Programming note: Please join me tomorrow, Wednesday, for another Clubland Q&A, when I'll be taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet. The fun starts at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm GMT.
~They're saying it out loud now:
Ireland's Green Party Sen. Pauline O'Reilly: "We are restricting freedom but we're doing it for the common good...Yes you have rights, but they are restricted for the common good."pic.twitter.com/A1JN1yMyVv
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 27, 2023
The obvious objection is that this is the rationale of totalitarian monsters throughout history. But, in our time, it's worse than that - because, when "diversity is our strength", there is no "common good". Because to have a "common good" you have to have something in common - and increasingly, in the vibrantly diverse multiculti hellhole our rulers have made of once coherent societies, we don't.
What does the firebreathing imam with four child brides at 27 Parnell Gardens have in common with the non-binary trans couple at Number 29? And what degree of "restrictions" will be required to maintain the pretence that he does? In such a world, it is entirely natural that, when young girls are stabbed by a "migrant" and some fellows are sufficiently intemperate to take to the streets and object to the government policy of importing stabbers, the problem is not the stabbers but the objectors.
Thus, Mr Varadkar's ministry is fast-tracking new laws to ensure that next time, if you're minded to object, you'll be prosecuted. As we discussed yesterday, it's the criminalisation of opposition - and legislators like Senator O'Reilly are ever more open about it.
~As longtime readers are aware, the biggest issue for me is the demographic death-spiral of the western world. As I wrote in 2006:
In demographic terms, the salient feature of much of the 'progressive agenda' – abortion, gay marriage, endlessly deferred adulthood – is that, whatever the charms of any individual item, cumulatively it's a literal dead end.
As fertility dries up, so do societies.
The big difference between my thesis and P D James's terrific novel The Children of Men is that, in her dystopian future, humanity is biologically infertile whereas, in the contemporary west, we seem only psychologically so.
But that was then, and here we are almost two decades later. Our pal Naomi Wolf's argument that the Covid vaccines damage fertility is dismissed by the media as "disinformation". And yet, as we have reported for two years on The Mark Steyn Show, across Europe there is a mysterious dearth of babies. Le Monde:
France's birth rate fell by 7% in the first half of 2023
And not just France:
Swiss birth rate hits all-time low
Finnish women gave birth to an average of 1.32 children in 2022, the lowest fertility rate since the figures were first recorded in 1776, according to a new report by Statistics Finland.
That's down from 1.87 in 2010.
The "Leader of the Free World", meanwhile, is leading the west in mass transitioning - that's to say, it's not just the occasional Pigalle showgirl packing a little more than you were expecting, but legions of middle-school girls insisting they're boys and receiving medical treatment that renders them (surprise surprise!) infertile.
What the developed world needs right now is more babies of its own - Finnish, Swiss, French, American. Instead, under current public policy, our entire society seems to be transitioning, from an America Alone disinclination to breed to a Children of Men inability to.
~Following her sell-out tour of the Deranged Dominion earlier this year, German MEP Christine Anderson is back in Canada - and this time she's brought everybody's favourite Hilversum milkmaid Eva Vlaardingerbroek (who will be joining Conrad Black, Bo Snerdley and others on the next Mark Steyn Cruise). Naturally, Bernie Farber's government-subsidised "Canadian Anti-Hate Network" has denounced Eva as - all together now - "far right". Obviously, she should be banned - for the "common good".
By "far right", Farber means that Eva is a supporter of the party that won the election. Here's her victory tweet:
Cheers to the fact that the PVV has just absolutely crushed the Dutch establishment.
The nationalist right wing is so back.
If you belong to that "Dutch establishment", how would you respond? Johannes Angelus gave it a bit of thought and then tweeted back:
If you think that a specific threat to rape and kill a named individual is going a bit far, hey, relax. Per the Twitter "support team":
After reviewing the available information, we want to let you know AngelusJohannes hasn't broken our safety policies.
Gee, that's good to know. I feel safer just reading that.
Unfortunately, the insouciant Continental branch office of Twitter was unaware that the boss man, Elon Musk, is quite a fan of Eva's, and within minutes of her publishing the "support team"'s response he swung into action. Johannes Angelus has now made his account private, and is wetting his panties - or the panties he's stolen from whichever other rape targets he fantasises about.
It is interesting that Mr Angelus, as an impeccably lefty progessive, felt he could safely publish a call for the murder of my friend. But it is more revealing surely that Twitter's local "support team" decided to go along with it: Ha-ha, someone wants to rape and kill that far-right chick! We lefties have all the best jokes, don't we?
How does this happen? Well, in part it arises from fellows like Bernie Farber, Canada's taxpayer-funded Hatefinder-General. I don't suppose he shares Mr Angelus's wish to rape and kill; he probably doesn't even want to steal her panties. But he has played a critical role in the dismal reductio of our political discourse, into the banale labeling of those with whom you have a public-policy disagreement - on immigration, on farming, on digital identity - as "haters".
After all, the only real haters here are Johannes Angelus and his "support team" at Twitter's Dutch office: Eva wants to talk about agricultural policy; Johannes wants to rape and kill her. This is a logical consequence of the dehumanisation that goes with turning mere political opponents into beyond-the-pale "haters". Yet Bernie Farber insists Eva is the problem, not her putative rapist.
Does Mr Angelus really wish to murder Eva? Probably not; he sounds a bit of a wimpy panty-sniffing loser. But there have been enough actual political assassinations in the Netherlands of the twenty-first-century - Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh - that Eva should not be put in the position of having to assess that risk.
As we have seen on the streets of western cities these last few weeks, today's left is a malign alliance between those who commit violence and those who are turned on by violence, who find its glamour seductive. Thus, the slacktivists chant "Gas the Jews!" outside the Sydney Opera House not because they can be arsed to do it themselves but because they'd get a kick if somebody more motivated did. The question for social tranquility in the years ahead is how many will cross over from the one group to the other.
~You have to be able to talk honestly about such things, and increasingly in the west you can't. So I've been enormously touched by how many readers, listeners and viewers wish to support my free-speech lawsuits on both sides of the Atlantic - over the Big Climate warmatollahs in Washington (the trial starts in January) and against the UK state censor Ofcom in London. Well, there are several ways to lend a hand, including:
a) signing up a friend for a Steyn Club Gift Membership - it's a great Christmas gift;b) buying a chum a SteynOnline gift certificate - likewise;
c) ordering a copy of my latest book The Prisoner of Windsor (you won't regret it); or
d) treating yourself to the limited-edition SteynOnline Liberty Stick.
With the first two methods, one hundred per cent of the proceeds goes to a grand cause - and, in the latter two, everything save the shipping. And you or your loved one gets something, too.
~Finally, let me thank all the newcomers to our ranks in recent days, from Idaho to Ireland, Johannesburg to Joncherey, Maple Grove to Moffat Beach. We hope to welcome many more of you in the years ahead. For more information on The Mark Steyn Club, see here.
