The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal: A Foolish Fiasco Yet a Wake-up Call for Freedom of Speech

Ian Mulgrew isn't a fan of Mark Steyn and he shows regrettable ignorance (or perhaps indifference) to the substantial issues raised in Steyn's America Alone. Indeed, Mulgrew dismisses Steyn's sound and substantial case regarding the frightening rise of Islamic jihad (and the West's lame responses to the threat) as specious, snide and exaggerated.

One wonders if he even read the book.

But there's something that ticks Mulgrew off a lot more than his distaste for what he calls the "right-wing humorist" Mark Steyn. And that's the stultifying actions of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal who went after him.

Check out these excerpts from Mulgrew's Vancouver Sun column.

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has decided right-wing humorist Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine are not racist hate-mongers.

How droll.

The panel -- chairwoman Heather MacNaughton, Tonie Beharrell and Kurt Neuenfeldt -- released on Friday 37 pages of self-righteous justification for dragging Steyn and the Toronto-based publication through a ridiculous process. The tribunal's week-long kangaroo hearing in June was a waste of public resources and of Rogers Publishing Ltd.'s money, too.

This make-believe "human rights" complaint was an attempt by the Canadian Islamic Congress to get publicity by taking on a well-known conservative polemicist and the country's weekly news magazine. It worked. This entire process was an affront to our right to free speech and should send a chill down the spine of every Canadian who wants to express an opinion...

Instead of ignoring the rant, or writing a letter of complaint to the editor (many of which were published by Maclean's), the congress initially tried to shake down the magazine for pages of free ink and a $10,000 donation. The editor said he would rather go bankrupt than surrender his publication's integrity...

As a result, the congress went forum shopping to find anyone in the country to take seriously its complaint that Maclean's and Steyn were inciting hatred and contempt of Muslims. Despite its distaste for Steyn's opinions, the Ontario agency said it would not investigate. The Canadian Human Rights Commission, too, ultimately sent them packing stating the obvious -- it had no merit. But the Muslim congress found the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, which may never live down this embarrassing fiasco.

Maclean's and Steyn didn't deign to even offer a defence at the summer's tomfoolery. Who can blame them?...

Maclean's was right to tell the tribunal to get lost and take its case to the public. This process was illegitimate and these tinpot judges knew it. They completely agreed that "read in its context, the article is essentially an expression of opinion on political issues which, in light of recent historical events involving extremist Muslims and the problems facing the vast majority of the Muslim community that does not support extremism, are legitimate subjects for public discussion."

So why did they feel they had the right to conduct an Inquisition?...

This bad joke exposes both a chink in our human rights' legislation that must be fixed and a lack of judgment on the tribunal that should be corrected. Had the agency any sense, it never would have embarked on this sorry exercise. All it has done is expose the human rights process to hatred and contempt, and B.C. to ridicule.

(For more Vital Signs posts dealing with Mark Steyn, go here.)

Steyn Remembers Denny Doherty

The Sixties got old so fast. Cass, Denny and John are all dead, and so are Zal and a bunch of the other supporting players. All the leaves are brown and the skies are grey and the California dream fades to a distant blur. (The conclusion of Mark Steyn's memorial column on Denny Doherty, one of the most magnificent and mellow male voices in rock and roll history.)

Mark Steyn writes so well about so many things and when he shows up in Vital Signs Blog posts, it is usually related to political matters. But Steyn's cultural commentaries are also provocative, engaging and superbly written. You can keep track of this talented fellow through his website, Steyn Online.

Mark Steyn's "America Alone" Raising Hackles

Mark Steyn is being criticized by many in the MSM for being a fraidy-cat alarmist about the encroachment of Islam, particularly in his new book, America Alone. But when your house is on fire, isn't a little alarm a good thing?

Steyn responds, as witty and relevant as ever, in this challenging article in Macleans.

...Okay, enough already. I get the picture: alarmist, alarmist, alarmist. My book's thesis — that most of the Western world is on course to become at least semi-Islamic in its political and cultural disposition within a very short time — is "alarmist."

The question then arises: fair enough, guys, what would it take to alarm you? The other day, in a characteristically clotted speech followed by a rather more careless BBC interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was dangerous to have one law for everyone and that the introduction of sharia — Islamic law — to the United Kingdom was "inevitable." No alarm bells going off yet? Can't say I blame you. After all, de facto creeping sharia is well established in the Western world. Last week, the British and Ontario governments confirmed within days of each other that thousands of polygamous men in their jurisdictions receive welfare payments for each of their wives. Still no alarm bells? I see female Muslim medical students in British hospitals are refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms, which is un-Islamic. Would it be alarmist to bring that up — say, the day before your operation?

Sharia in Britain? Taxpayer-subsidized polygamy in Toronto? Yawn. Nothing to see here. True, if you'd suggested such things on Sept. 10, 2001, most Britons and Canadians would have said you were nuts. But a few years on and it doesn't seem such a big deal, and nor will the next concession, and the one after that. It's hard to deliver a wake-up call for a civilization so determined to smother the alarm clock in the soft fluffy pillow of multiculturalism and sleep in for another 10 years. The folks who call my book "alarmist" accept that the Western world is growing more Muslim (Canada's Muslim population has doubled in the last 10 years), but they deny that this population trend has any significant societal consequences. Sharia mortgages? Sure. Polygamy? Whatever. Honour killings? Well, okay, but only a few. The assumption that you can hop on the Sharia Express and just ride a couple of stops is one almighty leap of faith. More to the point, who are you relying on to "hold the line"? Influential figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury? The bureaucrats at Ontario Social Services? The Western world is not run by fellows noted for their line-holding: look at what they're conceding now and then try to figure out what they'll be conceding in five years' time...

Don't stop now. The rest of Steyn's article is just around this corner.

And note too that America Alone is the next book being discussed in the Vital Signs Ministries' Book It! discussion series. If you're local (Omaha), zip me a line to get in on it.

Steyn on Abortion

At Mark Steyn's excellent web site, he features a column called "Request of the Week." Last week he received this note from a fan living in Stanchel on Prince Edward Island:

Dear Mark,

I would love to re-read a piece on abortion that appeared in The National Post sometime in 2001 or 2002. I can't recall the title, but it mentioned a 17 year-old pregnant waitress and how society's response should be to leave a good tip - not bemoan the "punishment" of a baby. In this age of abortion gift-certificates and Morgentaler's Order of Canada, thankfully you do not consider discussion of this issue "above your pay grade".

Love your writing and dedication to free speech!

Steyn responded, "Okay, here it comes. This was one of the first columns in which I began, tentatively, to address the demographic issue - the self-extinction of the civilization that built the modern world. Whatever one feels about "a woman's right to choose", the state's interest (and especially the big-spending state's) is in natalism."

And he then printed the requested column, a truly exceptional one from The National Post of January 27th, 2003. It's called "Abortion and the State" and it's right here.

The Inexplicable, Irrational Ingratiation to Islam

As usual, Mark Steyn says what needs saying...and he says it well.

“Any attempt to identify a murderous ideology with a great faith such as Islam is wrong, and needs to be denied,” declared Jacqui Smith, the new British Home Secretary, starting her job with a bang, or near-bang, as a flaming Jeep Cherokee (doing a fine impression of a Chevy Blazer) crashed through the terminal at Glasgow Airport, with one of its passengers staggering fron the wreckage screaming, “Allah! Allah!” The following day, nine persons, including seven Spanish tourists, were killed by a somewhat more efficient suicide bomber in Yemen.

Nevertheless, the incoming British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has banned ministers from using the word “Muslim” in connection with terrorism. As The Daily Express reported, “The shake-up is part of a fresh attempt to improve community relations and avoid offending Muslims.”

The world’s Prime Ministers and Presidents have been “avoiding offending Muslims” for five years now. The first reaction of almost every western leader to September 11th was to leap in the limo and hie himself to the nearest mosque...

The rest of Steyn's article is here.

The Right Stuff: The Latest Compilation Post

* “Tinker, Tailor, Clapper, Carter, Downer, Halper, Spy” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

* “7 Ways Spy-in-Chief Barack Obama Spied on Donald Trump” (John Nolte, Breitbart)

* “Scenes of surrender against public drug use” (Editors, New York Post)

* “In Ireland, St. Patrick weeps” (Monica Showalter, American Thinker)

* “From Russia With Love” (Walter Williams, Daily Wire)

* “President Trump at Annapolis” (Paul Mirengoff, Power Line)

* “Trump has secured release of 17 American hostages already and here’s what’s coming” (Samantha Chang, BPR)

* “Shirt of shame: Britain dishes out £62 million in foreign aid to Rwandan dictator who splurges £30 million on sponsorship for his beloved Arsenal Football Club” (Nick Craven, Daily Mail)

Catching Up

Having been busy with the sessions at the L'Abri Conference up in Rochester, Minnesota the last few days, I submit the following as particularly important reads I've since come across.

* “Obamacare and Abortion: Americans are often forced to pay for abortion coverage they do not want.” (Genevieve C. Plaster & Arina O. Grossu, NRO)

* “The Morning After” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

* “Obama’s so selfie absorbed” (Michael Goodwin, New York Post)

* “Dissident savagely attacked by Castro thugs” (Carlos Eire, Babalu)

* “Over 65 Cuban Dissidents Arrested Today” (Capitol Hill Cubans)

* “Standing By His Woman, Killing His Career” (Katie Kieffer, Town Hall)

* “HHS Pushes Church Talking Points, Bulletins to Promote Obamacare” (Jerly Bier, Weekly Standard) There are times when the President likes churches; that is, when they can be used for his political ends.

Mark Steyn on Benazir Bhutto

Mark Steyn has some important reflections on Benazir Bhutto in NRO's Corner today.

Mark Steyn: Big Brother Knows Everything...Except What's Most Important

...Your Granny’s phone calls, your teenager’s Flickr stream, and your Telecharge tickets for two on the aisle at Mamma Mia! for your wife’s birthday, and the MasterCard bill for dinner with your mistress three days later are all fair game, but since October 2011 mosques have been off-limits to the security state.

If the FBI guy who got the tip-off from Moscow about young Tamerlan had been sufficiently intrigued to want to visit the Boston mosque where he is said to have made pro-terrorism statements during worship, the agent would have been unable to do so without seeking approval from something called the Sensitive Operations Review Committee high up in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.

The Sensitive Operations Review Committee is so sensitive nobody knows who’s on it. You might get approved, or you might get sentenced to extra sensitivity training for the next three months. Even after the bombing, the cops forbore to set foot in the lads’ mosque for four days. Three hundred million Americans are standing naked in the NSA digital scanner, but the all-seeing security state has agreed that not just their womenfolk but Islam itself can be fully veiled from head to toe...

(From "Big Politically Correct Brother: The bozo leviathan sees everything . . . and nothing." Mark Steyn's weekend NRO column.)

The Top 5 Plus (September 27)

1) “Why the right is flocking to Christianity” (Joanna Williams, spiked!)

From the article --  A week earlier, I walked with similarly huge crowds of people on the Unite the Kingdom march in London. The same combination of politics and religion was also a feature of that event. Unlike any other demonstration I have attended, this rally kicked off with gospel singers and an evangelical preacher. Some of those marching carried cardboard crucifixes along with English flags. Chants of ‘Christ is King’ could be heard.

On both sides of the Atlantic, there is talk of a Christian revival as lapsed or non-believers find faith in God, leading some to ask if America is undergoing another ‘Great Awakening’. I suspect not everyone brandishing a ‘Turn Back to God’ placard at the Unite the Kingdom rally turned up at church the following morning. However, research for the Bible Society suggests that church attendance in Britain is indeed on the increase, particularly among Gen Z men.

Among cosplayers and believers alike, there is something distinctive about the form of Christianity that is being embraced today. If a revival is underway, it is as far from cross-legged, guitar-strumming, ‘Kumbaya’ Christianity as it is possible to be. Notably, the Bible Society reports that the increase in church attendance in Britain has not benefitted Anglican communities. Young converts are looking to Pentecostal or Catholic denominations. In the UK, as in America, the type of Christianity that seems to be in demand today combines traditional values with evangelical fervour.

2) “No Matter What People Call It, The Land Never Was And Never Will Be ‘Palestine’” (Olivier Melnick, Harbinger's Daily)

From the article -- 

This year marks the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, and while there are many parts of the world that could benefit from a genuine global organization that claims to be “the one place on Earth where all the world’s nations can gather together, discuss common problems, and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity” the United Nations are obsessed with demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. So much so, that since 2015, it has passed 301 resolutions against Israel and 192 against the rest of the world, including some countries such as North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Russia, China, Syria, and others. The double standards are so obvious, but nobody seems to care. The bias and one-sidedness are sickening!

Officially, the Palestinian Liberation Organization declared the establishment of the State of Palestine in 1988. This happened under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, who, incidentally, was born in 1929 in Cairo, Egypt, not “Palestine.” Ever since, more countries have officially recognized Palestine as a bona fide state. 151 out of the 193 nations part of the United Nations have now taken sides against Israel by recognizing Palestine. This year, the UK, France, Belgium, Portugal, Australia, Malta, and Canada will join ranks.

3) “Something Stirs in Post-Christendom” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

From the article --  Last week I observed that there was a critical difference between recent events in the New World and Old:

"In Europe, the people who want you dead are the imported barbarians - the rapists and beheaders loosed upon the land by madmen like Merkel and Johnson. In the US, as we have learned this past week, the people who want you dead are your fellow Americans controlling the commanding heights of your society - the schools, the hospitals, the mainline churches..."

What they share in common, however, is that both threats are pseudo-religious in nature. Islam is a hideously false religion, which is why, where e'r it goes violence follows and calm comes only when Mohammed is king on a field of corpses. There is little contemplation of the divine: In accord with its founder's earthly inclinations, paradise is a brothel staffed only by virgins. Practically speaking, it is a political project masquerading as a religion, which is mighty convenient because, if you submit a municipal planning application for a new mosque, you're treated as if you wish to build a Congregational church.

But the psychotrannies and other American predators have their pseudo-religions too. Some worship Gaia, some repurpose "the world's oldest hatred" as unbounded love for fashionable victim groups: On Saturday night in my own state of New Hampshire, several hours south of me on the Massachusetts border, a man went to dinner at a "country club" in Nashua and was gunned down in front of his mother, wife and daughter by a killer entirely unknown to him but who yelled as he did the deed "Free Palestine!" That's a very un-Granite State kind of murder. The deceased wasn't Charlie Kirk; he was just a guy who installed heating and air conditioning, and lived in a state with a very low homicide rate. But in the New America he's dead because he went out for dinner on a Saturday night.

4) “Cut Tucker Loose” (Scott Johnson, Power Line)

From the article -- 

The point is that Carlson is not fooling anyone anymore—not those on his side and not those on ours. But without the sponsorship of senior figures in the administration, he would be a lone crank podcasting into the void. Thus far, Carlson’s sponsors have been content to ignore his relentless attacks on their colleagues, their policies, their boss, and large swathes of their base. We suspect they hope that Carlson will spontaneously come to his senses, and that the problem will somehow solve itself without them having to do anything uncomfortable.

It won’t. Indeed, all evidence thus far suggests the opposite: that the more Carlson gets away with, the worse he gets. His sponsors can own that—and everything that comes with allying with an anti-Trump subversive whose stock-in-trade is using conspiracies about the Jews to foment civil war on the right—or they can cut him loose. There are no options beyond those two. And it is Carlson, not his critics, who is forcing them to choose.

Also see related article: “Netanyahu Responds Directly to Tucker Carlson, Says He Defends America’s ‘Worst Enemies’” (Alex Griffing, Mediaite)

5) “Leftist Violence Stems from a Hatred of God-Given Reality” (S.A. McCarthy, Washington Stand)

From the article -- The inescapable truth is that leftists do not see you as human. You may have the face of a man and the arms and legs and beating heart of a man, you may walk and talk like a man, but you have made yourself sub-human in their eyes. The reason for this is a failure or refusal to adhere to reality, and the tell-tale signs are the labels leftists use.

Reality is ordained and sustained by God and rooted in Him. Leftism, as a branch of naturalism, seeks to usurp the throne of God and subjugate reality not to His will but to one’s own will. It is the sin of Satan, the sin of Adam and Eve, and the root of nearly all sin ever since, both great and small, it is a rejection of the imitation of Christ and a direct inversion of His example. Where Christ poured out His own blood, the leftist sheds the blood of others. Where Christ prayed, “Not as I will, but as You will,” the leftist declares, “As I will, not as You will.” The animating spirit of leftism is a desire to reorder reality, to subjugate reality beneath the leftist’s feet, and to become God.

This naturalist animating spirit can be seen in leftism’s social and political aims: abortion reorders the procreative reality of sex by killing the child; homosexuality also reorders the procreative reality of sex by removing the possibility of procreation; transgenderism reorders the reality of biology through the use of dangerous drugs and horrifying mutilative surgeries. Of course, none of these things actually alters reality: a mother who kills her unborn child is still a mother, but she is now one who has killed her own child; a marriage is still a union between one man and one woman, no matter how many lawsuits a homosexual-identifying individual files; and a biological man is still a man even though he slices off his own sex organs and replaces them with reshaped forearm flesh. It is all to no avail.

Also see related articles: “While Media Denied Leftist Violence After Kirk Murder, Three More Left-Wing Attacks Happened” (Breccan F. Thies, Federalist)...”Charlie Kirk and the Left’s Memory Police” (Mark Judge, Hot Air)

Other excellent reads from the week:

* “Jabber About Jabs: The Vaccine Debate” (Francis Turner, Substack)

* “Hero at 11: The Boy Who Stopped a School Shooting - and Got Expelled for It” (Eli Shepherd, Red State)

* “UK Gets a Muslim Terrorist Counterterrorism Minister”

(Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone Institute)

* “The United States Has Spent $110 Billion on AIDS Prevention. 

Less Than Half of the Money Went to Medical Supplies and Health Workers, 

a State Department Audit Found.” (Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon)

* “Trump Promises American Global Leadership: 7 Themes from His UN Speech” (Joshua Arnold, Washington Stand) 

* “Why Do So Many European Leaders Now Seem Proud To Side With Hamas?” (Mick Hume, The European Conservative)

* “The Scandalous Case of Cardinal Cupich and Senator Durbin” 

(Jayd Henricks, Catholic World Report)

 * “God’s Character And Unchanging Word Dismantle 

The Lie Of Replacement Theology” (Josh Davis, Harbinger's Daily)

* “You Can’t Make This Up: The Insane Reasons Criminal 

Migrants Stay in the UK” (Niklas Hallén, The European Conservative)

* "The Possessed: Assassination mysteries and the dynamics of political murder." (Lloyd Billingsley, Front Page Magazine)

"It's Fascinating to Observe how Almost Any Old Totalitarian Racket Becomes Respectable Once it's Cloaked in Enviro-hooey." (Mark Steyn)

From NRO's "The Corner" comes this item from Mark Steyn:

People Who Don't Need People

"Humanity is the greatest challenge," says Colorado environmental activist John Feeney in "The Green Room" at BBC News. It's not enough to reduce emissions, we have to reduce the folks doing the emitting:

"We must end world population growth, then reduce population size. That means lowering population numbers in industrialised as well as developing nations."

It's fascinating to observe how almost any old totalitarian racket becomes respectable once it's cloaked in enviro-hooey. For example, restrictions on freedom of movement were previously the mark of the Soviet Union et al. But in Britain, they're proposing limits on your right to take airline flights to other countries - and, as it's in the name of environmental responsibility, everyone thinks it's a grand idea. Mr Feeney's views are the logical reductio, which means in another six months or so European cabinet ministers and UN officials are bound to start taking them up. Nobel Peace Prize winner and notorious cat slayer Jimmy Carter will turn his shotgun on two-legged targets and start building Habitats for Inhumanity.

"Too Sick to Survive?" -- The Death Wish of American Culture

Mark Steyn looks at just a few of the remarkable items which were ignored by the military brass (and others) involving Major Nidal Hassan's windup to mass murder. Those items include this one:

Danquah assumed the military’s chain of command knew about Hasan’s doubts, which had been known for more than a year to classmates in a graduate military medical program. His fellow students complained to the faculty about Hasan’s "anti-American propaganda," but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.

Steyn draws this conclusion --

I believe it was Derb a few months after 9/11 who said that for this new struggle our watchword was "Better screwed than rude." Major Hasan represents the institutionalization of that attitude.Thirteen people are dead, dozens more will live with their injuries for the rest of their days, and a lot of families have had a great big gaping hole blown out of their lives because of it.

Anwar al-Awlaki and his chums have bet that such a society is too sick to survive. Watch the nothing-to-see-here media driveling on about pre-post-traumatic stress disorder like gibbering lunatics in a padded cell, and then think whether you'd really want to take that bet.

Mark Steyn on Obama, Warren and the Trendiness of Racial Politics

Mark Steyn is a treasure, one of the brightest, boldest and best-writing cultural observers on the planet. The latest from his syndicated column is but the latest example of why you should have his website on your bookmark list.

...It turns out that the earliest recorded example of Birtherism is from the president's own literary agent, way back in 1991, in the official bio of her exciting new author:

"Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."...

When it comes to conspiracies, I'm an Occam's Razor man. The more obvious explanation of the variable first line in the eternally shifting sands of Obama's biography is that, rather than pretending to have been born in Hawaii, he's spent much of his life pretending to have been born in Kenya.

After all, if your first book is an exploration of racial identity and has the working title "Journeys In Black And White," being born in Hawaii doesn't really help. It's entirely irrelevant to the twin pillars of contemporary black grievance – American slavery and European imperialism. To 99.99 percent of people, Hawaii is a luxury vacation destination and nothing else.

Whereas Kenya puts you at the heart of what, in an otherwise notably orderly decolonization process by the British, was a bitter and violent struggle against the white man's rule. Cool! The composite chicks dig it, and the literary agents.

And where's the harm in it? Everybody does it – at least in the circles in which Obama hangs. At Harvard Law School, where young Barack was "the first African-American president of The Harvard Law Review," there's no end of famous firsts: As The Fordham Law Review reported, "Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995." There is no evidence that Mrs. Warren, now the Democrats' Senate candidate, is anything other than 100 percent white. She walks like a white, quacks like a white, looks whiter than white. She's the whitest white since Frosty the Snowman fell in a vat of Wite-Out. But she "self-identified" as Cherokee, so that makes her a "woman of color." Why, back in 1984 she submitted some of her favorite dishes to the "Pow Wow Chow" cookbook, a "compilation of recipes passed down through the Five Tribes families."

The recipes from "Elizabeth Warren – Cherokee" include a crab dish with tomato mayonnaise. Mrs. Warren's fictional Cherokee ancestors in Oklahoma were renowned for their ability to spear the fast-moving Oklahoma crab. It's in the state song: "Ooooooklahoma! Where the crabs come sweepin' down the plain." But then the white man came, and now the Oklahoma crab is extinct, and at the Cherokee clambakes they have to make do with Mrs. Warren's traditional Five Tribes recipe for Cherokee Lime Pie….

Turn Off the Old Guard Media...and Read These Instead

* “Refusing To Serve Customers You Don’t Agree With Is Suddenly Cool Again” (Mary Katharine Ham, Federalist)

* “Advice for the Loyal Opposition” (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online)

* “Literally Shaking” (Ann Coulter)

* “Transgender Conformity” (Katherine Kersten, First Things)

* “Media Malpractice? Media Bias And The 2016 Election” (Editors, Investor’s Business Daily)

* “Keep crying wolf about Trump, and no one will listen when there’s a real crisis” (Kyle Smith, New York Post)

* “Barbra Streisand urges Obama to bypass Senate, appoint Supreme Court justice unilaterally” (Valerie Richardson, Washington Times)

* “Google’s Eric Schmidt Wore ‘Staff’ Badge at Hillary Clinton Election Night Party” (Joe Schoffstall, Washington Free Beacon)

* “ESPN’s Public Editor Agrees With Viewers That Network ‘Has Moved Leftward’” (Clay Waters, MRC News Busters)

Prince Charles Blames the End of the World on Capitalism & Consumerism (Royal Company Excluded, Of Course)

"Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned. . . . And in a searing indictment on capitalist society, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and that the ‘age of convenience’ was over." (The Independent)

And, as Mark Steyn remarks, "He then got in his limo and was driven to his other palace."

Read the rest of Steyn's spot on commentary, Gaia’s Right: Environmentalism Seeks to Return Us to the Age of Kings, over here at NRO.

Higher Birth Rates Move Islam Past Catholicism in Number of Adherents

Here's news from Monsignor Vittorio Formenti at the Vatican that Islam has now surpassed Roman Catholicism as the largest single religious group in the world -- 19.2% percent of the world's population compared to 17.4% for Catholics.

The key reason? For those who've read Mark Steyn's remarkable book, America Alone, it's no surprise. Birth rates.

But, more important for the impact on culture than the sheer numbers, is that an awful lot of those counted as Roman Catholics are not practicing the tenets of their "birth religion" at all.

Nor does Roman Catholicism (or Buddhism, Bahai or the Baptists, for that matter) include among their religious beliefs "honor killings," jihad, suicide bombings, death sentences for converts, evangelism by scimitar, and so on.

So, this news from the Vatican certainly isn't good news for Western civilization.

(Note: Let me add here a more direct recommendation of Steyn's America Alone. It is a superb book, timely, insightful and very challenging. Last week it was the focus of one of Vital Signs Ministries' Book It! discussions over here at our home with Quint, Matt, John, Keith, Chet, Claire and I participating. I'm sure they would all add their endorsement of America Alone to mine.)

Just In Time for Christmas: Ben Nelson's Sell-Out, Budget-Busting Boondoggles & Other Democrat Antics

* Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oka.) said it is “absolutely fictitious” that there is an anti-abortion provision in the Senate Democrats’ reworked healthcare reform bill. “The negotiations, whoever did them, threw unborn babies under the bus,” Coburn said.

* The federal ban on abortion funding that has been in effect under the Hyde Amendment since 1977 will be ended with Ben Nelson agreeing to the Senate bill. “The abortion language in this bill funds abortion for the first time since 1977,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). “We are told this is a pro-life bill. It is not.”

* Democrat Senator Richard Burr was ticked off at Ben Nelson for working his hypocritical stance in order to get Nebraska a deal on Medicaid funds. “You have to compliment Ben Nelson for playing the price is right,” Burr said. “This isn’t the Louisiana Purchase. This is the Nebraska windfall.”

* Mark Steyn answered a Facebook friend who asked him, "Can we officially retire the phrases 'blue dog' democrats and 'pro life' democrats? Because there is no such thing:" Steyn said, "As I wrote back in the summer, 'Put not your trust in Blue Dog Democrats.' It was folly to bet the Republic on the likes of Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and other 'moderates' who are, by definition, trimmers and accommodationists."

* Yuval Levin writes in NRO, "The story of the day is certainly Sen. Ben Nelson’s shameless perfidy — giving up his pro-life principles in return for swindling taxpayers in the other 49 states into paying all of Nebraska’s future new Medicaid costs. The deal he struck would undermine both the logic underlying the Hyde Amendment and the logic underlying the Medicaid system. There is no conceivable policy argument for the way the new bill treats Nebraska, it’s simply a case of a senator’s vote being purchased with taxpayer dollars."

* Finally, you'll certainly want to check out the Wall Street Journal's editorial bemoaning the new politics of shame. An excerpt:

...Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.

Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce..

Ignorance Is "In" at the White House

Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity.”

Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.”

Like you, all he knows is what he reads in the papers.

Which is odd, because his Justice Department is bugging those same papers, so you’d think he’d at least get a bit of a heads-up.

But no doubt the fact that he’s wiretapping the Associated Press was also entirely unknown to him until he read about it in the Associated Press.

There is a “president of the United States” and a “government of the United States,” but, despite a certain superficial similarity in their names, they are entirely unrelated...

Mark Steyn is at his best when the opposition gives him something to work with…and, boy oh boy, has Team Obama done that in recent days!

No kidding, don't miss reading the rest of Steyn's weekend column for National Review.

Mark Steyn: "Big Government's Back Alley"

As I was leaving Fox News last night, I glanced up at the monitor and caught Juan Williams expressing mystification to Sean Hannity as to why Republicans in Congress were wasting the country's time on a "little thing" like abortion.

Gee, I dunno. Maybe it's something to do with a mass murderer in Pennsylvania, or Planned Parenthood clinics facilitating the sex trafficking of minors. From the Office of the District Attorney in Philadelphia: "Viable babies were born. Gosnell killed them by plunging scissors into their spinal cords. He taught his staff to do the same."
 
This is a remarkable moment in American life: A man is killing actual living, gurgling, bouncing babies on an industrial scale - and it barely makes the papers. Had he plunged his scissors into the spinal cord of a Democrat politician in Arizona, then The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC and everyone else would be linking it to Sarah Palin's uncivil call for dramatic cuts in government spending. But "Doctor" Kermit Gosnell's mound of corpses is apparently entirely unconnected to the broader culture.

Continue reading Mark Steyn's article, "Big Government's Back Alley," here.

Super, Super-Duper and Ho-Hum: Mark Steyn Looks at Tuesday's Vote

Mark Steyn's "Morning After" Reflections:

I think John O'Sullivan is right. There was an explicit anti-Romney vote in the South. A mere month ago, in the wake of Iowa and New Hampshire, I received a ton of e-mails from southern readers saying these pansy northern states weren't the "real" conservative heartland, and things would look different once the contest moved to the South. Well, the heartland spoke last night and about the only message it sent was that, no matter what the talk radio guys say, they're not voting for a Mormon; no way, no how. The rationale for Romney continuing his campaign is that he's the conservative alternative to McCain. The message from Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee is that he will never be accepted as such by the conservatives' electoral base. With the loss of California, it's hard to see the point of Mitt pushing on. On the other hand, given the ongoing vote-softness of the "frontrunner," it's mind-boggling to think the GOP can't produce a viable alternative.

As to Huck for Veep, I assume, whatever anti-Mitt coordination there is between the two campaigns, McCain is planning to toss Huckabee overboard as soon as he's served his purpose.

The real story of the night, when you look at their rallies and their turn-out numbers, is that the Dems have two strong candidates either of whom could lead a united party to victory. Forget the gaseous platitudes: in Dem terms, their choice on Super Duper Tuesday was deciding which candidate was Super Duper and which was merely Super. Over on the GOP side, it was a choice between Weak & Divisive or Weaker & Unacceptable. Doesn't bode well for November.