Welcome to Part Two of The Flying Inn by G K Chesterton, our latest audio adventure in Tales for Our Time and set in an England in which the elites decide to make common cause with Islam. Imagine that! Still, nice to have a bit of whimsical escapism from the headlines, right?
We are always pleased, in this our eighth year, to welcome new members to The Mark Steyn Club. Arnold, who lives in north-eastern Spain, was figuring on prevaricating for another quarter-century or so but was overcome with a sudden urge to rush right in:
Hi Mark. Finally took the plunge and became a First Decade Founding Member this week.
Didn't know what to expect with the serializations but not disappointed.
"Not disappointed": I think that's what they call on Broadway a money quote. Arnold continues:
I saw all these posts on X last week claiming the British monarchy will end pretty soon. Didn't buy into that, the Crown has almost a thousand years of experience clinging on to power and will just go with the flow. I noted your king was encouraged by Starmer's clampdown on the white rubes. He already threw his old subjects overboard and will be happy to become the sultan of the next inhabitants of the British isles. Hearing you make almost the same point didn't make me smile at all.
United Kingdom... United Emirate... Yeah, like Arnold says, go with the flow.
In tonight's episode of The Flying Inn, we find ourselves on a small Ionian island where the smaller European powers have dispatched Anglo-German emissaries to conclude a peace with the marauding Mohammedans. The Turk drives a hard bargain:
Oman Pasha insists on the destruction of the vineyards.
Hmm. As I remarked just the other day:
Anyone opened a book on when the first great French vineyard will be torched and razed?
Needless to say, when it happens, progressive opinion will have no more difficulty than Chesterton's urbane English diplomatist in putting a positive spin on it:
"... do we indeed owe nothing," the diplomatist was saying "to that gesture of high refusal in which so many centuries ago the great Arabian mystic put the wine-cup from his lips? Do we owe nothing to the long vigil of a valiant race, the long fast by which they have testified against the venomous beauty of the Vine? Ours is an age when men come more and more to see that the creeds hold treasures for each other, that each religion has a secret for its neighbour, that faith unto faith uttereth speech, and church unto church showeth knowledge. If it be true... that we of the West have brought some light to Islam in the matter of the preciousness of peace and of civil order, may we not say that Islam in answer shall give us peace in a thousand homes, and encourage us to cut down that curse that has done so much to thwart and madden the virtues of Western Christendom. Already in my own country... the legislature takes more and more sweeping action to deliver the populace from the bondage of the all-destroying drug. Surely the prophet of Mecca is reaping his harvest; the cession of the disputed vineyards to the greatest of his champions is of all acts the most appropriate to this day; to this happy day that may yet deliver the East from the curse of war and the West from the curse of wine..."
To hear me read the second episode of The Flying Inn, please click here and log-in. If you missed Part One, you'll find that here.
Chesterton's satirical fancy has not yet been entirely overtaken by events, but it's a damn close-run thing. Robert, a First Fortnight Founding Member from Ottawa, notes of this latest Tale for Our Time:
Even more accurate than you might think. Check out American Thinker: "To keep Muslims happy, the UK's Labour Party wants to destroy pub culture", and the nationalpulse link cited therein.
~If you seek alternative dystopias to Chesterton's, do check out our brace of Orwellian adaptations - Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four - or even a contemporary inversion of a classic, retooled for our wretched times, by yours truly. Whatever your taste, we have plenty of other yarns in all genres over on our Tales for Our Time home page.
Tales for Our Time started as an experimental feature we introduced as a bonus for Mark Steyn Club members, and, as you know, I said if it was a total stinkeroo, we'd eighty-six the thing and speak no more about it. But I'm thrilled to say it's proved very popular, and and we now have quite an archive. If you're a Club member and you incline more to the stinkeroo side of things, give it your best in the Comments Section below.
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