Programming note: Join me tomorrow, Saturday, for another edition of my Serenade Radio show, On the Town. The fun starts at 5pm British Summer Time - which is 6pm in Western Europe/12 midday North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
With that out of the way and just ahead of Episode Eight of our current Tale for Our Time, a word from your host:
As I predicted four years ago, before America's laughably misnamed "election", things are cratering very fast on the free-speech front - in Canada, Australia, Europe, the United States and, most disgracefully of all, in the United Kingdom, where, under an evil and ever more brazenly authoritarian government, you'll get more prison time for a Facebook post than for raping a child. Meanwhile, in Brussels the commissars threaten to ban Twitter from the entirety of the EU because its proprietor conducted an interview with the Republican candidate for US president.
In such a world, I thank all of you who swing by the Steyn shingle as part of your daily rounds. I so miss the Internet of yore and the heyday of independent websites in the early years of this century - before the woketalitarians seized control and tightened the screws, in new media and old. I am full of foreboding about what lies ahead - and our shrinking freedom to talk about anything honestly. The last-photocopier-in-the-woods scenario gets closer every day - although we'll have to move it every night to avoid getting droned.
I'm particularly touched in such an environment by your kind comments about our content here, including this latest audio adventure, written in 1914 but extraordinarily prescient in its vision of an alliance between the elites and Islam. Veronica writes from New Zealand in admiration of the way Lord Ivywood is selling the Mohammedan strictures to an audience of "progressives":
Lord Ivywood's characterization of Islam as a progressive creed, similar to the more familiar allies of Judaism and Methodism, whose symbol is a 'growing' Crescent (as opposed to the fixed and final Cross) which will one day deliver the 'eternal promises of the Orb' to its followers is actually quite a creative and clever one.
The 'very imperfection is its pride' line is even better, as it gives Ivywood a lot of room to dismiss any and all drawbacks of Islam (which his female audience may not embrace at first, such as polygamy) as merely slightly unpleasant, but entirely necessary, little innovations to be made along the 'wonderful path' to Utopia.
Lie back and think of the Orb, Lady Joan!
Genius.
It is indeed. However, in tonight's episode of The Flying Inn, its effectiveness is somewhat stymied by the sudden arrival of the lower orders, all gagging for a drink:
"No offence, sir. But ain't it the Law, sir, that if you 'ave that outside we're all right? I came in 'ere as natural as could be. But Gorlumme, I never see a place like this afore." (Hoarse laughter behind.)
"No apology is needed, my friend," cried the Eastern sage, eagerly, "I can conceive you are not perhaps du-uly conversant with such schools of truth. But the Law is All. The Law is Allah. The inmost u-unity of—"
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Episode Eight by clicking here and logging-in.
Earlier instalments of The Flying Inn can be found here - and, if your tastes incline to the more obviously brutal, my serialisation of Nineteen Eighty-Four starts here.
Thank you again for all your comments, thumbs up or down, on this latest tale. Very much appreciated. If you'd like to know more about The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget, for fellow fans of classic fiction and/or poetry, our Steyn Club Gift Membership.
I'll see you back here tomorrow for Part Nine of The Flying Inn.
