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Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn is a Canadian journalist, columnist, and film and theatre critic.

On Culture

  • "Bisexuality is the proportional representation of sexuality in a world where most of us - straight or gay - operate a first-past-the-post system." ~ "Sorry, but voters prefer straight choices", Daily Telegraph, 31 January 2006

  • "In the multicultural West, our values are that we have no values: we accord all values equal value; the wittering English feminist concerned that her tolerance is implicitly intolerant or the Sudanese wife-beater and compulsory clitorectomy scheduler." ~ "The slyer virus: The West's anti-westernism", The New Criterion Vol. 20, No. 6, February 2002

  • "As for 'cultural genocide', if there's any going on these days, it's the genocide of the Britannic inheritance - in North America, in the Antipodes, in Blair's Britain." ~ "The slyer virus: The West's anti-westernism", The New Criterion Vol. 20, No. 6, February 2002

  • "To London's Europhiles, Britain is obviously "part of" Europe. But, in the age of jet travel, cellphones, wire transfers and the internet, we are less bound by physical proximity than ever. Yet Britain for the first time in history has chosen to be imprisoned by geography and to disconnect itself from its own culture." ~ "The slyer virus: The West's anti-westernism", The New Criterion Vol. 20, No. 6, February 2002

  • "As I understand it, the benefits of multiculturalism are that the sterile white-bread cultures of Britain, Canada and Australia get some great ethnic restaurants and a Commonwealth Games opening ceremony that lasts until two in the morning. But in the case of those Muslim ghettoes - in Sydney, in Oslo, in Paris, Copenhagen and Manchester - multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women - combine with the worst attributes of Western culture - licence and self-gratification. Tattoed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of Northern England are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort at Rideau Hall. Yet even in the face of the crudest assaults on its most cherished causes - women's rights and gay rights - the political elite turns squeamishly away." — "Battered Westerner Syndrome inflicted by myopic Muslim defenders", column, 23 August 2002

  • "We're told the old-school imperialists were racists, that they thought of the wogs as inferior. But, if so, they at least considered them capable of improvement. The multiculturalists are just as racist. The only difference is they think the wogs can never reform: good heavens, you can't expect a Muslim in Norway not to go about raping the womenfolk! Much better just to get used to it." — "Battered Westerner Syndrome inflicted by myopic Muslim defenders", column, 23 August 2002

  • "As one is always obliged to explain when tiptoeing around this territory, I am not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture - rule of law, universal suffrage - is preferable to Arab culture. That's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic. I support immigration, but with assimilation." ~ "Battered Westerner Syndrome inflicted by myopic Muslim defenders", column, 23 August 2002

  • "The great thing about multiculturalism is it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures - the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I think was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society." ~ "It's the Demography, Stupid," column, 4 January 2006

On Western Civilization

  • "As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it, "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder", as can be seen throughout much of the Western world right now. The progressive agenda - lavish social welfare, abortion, agnosticism, multiculturalism - is collectively the real suicide bomb." — "It's the Demography, Stupid", column, 4 January 2006

  • "Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not all European countries." ~ "It's the Demography, Stupid", column, 4 January 2006

  • "Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb; the grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the race who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world." — "It's the Demography, Stupid", column, 4 January 2006

  • "A decade and a half after victory in the Cold War and end-of-history triumphalism, the "what do you leave behind" question is more urgent than most of us expected. The Western world, as a concept, is dead and the West, as a matter of demographic fact, is dying." ~ "It's the Demography, Stupid", column, 4 January 2006

On US Politics

  • On John Edwards, U.S. Senator from North Carolina: "The stump speech of pretty-boy Senator John Edwards, which I've heard often enough to be able to mouth along with him, has room for everything, including vivid, wrenching portraits of despair: 'Tonight somewhere in America a ten-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm.' You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be doubled up in laughter at that line." — "It's the war, stupid", 1 March 2004

  • On protests against going to war with Iraq : "One woman bore a picture of some female genitalia – possibly hers, the provenance was obscure – over the caption 'This Bush Is For Peace.' Another waxed eloquent: 'Trim Bush.' Out in Marin County somewhere, other bushes for peace disrobed, lay down on a hillside, and formed the words 'No War.' I wonder if there are any conflicted nudists, with a bush for Iraq and a rack for Bush." — The Spectator, 25 January 2003


  • On Al Gore: "The Eco-Messiah sternly talks up the old Nazi comparisons: "what we're facing is an ecological Holocaust, and the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin." That 221,000 kilowatt-hours might suggest that, if this is the ecological Holocaust, Gore's pad is Auschwitz. But, as his spokesperson would no doubt argue, when you're faced with ecological Holocausts and ecological Kristallnachts, sometimes the only way to bring it to an end is with an ecological Hiroshima. The Gore electric bill is the eco-atom bomb: you have to light up the world in order to save it." Chicago Sun Times March 4 2007

On European Politics

  • On the French view of international politics: "According to my dictionary, the word 'ally' comes from the Old French. Very Old French, I'd say. For the New French, the word has a largely postmodern definition of 'duplicitous charmer who undermines you at every opportunity.'" ~ The Australian, 23 February 2007

  • "The principle underpinning the EU is not "We, the people" but "We know better than the people" — not just on capital punishment and the single currency, but on pretty much anything that comes to mind. Not so long ago, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, France's Defence Minister at the time, insisted that the United States was dedicated to the "organized cretinization of our people." As a dismissal of American pop culture - MTV, Disney - this statement is not without its appeal, though it sounds better if you've never had the misfortune to sit through a weekend of continental television. But the reality is that nobody is as dedicated to the proposition that the people are cretins than M. Chevenement and the panjandrums of the new 'Europe.' The EU is organized on this assumption. If, like the Danes and now the Irish, they're impertinent enough to tick the wrong box in referenda on deeper European integration, we'll just keep asking and re-asking the question until they get it right." ~ "The slyer virus: The West's anti-westernism", The New Criterion Vol. 20, No. 6, February 2002

On British Politics

  • On David Cameron's Conservative Party: "The carbon emissions trading system imposed by Kyoto is absurd and entirely ineffectual, but in London, David Cameron wants to apply it to hamburgers. Cameron wants to impose some sort of Kyoto-esque calorie trading system on fast-food purveyors whereby McDonald's would have some trans-fat cap imposed to ensure they pick up the tab for what that $3 Big Mac really costs society. And David Cameron is the leader of the alleged Conservative Party. He's also living in a country whose major cities have been hollowed out by Islamist cells. Nevertheless, as England decays into Somalia with chip shops, taxing the chip shops is the Conservatives' priority." ~ Chicago Sun-Times, 28 January 2007

Attributed

  • On America's international image: "The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lapdancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too Godless, America is also too isolationist, except when it's too imperialist."

  • On the CIA: "The CIA now functions in the same relation to President Bush as Pakistan's ISI does to General Musharraf. For Musharraf, the problem is the significant faction in the ISI that would like to kill him. Fortunately for Bush, if anyone at the CIA launched a plot to kill him, they would probably take out G. W. Bish, who runs a feed store in Idaho."

On Canadian Politics

  • On Quebec: "The dumbest secession movement in the world: they want to leave Canada in order to set up a country that looks exactly the same - confiscatory taxation, moribund health service, no mail service on weekends."

  • On Canadian health care: "Unlike Britain but like North Korea, in Her Majesty's northern Dominion the public health system is such an article of faith that no private hospitals are permitted; 'America' is the name of Canada's private health care system."

  • On the Canadian flag: "At least the Red Ensign had the guts to be a boring flag, not a propaganda symbol."

  • On Denmark's flag planted on Arctic land claimed by Canada: "There's something Danish in the state of rotten."

On Europe and the European Union (EU)

  • "The EU's Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has decided to shelve its report on the rise of anti-Semitism on the Continent. The problem, as reported in The Telegraph, is that the survey had found that 'many anti-Semitic incidents were carried out by Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups', and so a 'political decision' was taken not to publish it amid fears it would 'increase hostility towards Muslims.' Let's go back over that slowly and try not to get a headache: the EU's main concern about an actual epidemic of hate crimes against Jews is that it could provoke a hypothetical epidemic of hate crimes against extremist Muslims."

  • "Europe's ruling class has effortlessly refined Voltaire: I disapprove of what you say, and I will defend to the death my right not to listen to you say it.

You might disapprove of what Le Pen says on immigration, but to declare that the subject cannot even be raised is profoundly unhealthy for a democracy. The problem with the old one-party states of Africa and Latin America was that they criminalized dissent; you could no longer criticize the President, you could only kill him. In the three-party one-party states of Europe, a similar process is under way: if the political culture forbids politicians from raising certain topics, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable politicians, as they are doing in France, Austria, Belgium, Denmark and elsewhere. Le Pen is not an aberration but the logical consequence."
  • "If Adolf Hitler were to return from wherever he is right now, what would he be most steamed about? That in some countries there are laws banning Nazi symbols and making Holocaust denial a crime? No, because that would testify to the force and endurance of his ideas — that 60 years on they're still so potent the state has to suppress them. What would bug him the most is that on Broadway and in the West End, Mel Brooks is peddling Nazi shtick in The Producers and audiences are howling with laughter. One reason why the English-speaking democracies were the only advanced nations not to fall for Nazism or Fascism is they simply found it too ridiculous."

On Culture

  • On Christmas: "The Jews - the Ellis Island/Lower East Side generation - were merely the latest contributors to the American Christmas. For their first two centuries on this continent, the Anglo-Celtic settlers attached no significance to Christmas: it was another working day, unless it fell on a Sunday, in which case one went to church. It was later waves of immigrants — the Dutch, Germans and Scandinavians — who introduced most of the standard features we know today — trees, cards, Santa. Nothing embodies the American idea — e pluribus unum — better than the American Christmas. This is genuine multiculturalism: if the worry is separation of church and state, the American Christmas is surely the most successful separation you could devise - Jesus, Mary and Joseph are for home and church; the great secular trinity of Santa, Rudolph and Frosty are for school and mall."

  • On the movie Monster: "I confess I went into the movie ready to dislike Miss Theron. I'm sick of newspaper articles detailing the amount of time, talent and technical wizardry required to turn some silver-screen beauty into an average-looking woman. There are plenty of average-looking women out there — gritty Britty TV drama seems to be full of them — and it seems excessively unfair that they can't even get a shot at the frumpy roles because Nicole Kidman's hogging the false nose again."

  • "If you look at the range of Hollywood movies playing in most cities in the developing world, you'd hate the America they portray as well."

On International Affairs

  • On the Israeli-Arab conflict: "In fact, there is a Palestinian state: it's called Jordan, whose population has always been majority Palestinian. It's not as big a state as it used to be, but that's because King Hussein, in the worst miscalculation of his long bravura highwire act, made the mistake of joining Nasser's 1967 war to destroy Israel. Hence the 'occupied territories' - they're occupied because the Arabs attacked Israel and lost."

  • On Newsweek's flushed Koran story: "In a way, both the U.S. media and those wacky rioters in the Afghan-Pakistani hinterlands are very similar; they're both highly parochial and monumentally self-absorbed tribes living in isolation from the rest of the world and are prone to fanatical, irrational, indestructible beliefs — not least the notion that you can flush a 950-page book down one of Al Gore's eco-crazed federally mandated low-flush toilets, a claim no editorial bigfoot thought to test for himself in Newsweek's executive washroom."

  • On the United Nations and Darfur: "The good people of Darfur have been entrusted to the legitimacy of the UN for more than two years and it's killing them. In 2004, after months of expressing deep concern, grave concern, deep concern over the graves and deep grave concern over whether the graves were deep enough, Kofi Annan took decisive action and appointed a UN committee to look into what was going on. They eventually reported back that it wasn't genocide. Thank goodness for that. Because, as yet another Kofi-appointed UN committee boldly declared, "genocide anywhere is a threat to the security of all and should never be tolerated." So, fortunately, what's happening in the Sudan is not genocide. It's just hundreds of thousands of corpses who happen to be from the same ethnic group, which means the UN can go on tolerating it until everyone's dead, at which point the so-called "decent left" can support a "multinational" force under the auspices of the Arab League going in to ensure the corpses don't pollute the water supply."

  • On the Iraq war: "Another six weeks of insurgency sounds about right, after which it will peter out..."

On US Politics

  • On Judge Roberts' Senate confirmation hearings: "I would be in favor of these nomination hearings continuing on for another three months, three years, until the last registered Democrat on the planet has expired in shame at the pitiful spectacle of these 20 minute questions, content-free questions, dancing around a lot of irrelevant issues that only expose the Senators' lack of understanding of the matters they are supposed to be dealing with."

  • "Diversity" doesn’t extend to, say, some dirtpoor piece of fundamentalist white trash. Her presence wouldn't "enrich" anyone. "Diversity" means "more blacks." That's why traditional African-American colleges are exempt from its strictures: as 100% black schools, they're already as diverse as possible."

On British Politics

  • On Cherie Blair and 'Cheriegate': "Nude models, diet quacks, psychics: I cannot speak for Britain, but in North America these are three of the four categories of person that most of us spend the first 10 minutes of our day dumping from the in-box. If Cherie had a fourth confidante with a guaranteed plan to increase the length of Tony's penis by three inches, the Blairs would have a full set. They could throw the perfect spam dinner party."

  • On the 1997 UK General Election: "For those who can't stand the me-tooness of it, there are all kinds of malcontents' parties on the ballot this time, johnny-come-latelies to Screaming Lord Sutch's long-standing Monster Raving Loony Party. There's the Natural Law Party, which believes in better government through "yogic flying" - that is to say, bouncing vigorously up and down on mattresses. If that worked, the Tories would be a shoo-in."

  • Quoting General Charles Napier on how the British dealt with suttee in India: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre. Beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom, and then we will follow ours."

About Steyn



  • "Our treatment plants will always be ready to receive the literary outpourings emanating from his most humane soil" ~ Ghazi Algosaibi, Minister of Water and Sewage, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=32)
 
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