise!) Muslim “extremists,” broke into an agricultural college in Nigeria and killed some four dozen students. The dead were themselves mainly Muslim, but had made the fatal mistake of attending ... -
A Privilege of the Commons
I wouldn’t attempt to pass myself off as a U.S. Constitutional scholar, but, in the dispute between Andy McCarthy and Matthew Franck (and Ramesh Ponnuru) on the Senate and the power of the purse, I’m inclined to ... -
Worse Is the New Normal
A few years ago, after the publication of my book America Alone, an exasperated reader wrote to advise me to lighten up, on the grounds that “we’re rich enough to be stupid.” That’s to say, Western democracies and ... -
American Banana Republic
‘This is the United States of America,” declared President Obama to the burghers of Liberty, Mo., on Friday. “We’re not some banana republic.” He was talking about the Annual Raising of the Debt Ceiling, which glorious American tradition seems ... -
The Last Phobia
I see David Brooks has attracted a bit of pushback for describing Ted Cruz as “the Senator from Canada,”perhaps snidely hinting at divided loyalties. The Times’s man has jumped the moose with this one. As it turns out, ... -
Hold the Front Page
My weekend column is about Putin’s urge to kick a man when he’s down. Having initially misread his New York Times piece, Peggy Noonan now gets the point: He is telling the world he knows how to correct ... -
American Ineffectualism
For generations, eminent New York Times wordsmiths have swooned over foreign strongmen, from Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer-winning paeans to the Stalinist utopia to Thomas L. Friedman’s more recent effusions to the “enlightened” Chinese Politburo. So it was inevitable that ... -
Casus Belli
I began my weekend column with some cheap shtick about how the Obama crowd’s line on Syria is indistinguishable from what they once objected to on Iraq. But this headline embodies, very literally, their confused thinking: BBC News uses ‘...