Mark Steyn

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Mark Steyn (born 8 December 1959) is a controversial journalist and critic, born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and who identifies as an American conservative. He is a columnist for the Washington Times, and, on his website, modestly calls himself the "one-man worldwide content provider."[1] He is also a guest host for Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. His commentary extends to music and culture as well as politics.

He began writing at the then-new Independent (UK) newspaper in London in the mid-1980s, after leaving school at 16 and becoming a disk jockey.

Positions

President Barack Obama's speeches, according to Steyn, show weakness on the part of the United States of America, outside the immediate areas of conflict. [2] His commentary is about perception, with few specifics: "Democratizing the planet is, in a Council on Foreign Relations sense, "unrealistic," but talking it up is a very realistic way of messing with the dictators' heads. A pipsqueak like Boy Assad sleeps far more soundly today than he did back when he thought Bush meant it, and so did the demonstrators threatening his local enforcers in Lebanon."

He cites demographic reasons for the impending downfall of Western civilization.

The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion. The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths--or, at any rate, virtues--and that's why they're proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam. [3]

Critics of the Critics

His website proudly says "You can't argue with endorsements like these" from some of his critics, giving a chosen few a place of honor:[4]

  • "The arrogance of Mark Steyn knows no bounds." (The Saudi ambassador to the US)
  • "Dangerous Idiot of the Week." (New Statesman magazine)
  • "The champion stage-door-Johnny of the Broadway musical scene, whose forays into the geopolitical uplands remind us why Rodgers, Hart and Hammerstein so seldom tried their luck at comment journalism." ( Guardian columnist Matthew Norman)

With respect to Saudi poet and diplomat, he says Ghazi al-Gosaibi. "He's certainly my favourite Saudi...I got into a kind of running spat with him at one point in London and he wrote very sarcastically to the Spectator (magazine) …

Oh, Mark Steyn: the destroyer of nation states and destabiliser of entire regions

Steny said "I liked so much I had it put on my business card. You can't buy publicity like that. 'Strictly by appointment' sort of thing." And Steyn roars with self-satisfaction."And when I congratulated him on his appointment as Minister of Water and Sewerage, he wrote to the paper thanking me for that and saying that his treatment plants would always be ready to process my literary work." More laughter. "He's actually a very funny man and he sent me a copy of a rather limpid novel he (wrote), a 150-page novel written in English … and he wrote in the front of it 'To Mark, ambivalently, Ghazi', which is my favourite book inscription of all time."

References

  1. Homepage, steynonline.com
  2. Mark Steyn (5 December 2009), "The Unrealistic Realist: Leader of the free world? Not Obama's bag.", National Review
  3. Mark Steyn (4 January 2006), "It's the Demography, Stupid: The real reason the West is in danger of extinction", Wall Street Journal
  4. Steyn, Mark. Lines on Steyn. SteynOnline. Retrieved on 11 October 2013.