I've been on the radio most of the day promoting my new book The [Un]documented Mark Steyn (see below, or above). It's always a fun time when I get to shoot the breeze with the great Howie Carr at WRKO Boston. When you're on with Howie, the conversation always takes a few surprising turns, and this one includes me conjugating the Latin verb ebolo, ebolas, ebolat, and wondering why ISIS have better gag writers than Jon Stewart. Click below to listen:
By the way, re The National Post's line on the Ottawa carnage ("It's been a tough week for Canadian Muslims"), the gentleman who came up with the withering retort was Michael Greenspan:
National Post, Nov. 28, 1963: "It's been a tough week for the Oswald family"
~As you can hear, the Koch/Tourette's thing arose in a consideration of the Jeanne Shaheen/Scott Brown debate. Last night's debate was between the candidates for New Hampshire's second Congressional district: I thought Marilinda Garcia was very impressive, and Annie Kuster rather overdid it with all those condescending "naive and inexperienced" sneers. For a look at Mrs Kuster's "experience" in action, see here:
First, even though the question has been submitted in writing, she has no idea what "Benghazi" is.
Then, pleading in mitigation that she's there to talk about the Middle East, she reveals that she has no idea where Benghazi is.
Finally, when her constituents helpfully point out that Benghazi is in Libya, she turns to the side and gives that pitiful look that is the single thing I most loathe about American politics – the look a floundering empty suit gives to her minder when she needs him to come and rescue her. Which the minder immediately does.
That's the "experienced" Annie Kuster. Go, Marilinda!
~In the course of the day, I also checked in with Scott Sands in Toledo, Will Dance in Tallahassee, Brian Thomas in Cincinnati, and with Steve Malzberg on Newsmax TV to discuss Obama and the post-constitutional order,
~The Daily Caller picks up my remarks on Fox News about the euphemisms and evasions our leaders deploy to avoid stating the obvious:
"It tells our enemies that we don't have the will even to acknowledge the enemy that we're trying to fight," said Steyn. "They want to make this about just a few isolated mentally ill people here and there who suddenly decide to attack a policeman, or attack a soldier, or behead a woman in her place of work in Oklahoma.
"In fact, every story is slightly different, and yet they're all the same. They're all recent converts to Islam. They all have Facebook pages and other social media that make it clear that in fact they're Islamic State fan boys."
Janet Albrechtsen also takes up the issue in The Australian:
Pollyanna critics use the "lone-wolf" descriptor as the latest excuse to ignore the implications of terrorism. As Canadian Mark Steyn wrote last week after the terrorist attack in Ottawa, "it suits them to say, 'Oh no this is just some mentally ill guy in Ottawa and this is another guy who's a bit goofy in New York and there's no connection between the two.' Because otherwise you … have to treat it like ideological Ebola and you have to stop the infection."
I worry a bit about Janet's conclusion:
We are in the midst of another extraordinary war that requires extraordinary powers because without security, liberty is a meaningless Pollyanna dream.
Western governments already have "extraordinary powers". The NSA has the power to monitor every letter I send, every email I write, every telephone call I make and every credit card purchase I charge - all of which would seem pretty "extraordinary" to previous generations of Americans. The reason they do this is because government, for reasons of cultural sensitivity, feels unable to identify honestly the source of the threat and act accordingly. You don't need an NSA for Facebook, Twitter or YouTube - the preferred methods of dissemination of jihadist incitement: that's public speech, that's published. Much of it openly supports the Islamic State, a declared enemy of the United States, Australia and Canada, whose spokesmen pledge to fly the black flag of ISIS over the White House and Buckingham Palace. If you are a US or Australian citizen and you support the Islamic State and you work to advance their goals, fine, that's your choice. But you are a traitor - and you should be tried and hanged for treason. If western civilization were not hollowed out by cultural relativism and still took the concepts of citizenship and allegiance seriously, this would not be a difficult problem.
Instead, we will probably further wall off our political class behind even more metal detectors and security perimeters, and further burden the law-abiding rather than offending the multiculti pieties.
~It's another dizzying day on the air for me, starting just after 8am Eastern with Ben Ball on North Carolina's Coastal Daybreak. At 8.30am I'll be keeping my regular date with Toronto's Number One morning man, John Oakley, on AM640, and then it's on to Bryan Nehman at WBAL Baltimore at 9.30. The afternoon kicks off with Dom Giordano just after 1pm on The Big Talker in Philadelphia, followed by The Schilling Show in Charlottesville, my old piano-playing imam Andrew Lawton on AM980 in London, Ontario, and Jay Severin at The Blaze. At 2pm Pacific, I'll talk to Ben Shapiro at KTTH Seattle, and at 4.30pm Central Simon Conway at WHO in Des Moines. For full details of all my media appearances each day, please see the On The Air box at right.
~As for The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, you can buy it right now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million in America, or Indigo-Chapters, Amazon and McNally-Robinson in Canada. Or, for instant gratification, get it in eBook - in Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks. We're currently the Number One political humor bestseller in America, cleaning Russell Brand's clock. Alas, up north Russell's kicking my butt.
