The fifth annual Mark Steyn Cruise docked yesterday at Southampton (not my favourite port of call) and so, in consequence, I spent a few hours in what passes for the United Kingdom. It is a very weird land.
For example, if a partially deaf man asks a "migrant" to "speak clearly", this act necessitates a visit from the British state. Meet our Brit Wanker Copper of the Day:
British police tell an elderly man that it has been alleged that he told a migrant "speak English."
They warn the elderly man that it could be perceived as a hate crime.
Watch people's reactions when he says "hate crime" pic.twitter.com/8kVH9pyEBI
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 13, 2025
The creepy deracinated creature passing himself off as a constable represents a betrayal of two hundred years of British policing. He is insufficiently self-aware to recognise that what he is doing is an outrageous provocation - and one day, even in England, will prompt the obvious and entirely proper reaction.
And, for those nancy types still betting the farm on "western values" saving the west, the above half-minute should be instructive: the "values" represented by the Brit wanker copper would be unrecognisable to any of his countrymen pre-1970.
~We pondered such issues this last week, including on a Mark Steyn Show with Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer addressing what's going on in Ireland. Confronting the woeful state of "the British Isles" - which expression is undoubtedly also a "hate crime", if not to Irish republicans, then certainly to Albanian sex traffickers and Somali "knifemen" ...but, surveying the woeful scene, I found myself musing that the only unambiguous winners of the last thirty years are Sinn Féin. The IRA's "political wing" is now the biggest party north of the border and a point-and-a-half shy of being the biggest party south of the border. Their grand strategy marches on: perceived as the hardcore guys who meant it, they first supplanted Ulster's moderate nationalist parties, such as the SDLP; they then clobbered the divided unionist parties; and they're now devouring Dublin's "mainstream" parties. The principal consequence of Brexit - and the attendant Northern Ireland Protocol and Windsor Framework - is that it confirmed the Shinners' position that there is no British sovereignty on British sovereign territory.
How was that allowed to happen?
Because the British state knows that, if you don't keep Sinn Féin on side, they'll go back to blowing the legs off grannies at bus stops.
One day other disaffected types beset by an evil officialdom as represented by the policeman above will draw the obvious conclusion.
~Speaking of demographic shifts, we are currently marking the demi-centennial of the Lebanese civil war. Older readers will recall these scenes from a long-lost Beirut:
50 years ago today, on April 13 1975, Palestinian terrorists opened fire on a church in Beirut, killing 4 Christians.
It was the start of the Lebanese Civil War
It would destroy the Christian-majority country that had been one the best and safest countries in the Middle East 🇱🇧 pic.twitter.com/0mnH5DPmTn
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 13, 2025
Lebanon was then fifty-something per cent Christian. The CIA currently estimates today's Lebanon at almost seventy per cent Muslim. The "Lebanese diaspora", on the other hand, is majority Christian, as you'll know if you've met the many charming, urbane Lebanese doctors practising around the west from Milan to Los Angeles to Sydney.
In those days, they called Beirut "the Paris of the Middle East". If it's any consolation, Paris is on course to become the Beirut of Europe.
~One way or another, the future will be bloody and murderous:
Thanks be to God that Governor Shapiro and his family were unharmed in this attack.
Really disgusting violence, and I hope whoever did it is brought swiftly to justice. https://t.co/U47C6mXvDP
— JD Vance (@JDVance) April 14, 2025
He is a Democrat but also a Jew - and to the left the former no longer cuts him any slack on the latter.
~DIVERSITY STABBING OF THE DAY: In Berlin, a man boarded the subway in Charlottenburg and killed another chap. The deceased was German; the perp was Syrian. But don't worry about it:
'Hinweise darauf, dass der 43 Jahre alte syrische Staatsangehörige den 29-Jährigen deutschen Staatsangehörigen aufgrund einer islamistisch-terroristischen Motivlage angegriffen haben könnte, liegen bislang nicht vor', erklärten Polizei und Staatsanwaltschaft.
Which means:
'There are no indications as yet that the 43-year-old Syrian national attacked the 29-year-old German citizen because of an Islamist-terrorist motive,' police and prosecutors said.
The talk so far is of a dispute over drugs and other such activities. Apparently, diversity is our strength everywhere but organised crime.
~Notwithstanding the grand finale of the Mark Steyn Cruise, we had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with my column on a rather bloody pushback against the "Macheten-Männer" of Germany. My Saturday music show celebrated the International Day of Human Space Flight, with a Sunday Song of the Week to match. Rick McGinnis's weekly movie date saw Mr Blandings build his dream house, and our Sunday-morning Se'nnight of Steyn proffered a few glimpses from our 2025 cruise. Our marquee presentation was a favourite Tale for Our Time - Scott Fitzgerald's The Rubber Check. Click for Part One, Part Two, and the concluding episode. A new Tale will air later this month.
If you were too busy this weekend turning in the deaf guy for asking you to enunciate, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on towards our first decade. We're thrilled by all those across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. We have quite a bit of fun in The Mark Steyn Club, with audio adventures, video poems, planet-wide Q&As, and much more (heart attacks permitting). We appreciate the Club is not to everyone's taste, but, if you're minded to give it a go, either for a full year or a three-month experimental period, we'd love to have you. You can find more details on The Mark Steyn Club here - and, if you've a loved one who'd like something a little different for his or her birthday, don't forget our special Gift Membership.
