Lego my insurrection

 Mark Steyn tells how legos have influenced history through the years - not.

Remember when

Mark Steyn remembers when Donald Trump went to Vermont as 2016 dawned.
The headline in Friday's local paper read: "BURLINGTON TRUMPED". That's what his fans liked. In the liberal heart of a liberal state, the supporters streaming out of the Flynn Theatre, waving genially to the social-justice doofuses across the way, couldn't recall a night like it. Not in Vermont. In New Hampshire, sure. In South Carolina. But not in Vermont. It felt good to be taking it to the other side's turf. And they'd like a lot more of it between now and November.

Baby, it's crazy out there

Mark Steyn sings the praises of "Baby, It's Cold Outside.
"Baby, It's Cold Outside is a fun song, but one line in particular is apparently a major micro-aggression that come December is mass-triggering the safe-spaced generation across our winter wonderland.

The real McCain

In the midst of all the talk about Senator John McCain, Mark Steyn remembers his encounters.
When he and I appeared together on "The Dennis Miller Show", he said he had a real respect for me because that ridiculous accent was a lot harder to keep up for three hours than you'd think. Off-air it was more cutting, snide, vindictive, and extraordinarily petty.
Remember there was a real man behind all the sanitized remembrances.

Splash from the past

As the stampede to impeach President Trump rolls across CNN and like-minded groups, Mark Steyn goes back to 1998.
Earlier today Bob Loblaw tweeted something that I'd completely overlooked:

Today is the "future" dateline referenced in the @MarkSteynOnline column "Monica's Dress" where the dress (now a pair of curtains in Idaho) reflects back 20 years to its heyday leading up to the 1998 Bill Clinton impeachment trial.

What is falling down

Mark Steyn had interview plans Saturday night, and the topic changed after the latest terror attack in Great Britain.
London Bridge still stands, but everything else is falling down, in Britain and Europe.

Divided we stand, united we fall

Mark Steyn looks at the establishment's new favorite term - sowing division - after the Manchester bombing.
When death stalks the land, make no mistake: He may look like a grim reaper, but he's really a grim sower. An entire sowing bee of experts has so decreed. Indeed, in their warnings about sowing division, our betters are so non-divided that they give off the faintly creepy whiff of fellows all reading off the same cue card helpfully biked round to them by the Central Commissar ten minutes after the "incident" occurred.
You non-experts might think this a fairly crude sleight of hand - that concerns about "division" is a not so subtle way of suggesting that the real problem isn't guys like Salman Abedi waiting with his nail bomb at the exit to the pop concert, but divisive types like you querying whether it's prudent to keep importing more and more Islam into the western world. Well, screw you: if you disagree that the real danger here is the sowing of division, you're just sowing even more division.

Carry on until the next attack

Mark Steyn does not have kind words for European leaders after the latest attack - this time after a concert in Manchester.
 "Carry on" is a very British expression. One thinks of the famous scene in one of the most famous of the Carry On comedies, Carry On Up The Khyber, surely the most insightful film ever made about Afghanistan: as you'll recall, the revolting Khasi of Khalabar grows ever more enraged at the British Governor's refusal to let the shelling and destruction of Government House disrupt his dinner party. Even when the Khasi has the main course replaced with the head of a decapitated fakir, Her Majesty's viceroy declines to let his eye be caught by these vulgar attention-seeking jihadists. The film received unenthusiastic reviews from London critics in 1968. One would not have predicted that half-a-century later it would be official British policy on the home front.

Do you hear me know

Catching up with Mark Steyn's post election column - about the people who rose to elect Donald Trump.
Trump turned the armies of the "culturally dispossessed" into just another aggrieved minority group, and the new minority came out in enough numbers to make them a majority. If both left and right regard Trump's victory as a horror show, well, you created the monster: The establishment of both parties spent the last year telling his supporters they no longer mattered - they're too old, too white, too male, too bluecollar, too rust-belt, too too tootsie, g'bye; they're old and fading and they'll be dead soon.

Laboring to the new next

Mark Steyn uses this Labor Day to wonder what happens to the laborers when there's no work for them to do.
Manufacturing produces the same amount with about a third of the labor that it took in 1950. By 2010, the US economy had restored pre-recession levels of output but without restoring pre-recession levels of employment: It turned out there was no reason to hire back laid off workers, and a lot of reasons not to, once you factor in the taxes, insurance and the other burdens the state imposes on you for putting even modest sums in the pocket of employees you don't really need.

Where we stand this morning

Jeb's run is done.
All that super PAC money went to TV ads that didn't produce votes.
Mark Steyn looks at how the outsiders stand this morning.
The difference between Trump's hijacking of the GOP primary and Sanders' attempt to do likewise to the Democrats is the difference between a fellow who means it and a guy who lacks the killer instinct.

Proving Steyn right

Mark Steyn remembers what he wrote 10 years ago - and how Germany is making his thoughts come true quickly.
It's the biggest story of our time, and, ten years on, Europe's leaders still can't talk about it, not to their own peoples, not honestly. For all the "human rights" complaints, and death threats from halfwits, and subtler rejections from old friends who feel I'm no longer quite respectable, I'm glad I brought it up. And it's well past time for others to speak out.

Year of Steyn

Mark Steyn wraps up the year in news.
A year of song, climate change censorship and just Feline Groovy.

Thoughts for 2016 and beyond

Mark Steyn continues warning the West about the direction it is going in dealing with Islamic radicals.
I like western civilization. I regard Common Law as superior to Sharia, so I would rather people who wish to live under Sharia remained in the many countries where it already operates, rather than adding Austria and Ireland and Denmark to the list. A schizophrenic strategy of ineffectual war overseas and celebrating one's tolerance of the avowedly intolerant at home will ensure we lose.

How dare someone say that?

Mark Steyn looks at the hissy fit thrown by the media over the member of Donald Trump's audience daring to questions the President's loyalty.
And frankly, whatever the President's personal faith, there is no dispute that his leadership of the western world has been an utter catastrophe for Christians around the planet. Some of the oldest Christian communities on earth have been entirely extinguished on Obama's watch: in Mosul, Iraq, which was an American protectorate on the day he took office, not a single Christian remains. Every single one of them is dead or fled. So, instead of jumping through your preposterous hoops and speaking up for the most powerful man in the world, I would rather speak up for the powerless - for the Nigerian schoolgirls, for the Yazidi, for the Copts in Egypt, and for all the other beleaguered Christian communities in the world this feckless president has set alight and watched burn.

Getting to the real story

After a great headline "Hastert La Vista, Baby," Mark Steyn finds the true beneficiary of the story.
So far, The New York Times has five reporters on the Hastert story, The Washington Post nine ...so there's no one left in the newsroom to look into Hillary - even though Bill's been flying around with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein on a plane called the Lolita Express. Couldn't that just sort of get mentioned in paragraph 37 of the Hastert stories, maybe with Josh Duggar, as part of a general pedophile trend among the powerful?
Let's talk about former Republican leaders instead of potential Democratic leaders.

Evil begats evil

Mark Steyn wonders when President Obama will wake up to the evil of ISIS.
Obama, by contrast, declares action, and then does nothing. His war against ISIS was supposed to be one in which the US would not put "boots on the ground", but instead leave that to our allies. The allies have the boots, but they could use some weapons, too. Obama has failed to supply the Kurds or anybody else with what they need to defeat our enemies. It's becoming what they call a pattern of behavior.

Undocumented in Charlottesville

Mark Steyn's book tour appearances includes Charlottesville Wednesday, with an appearance on the Schilling Show scheduled for 1:35 p.m.

Bring back our power

Mark Steyn notes the inept show of "power" trying to use social media to fight guns.
Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn't actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn't require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama's hashtag is just a form of moral preening.

Conform or else

Mark Steyn knows about the speech police.
Most Christian opponents of gay marriage oppose gay marriage; they don't oppose the right of gays to advocate it. But increasingly gays oppose the right of Christians even to argue their corner. Gay activists have figured that, instead of trying to persuade people to change their opinions, it's easier just to get them banned.
Current events make him look smarter all the time.