A VFR reader shrewdly sums up Steyn

A Minnesota conservative offers a few thoughts about Steyn:

• He’s much too pessimistic about Europe. His scribblings are basically ahistorical—Europe’s permanent condition from the 7th century through the 19th century was to be under a condition of threat from the Muslim world. From Poitiers and Covadonga to the Crusades to Vienna and the subsequent national liberation struggles of the Balkans, Europe’s history can to some degree be defined as a struggle against the Islamic world and its absurd pretentions. We have been witnessing, since the 1960s, a reversion to the earlier pattern of history that existed until the 1890s (at least in the East and South of Europe); that pattern is one of struggle, battle and unremitting conflict with the Islamic world.

• “Dr.” Steyn’s diagnosis of Europe’s malaise is all wrong——he’s taken the temperature of a corpse (European liberalism, social democracy, welfarism etc.)——and declared that the corpse has no future, which is true. That Europe is long dead, its obituary just hasn’t been published yet so no one is aware of its death.

• At the same time, Steyn completely ignores the vital and healthy elements in Europe that are saying “no” to further Muslim bullying, domination and oppression. Not a single good word for those Europeans are to be found in Steyn’s columns.

• Surely as the sun rises in the East, a new Martel or Pelayo has been born or will be born in France, Spain, etc. Unlike physics, not every human action has an equal and opposite reaction…my suspicion is that the reaction ,(when it comes…and it will come) to continual Muslim provocation in Europe, will be astounding, titanic and “unexpected” (at least unexpected, by those, like Steyn, who have already given up).

LA replies:

Excellent statements! In fact just the other day I wrote about how the West has basically been a contemporary of Islam, if you think of the West as having taken form in the Dark Ages. Islam has been our nemesis from the start.

Also, great insight into Steyn, that he hates European PC, leftism and statism, but he thinks that because European PC, leftism and statism are doomed, that means that Europe is doomed. I would say that he has this false view because he’s a neocon and therefore he only sees and cares about ideology, not the substance of a people and culture.

You wrote:

He completely ignores the vital and healthy elements in Europe that are saying “no” to further Muslim bullying, domination and oppression. Not a single good word for those Europeans are to be found in Steyn’s columns.

Truer words were never spoken. He has arrogantly written off an entire civilization, continent, and people. He represents the ultimate sickness and, I would now say, the ultimate nihilism, of neoconservatism.

Thanks for writing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 05, 2006 12:17 PM | Send