The Torch Has Been Passed

July 24, 2024

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If you missed today's Clubland Q&A live around the planet, here's the action replay. Steyn was back at the microphone, fielding questions on another deeply strange week in America - plus a new low in "lawfare": as VDare just discovered, you can be put out of business by the state without being charged with anything.

Click above to listen.

Re VDare's problems, Lydia Brimelow has listed all the companies that made it impossible for her website to do business in America:

Before I contact a potential new vendor, I read the terms of service to size up my risk. Ninety per cent of off-the-shelf-services have Terms of Service clauses explicitly hostile to freedom of speech, and I know from experience they will lean on that to terminate our business when they come under the slightest pressure.

The United States has a "First Amendment", if you've got a decade-and-a-half to spend in litigation, but it has almost entirely lost any genuine culture of free speech. If you hold views that far-left activists do not like, you will find it hard to process credit cards, stay in hotels ...and, one day soon, have access to electricity or running water.

Conservative Inc should have spoken up for VDare. As I learned from the "human rights" commissions in Canada, these things always start on the fringes and then move inwards, very fast.

Thank you for all your kind comments these last grisly few months, and thank you to all the brand new members of The Mark Steyn Club - and to those long-time members who've bought a chum a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Mark Steyn Club Gift Membership.

Notwithstanding the circumstances, Mark managed an hour-and-a-quarter of what we think you'll find worthwhile content. You don't have to be a Mark Steyn Club member to listen to the show, so please click away. But in this our eighth year, as always, we thank Steyn Clubbers for their many interesting questions.

Mark will be back on Thursday with another episode of his current Tale for Our Time - Bulldog Drummond.