The nothingness of Mark Steyn

Last night I saw on C-SPAN most of Mark Steyn’s speech at the much touted Claremont Institute dinner in early December where he received their Winston Churchill award. Giving what was intended to be a weighty presentation about the state of the world instead of one of his usual desultory columns, Steyn revealed as never before his two chief features about which I’ve commented in the past: his appalling intellectual vacuity, and his traitorous defeatism vis à vis Islam. It was stunning. He kept saying in the most conclusory manner that because of low birthrates and the Islamic expansion Europe is doomed, finished, kaput—that by the end of this century Europe will be merely a place name, no longer historically recognizable as Europe; and that America, though in better shape than Europe (he singles out for special praise our religiosity, our gun rights, and our lack of socialized medicine), is moving in the same direction. Yet despite all this he kept his upbeat, almost gleeful tone, as though the Islamization of Europe would not be an inconceivable calamity that would doom us as well. The net effect of his speech, like that of his columns, is not to arouse his listeners to defend our civilization against Islam, but to make them feel that nothing can be done about it, because, somehow, it doesn’t really affect them, it’s all happening (at least for now) “over there,” in Europe, a distant place of which we know little. In his speech he did not suggest a single thing that might be done to turn back the Islamic tide and save Europe—and America. He didn’t say a single word about immigration.

Steyn is truly a nothing, a fraud. That conservatives admire him so much shows something amiss in their own souls.

An English reader replies:

For a couple of years I admired Mark Steyn without any reservations. And there are many things to admire: he’s probably the wittiest opinion writer around, he writes with dazzle, and he’s a rottweiler when it comes to ripping into the left. (There’s also his versatility as a writer on musicals—although that’s not really my bag.)

But eventually he really started to bug me. Apart from the repetitiveness that comes from writing too many articles every week, I started to notice the faults which you describe in your recent posts. I couldn’t stand reading his rants about how Europe is doomed to become a Muslim continent and how there’s nothing that can be done about it. What’s even more annoying is that, at the same time, he completely ignores the Hispanic invasion of America. According to Steyn, Europe is doomed but America is doing just fine because it doesn’t have a large welfare state and because it has a steady rather than a falling population. But why is the US population rising? Because it’s being invaded by an army of illiterate, unskilled Mexicans (plus a supporting cast of millions of other Third Worlders) who constitute a massive net burden on the state!

After some time of watching Steyn switch AC/DC-like between Doom-mongering and Panglossian crap, it’s hard to take him that seriously. He may be a superficially talented commentator, but from studying his two basic positions on Western civilization—Europe is finished and there’s no point trying to save it; America has a rosy future ahead of it and the Third World invasion isn’t a problem—it becomes clear that he is no friend of that civilization.

He therefore fails the most meaningful test of credibility as a conservative.

In Steyn’s defence, one could surmise that he privately believes that Europe should halt Muslim immigration, but given there’s a limit to what policy recommendations he can make in the mainstream media, rather than say explicitly what ought to be done, he simply expects his readers to read between the lines.

But on reflection I think this is too generous. Although Steyn couldn’t recommend, say, your plan for dealing with the Muslim threat, he could at least make a mainstream call for immigration reform—which he hasn’t done. Also, I suspect he won’t advocate such reform because it would put him in conflict with influential sections of the conservative establishment—especially the White House and the neo-con commentariat. And, of course, Steyn is too much of an insider to leave that charmed circle.

Best wishes for the New Year,

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 28, 2005 01:12 PM | Send