UPDATE! Thank you so much for all your questions. The new video edition of Mark's Mailbox will be airing shortly. We've posted below some of the questions I didn't get to, which are well worth your time. And I'll be answering a few more of them in the first edition of our new Mark Steyn Club newsletter, The Clubbable Steyn, which will be going to press shortly.
The headline comes courtesy of the current stage of a tedious legal dispute, but be that as it may...
Later this week we'll be doing another video edition of Mark's Mailbox in which I answer questions from members of The Mark Steyn Club. If you're one of our Founding Members or Premium Members and you have a burning topic you'd like me to address, please log in and append it below, and I'll do my best to get to it. And, if it doesn't make the video, we may use it in the first issue of The Clubbable Steyn, which will be shipping shortly. We'll eventually theme some of these Clubland Q&As around particular issues, but for this one feel free to chip in about whatever's on your mind. Could be Bob Mueller or Lulu or Canada's immigrating Indians or one of the other subjects I've written about this last week. Or it could be a topic entirely of your own concoction: Van Jones or Van Gogh or Van McCoy or van rental - whatever's your bag.
~One subject that might recur is the Bollardization of the Western World - which the Great Australian Wag Tim Blair writes about in Sydney's Daily Telegraph - along with tighter security perimeters and slower security lines for every footie match or pop concert. Even though in Manchester it was the security perimeter that got blown up. And, however many bollards you install and however far you push back the security line, the perimeter is obviously both the softest and most crowded target. As Tim recalls, I wrote about this seven years ago:
Six years before the 2016 Brussels Airport bombings, when suicidal Islamists targeted people lined up waiting for security checks, US columnist Mark Steyn predicted just such a scenario. "The ever-longer lines to get into the 'secure' area are now the least secure area in America," Steyn wrote. "Why not blow up the security line?"
Picture the lines outside the MCG when an 80,000 crowd is waiting to get inside.
As Mark asks: "Where's the 'safe space' against an enemy that wants to blow up everything?"
Great question.
Our leaders are disfiguring our cities, burdening their citizens and thinning the air of freedom because they'd rather do anything than address honestly the source of this problem.
~Speaking of which, we had a busy weekend at SteynOnline, including a vision of health-care hell Americans may care to to take note of. But our main feature was a new edition of The Mark Steyn Show featuring a full-length interview with Douglas Murray, the author of a trenchant and profound new book The Strange Death of Europe. If you haven't yet seen the show, you can find it here - and it's well worth your time. Douglas observes that the trouble for a masochist begins when he meets a real sadist - which is the situation we find ourselves in: western "virtue-signaling" is a form of masochism that sooner or later was bound to attract a real sadist. For that and more, do check out our latest show.
~This coming week we'll be acknowledging the Dominion of Canada's impending 150th birthday bash this weekend with some maple-infused content. Oddly enough, "To Sir, With Love" - an American Number One sung by a Scots lassie in an English movie starring a Bahamian actor playing a guy from British Guiana - meets that criterion.
~The above episode of The Mark Steyn Show is made possible through the support of members of The Mark Steyn Club, for which we're very grateful. As I always say, membership of the Club isn't for everyone, but it does ensure that our content - such as that interview with Douglas - remains available for everyone, in print, in audio, in video, out there and available around the world, and maybe once in a while changing a mind or two. We'll be introducing a new Club feature next month. For more information on The Mark Steyn Club, see here.
Meanwhile, for existing members, fire away with your questions for our Clubland Q&A...