Amren readers on Auster on Steyn

There’s a long discussion at American Renaissance of my initial critique of Mark Steyn’s incoherent and defeatist article at The New Criterion, “It’s the demography stupid.” Some agree with me, some are in between, and a several are annoyed that I criticized Steyn at all, since, as they they put it, he’s “on our side” and is such a great writer. I posted a comment showing why I do not think of Steyn as being on our side, and an AR reader wrote to me:

Sir,

Thank you for clearing up something for me in your post and the links you provided at the American Renaissance Website. I had picked up on this man’s rather oddly ghoulish joy at Europe’s “enriching future” at the hands of Islam, but could not quite clearly figure out where he was coming from, by only reading his “It’s The Demography, STUPID” article. This was my first ever contact with this man’s positions, but I was instantly struck by his “optimistic” observations that Europe would be very old and/or Muslim and the USA would be doing just ducky and grand at the 500 million mark?

In your other writings on the topic, you clarified something that was mildly puzzling without the broader contexts of this happy wanderer’s larger views and your ongoing responses to them on this subject. This being that the man is a Neo Con and thus so intellectually handicapped to the point of hopelessness, that not even the most wretched of Marxists are, since he cannot at least fallback on the comforts of Das Kapital? Indeed, that you do address at other times his equally nonchalant attitude toward the USA in the bigger picture, is something that I was unaware of, thus my mild criticisms on that point. For that I apologize!

In any event, your pains to expose this man for what he is (a Neo Con Buffoon) are not lost on me; in fact they were felt at the gut level, before my head fully realized it via your more knowledgeable critiques! Or put another way, I now fully understand that he deserves at best a Neville Chamberlain Oscar, not a Winston Churchill Award.

Sincere Best Wishes,
John PM

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 10, 2006 03:50 PM | Send