Yes, it's me! Mark Steyn of that ilk - back in the saddle for another hour of questions from Steyn Clubbers around the planet.
~THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - from Marco Rubio, of all people:
Just listen to what Rubio told the Senate. America, he said, won the Cold War 30 years ago, but promptly succumbed to triumphalism. We sought to retain our superpower status through open immigration, free trade, and foreign intervention. The results? A border crisis, deindustrialization, endless wars, and a rising China.
"The postwar global order is not just obsolete," Rubio said. "It is now a weapon being used against us." Under President Trump, Rubio continued, U.S. foreign policy will prioritize the national interest.
Imagine that. One might object that this précis doesn't go far enough. It's more than, for example, "deindustrialisation"; it's the reduction of the United States to a cheap service economy: China gets to make everything and the American people get to be "Walmart greeters" in the store that sells it to them. But such analysis represents quite the transformation from the Rubio of two election cycles ago, the chap who was running soft-focus ads on the need for "a second American century" when the majority of my North Country neighbours were willing to settle for the remainder of their life expectancy being marginally less crap than the political class had spent the last quarter-century making it.
But, to keep it in Rubio 2016 terms, one might say, rather, that the over-long twentieth century is finally drawing to a close, for Americans and Europeans alike.
Across the pond, they're also beginning to get that it's over. From the former chairman of The Spectator and my predecessor in the GB News 8pm slot, Andrew Neil:
The Atlantic Alliance which has served us so well for almost 80 years is all but over. We are at a geopolitical watershed. What should Britain and Europe do next? https://t.co/UqrD52iray
— Andrew Neil (@afneil) February 25, 2025
Given the state of - call it what you will - Europe, Christendom, the west in 2025, I wouldn't say it had "served us so well". Yet, even so, the most pressing question is: what comes next?
For our Australian readers, I have some big-pictures thoughts of my own in the new issue of Quadrant:
How the West Was Lost
Happy to take your thoughts on that and related matters today. Whether or not you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, you can listen to our show live as it happens wherever you chance to be on this turbulent earth: Club membership is required only to ask a question. We love to hear from brand new members, and especially appreciate those who are having such a great time round these parts that they've signed up a chum for a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Among the additions to our ranks in recent days are newbies from around the globe - from Surrey to Surrey Hills, Vancouver to Virginia, Auckland to Anaheim. If you've joined this week either for a full year or a see-how-it-goes experimental quarter, do shoot me a head-scratcher for today's show.
But, if you're not interested in joining, no worries, as they say in Oz: We seek no unwilling members - and as always the show is free to listen to, so we hope you'll want to tune in. So see you back here at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in London, 9pm in Paris, 10pm in Jerusalem,11pm in Moscow; half-past-eleven in Teheran; one-forty-five in Kathmandu; 4am in Singapore and Honkers (sorry about that); 7am in Sydney and Melbourne; 9am in Auckland, and an even more civilised hour for the kippers and kedgeree in His Majesty's Dominions eastward across the Pacific, where you're so far ahead I've probably already lost my appeal by now...
