Free Republic

August 01, 2009, 7:00 a.m. A Liberty IssueGovernment health care would be wrong even if it “controlled costs.” By Mark Steyn My conservative friends — and even a few media liberals — are agreed: The bloom is off the Obama rose. He’s not the Obamessiah, just another 50-percent president. He tried to do too much too fast, and his numbers are sinking. The Europeanization of health care is dead. Fuhgeddabouddit. I wouldn’t be so sure. President Obama has no choice but to move fast, in part because the image he presented during the campaign — a post-partisan, post-racial, post-anything-unpleasant-and-controversial,...

Even a watered-down version of Obama's plan would shift the country permanently to the left.My conservative friends – and even a few media liberals – are agreed: The bloom is off the Obama rose. He's not the Obamessiah, just another 50 percent president. He tried to do too much too fast, and his numbers are sinking. The Europeanization of health care is dead. Fuhgeddabouddit.I wouldn't be so sure. President Barack Obama has no choice but to move fast, in part because the image he presented during the campaign – a post-partisan, post-racial, post-anything-unpleasant-and-controversial pragmatic centrist – was a total crock....

When it mattered, ‘the most trusted man in America’ actually wasn’t that trustworthyOn the face of it—and on the face of them—Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite would not appear to have much in common. Cronkite was (all together now) “the most trusted man in America”; Jackson was the least trusted child-man in America, at least to any parents whose ambitions for their kid extend beyond a $30-million out-of-court settlement. But, for those members of the Jackstream Media hoping to eke out one more week of prostrations and ululations for their Gloved One, Cronkite’s death served as a kind of intervention....

By common consent, the most memorable moment of Barack Obama's otherwise listless press conference on "health care" were his robust remarks on the "racist" incident involving professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police. The latter "acted stupidly," pronounced the chief of state. The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power. And thank God the leader of...

By common consent, the most memorable moment of Barack Obama's otherwise listless press conference on "health care" were his robust remarks on the "racist" incident involving professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police. The latter "acted stupidly," pronounced the chief of state. The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power. And thank God the leader of...

Walter Cronkite died almost three decades after stepping down from his anchor gig. CBS pretty much stiffed him in retirement, the promised special reports et al mostly coming to naught (as they did rather more quickly for Dan Rather). But his death afforded his old colleagues, the rival networks and the rest of the legacy media to go into full eulogistical overload. There are a few dissenters, of course, and I've written more about "Uncle Walter" in this week's issue of Maclean's. But I was reminded of the last time the MSM (though not yet designated as such) bade farewell...

In an Iranian prison, marriage is till death do us part: He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death." In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her...

Government housing, federally funded contraception now the fate of many wild mustangs. On Friday, July 17, the House of Representatives met to debate … Go on, take a guess: Health care? The cap-and-tax racket? Stimulus Two? No, none of the above. Don't worry, they're still spending your money. Wild horses couldn't stop them doing that.

According to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, we only have 96 months left to save the planet. I’m impressed. 96 months. Not 95. Not 97. July 2017. Put it in your diary. Usually the warm-mongers stick to the same old drone that we only have ten years left to save the planet. Nice round number. Al Gore said we only have ten years left three-and-a-half years ago, which makes him technically more of a pessimist than the Prince of Wales. Al’s betting that Armageddon kicks in sometime in January 2016 — unless he’s just peddling glib generalities. And,...

According to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, we only have 96 months left to save the planet. I'm impressed. 96 months. Not 95. Not 97. July 2017. Put it in your diary. Usually the warm-mongers stick to the same old drone that we only have 10 years left to save the planet. Nice round number. Al Gore said we only have 10 years left three-and-a-half years ago, which makes him technically more of a pessimist than the Prince of Wales. Al's betting Armageddon kicks in January 2016 – unless he's just peddling glib generalities. And, alas, even a...

MARK STEYN HOSTING FOR RUSH

MARK STEYN HOSTS Posted early due to work commitments.

Jonah, you're missing the point. Those maggots are part of the treatment: The treatment for the cancer appeared to be working, but the bedsore continued to get worse despite attempts to treat it with "maggot therapy" in which maggots are used to clean out the wound

...last week I thought Mark Sanford could survive the adultery. But I don't think he can survive his weirdly exhibitionist public meditations on the adultery. I doubt many of his constituents share his view of the gubernatorial office as a personal growth experience the entire state can benefit from, and he might at least run some of the talking points of his thrice-daily confessionals past the staffers: "South Carolina's Governor Mark Sanford may be sleeping in the doghouse permenantly after telling the AP that his mistress is his soulmate, but that he'll try to fall back in love with his...

For a while, the weirdness exercised a global fascination. The prestigious Oxford Union invited him to address their members, and Michael Jackson flew in to Britain wearing his trademark surgical mask, a wise move considering the country was then in the grip of Mad Cow Disease. On an official tour of Blenheim Palace, which must have been a bit of a comedown after Neverland, they rolled out the red carpet, but he insisted it be heavily disinfected, and it squelched under his crutch. Crutch, not crotch. Due to some domestic mishap, he was grabbing the former rather than the latter....

Driving north out of New York the other day, I heard a caller to Mark Levin’s show discuss his excellent book Liberty and Tyranny. The word she kept using was “inevitable”: The republic felt exhausted, and there was an “inevitability” to what was happening. A quarter-millennium of liberty seemed to be about the best you could expect, and its waning was—again—“inevitable.” As she spoke, the rich farmland of Columbia County rolled past my window. To many of its residents, the caller would have sounded slightly kooky. Were any of the county’s first families suddenly to rematerialize from their centuries of...

In a lousy week, Mark Sanford had one stroke of luck: Michael Jackson chose the day after the governor's news conference to moonwalk into eternity, and thus gave the media's pop therapists a more rewarding subject to feast on — or at any rate one of the few stories whose salient points are weirder than Sanford's. Not that the governor didn't do his best to keep his end up on the pop culture allusions: "I've spent the last five days crying in Argentina," he revealed, in presumably unconscious homage to Evita. The plot owed less to Tim Rice and Andrew...

Jackson, Sanford and weirdness Big government more or less guarantees rule by creeps and misfits In a lousy week, Mark Sanford had one stroke of luck: Michael Jackson chose the day after the governor's news conference to moonwalk into eternity, and thus gave the media's pop therapists a more rewarding subject to feast on – or at any rate one of the few stories whose salient points are weirder than Sanford's. Not that the governor didn't do his best to keep his end up on the pop culture allusions: "I've spent the last five days crying in Argentina," he revealed,...

NET LOSSES Steyn on America Monday, 22 June 2009 A mere year ago the notion that the government would take over General Motors would have seemed incredible. Yet here we are, with the president of the United States firing the CEO and personally calling the mayor of Detroit to assure him he has no plans to move the head office out of the city. Not literally, not yet. But in any practical sense it’s now headquartered in Washington. In another twelve months, I wonder what currently unthinkable scenarios will have become faits accomplis.

...For the Obama administration, (Iran) presents a particular challenge - because the president's preferred rhetorical tic is to stake out the two sides and present himself as a dispassionate, disinterested soul of moderation...That was pretty much his shtick on abortion at the University of Notre Dame...So in his recent speech in Cairo, he applied the same technique. Among his many unique qualities, the 44th president is the first to give the impression that the job is beneath him - that he is too big and too gifted to be confined to the humdrum interests of one nation-state. As my former...

The polite explanation for Barack Obama’s diffidence on Iran is that he doesn’t want to give the mullahs the excuse to say the Great Satan is meddling in Tehran’s affairs. So the president’s official position is that he’s modestly encouraged by the regime’s supposed interest in investigating some of the allegations of fraud. Also, he’s heartened to hear that OJ is looking for the real killers. “You've seen in Iran,” explained President Obama, “some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election . . . ” “Supreme Leader”? I...

You always have a dog in the fight, whether you know it or not. By Mark Steyn The polite explanation for Barack Obama’s diffidence on Iran is that he doesn’t want to give the mullahs the excuse to say the Great Satan is meddling in Tehran’s affairs. So the president’s official position is that he’s modestly encouraged by the regime’s supposed interest in investigating some of the allegations of fraud. Also, he’s heartened to hear that OJ is looking for the real killers. “You've seen in Iran,” explained President Obama, “some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he...

Willie Whitelaw, a genial old buffer who served as Margaret Thatcher’s deputy for many years, once accused the Labour party of going around Britain stirring up apathy. Viscount Whitelaw’s apparent paradox is, in fact, a shrewd political insight, and all the sharper for being accidental. Big government depends, in large part, on going around the country stirring up apathy — creating the sense that problems are so big, so complex, so intractable that even attempting to think about them for yourself gives you such a splitting headache it’s easier to shrug and accept as given the proposition that only government...

Willie Whitelaw, a genial old buffer who served as Margaret Thatcher's deputy for many years, once accused the Labour Party of going around Britain stirring up apathy. Viscount Whitelaw's apparent paradox is, in fact, a shrewd political insight, and all the sharper for being accidental. Big government depends, in large part, in going around the country stirring up apathy – creating the sense that problems are so big, so complex, so intractable that even attempting to think about them for yourself gives you such a splitting headache it's easier to shrug and accept as given the proposition that only government...

As recently as last summer, General Motors filing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story of the week.  But it’s not such a very great step from the unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually happened the market barely noticed and the media were focused on the president’s “address to the Muslim world.” As it happens, these two stories are the same story: snapshots, at home and abroad, of the hyperpower in eclipse. It’s a long time since anyone touted GM as the emblematic brand of America — What’s good for GM is good for...

As recently as last summer, General Motors filing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story of the week. But it's not such a very great step from the unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually happened the market barely noticed, and the media were focused on the president's "address to the Muslim world." As it happens, these two stories are the same story: snapshots, at home and abroad, of the hyperpower in eclipse. It's a long time since anyone touted GM as the emblematic brand of America – What's good for GM is good for...

In a world of imponderables, some old-fashioned detachment might serve us better Empathy. You either got it or you ain’t. Sonia Sotomayor’s got it, which is why she’s just been nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. President Obama said that what he’s looking for in a big-time judge is “the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.” As he told his pro-abortion chums at Planned Parenthood, “We need somebody who’s got the heart—the empathy—to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or...

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, a group of just under 100 people—Londoners and a few visitors —took a guided tour of the old Jewish East End. They visited, among other sites of interest, the birthplace of my old chum Lionel Bart, the author of Oliver! Three generations of schoolchildren have grown up singing Bart’s lyric:   Consider yourselfAt ’ome!Consider yourselfOne of the family! Those few dozen London Jews considered themselves at ’ome. But they weren’t. Not any more. The tour was abruptly terminated when the group was pelted with stones, thrown by “youths”—or to be slightly less evasive, in the...

Driving north out of New York the other day, I heard a caller to Mark Levin’s show discuss his excellent book Liberty and Tyranny. The word she kept using was “inevitable”: The republic felt exhausted, and there was an “inevitability” to what was happening. A quarter-millennium of liberty seemed to be about the best you could expect, and its waning was—again—“inevitable.” As she spoke, the rich farmland of Columbia County rolled past my window. To many of its residents, the caller would have sounded slightly kooky. Were any of the county’s first families suddenly to rematerialize from their centuries of...

Driving north out of New York the other day, I heard a caller to Mark Levin’s show discuss his excellent book Liberty and Tyranny. The word she kept using was “inevitable”: The republic felt exhausted, and there was an “inevitability” to what was happening. A quarter-millennium of liberty seemed to be about the best you could expect, and its waning was—again—“inevitable.” As she spoke, the rich farmland of Columbia County rolled past my window. To many of its residents, the caller would have sounded slightly kooky. Were any of the county’s first families suddenly to rematerialize from their centuries of...

What does a nuclear madman have to do to get America's attention? On Memorial Day, the North Koreans detonated "an underground atomic device many times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki," as my old colleagues at The Irish Times put it. You'd think that'd rate something higher than "World News In Brief," see foot of page 37. But instead Washington was consumed by the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, who apparently has a "compelling personal story." Doesn't Kim Jong-il have a compelling personal story? Like Sonia, he grew up in a poor neighborhood (North Korea),...

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Teleprompter We are on the brink of ‘man-caused disaster.’ By Mark Steyn What does a nuclear madman have to do to get America’s attention? On Memorial Day, the North Koreans detonated “an underground atomic device many times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” as my old colleagues at the Irish Times put it. You’d think that’d rate something higher than “World News In Brief,” see foot of page 37. But instead Washington was consumed by the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, who apparently has a “compelling personal story.” Doesn’t...

HH: Watched the extensive news coverage of President Obama and Dick Cheney hurling thunderbolts at each other. And to discuss that and other matters, joined by Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn. You can read all of Mark’s work at www.steynonline.com. Mark, just generally, quite an extraordinary day on the national security front with these battling giants of the national security world. MS: Yes. I thought the President’s speech was revolting and contemptible, and one that he really should not have given. In a sense, the Vice President, Dick Cheney, all he had to do, really, was say well look,...

was in Vermont the other day and made the mistake of picking up the local paper. Impressively, it contained a quarter-page ad, a rare sight these days. The rest of the page was made up by in-house promotions for the advertising department's special offer on yard-sale announcements, etc. But the one real advertisement was from something called SEVCA. SEVCA is a nonprofit agency, just like the New York Times, General Motors Corp. and the State of California. And it stands for "Southeastern Vermont Community Action." Why, they're community organizers, just like the president! The designated "anti-poverty agency" is taking out...

I was in one of those hotels where they give you The New York Times whether you want it or not. And, even if you leave it in the corridor, the maid brings it into the room and places it invitingly on the table. And, even though you ignore it, you call down for a pot of tea and the room service guy moves it to put the tray down and then drapes the paper slightly over the edge between the cup and the single flower in the mini-vase as though posed for a “Still Life of Afternoon Tea with...

I was in Vermont the other day and made the mistake of picking up the local paper. Impressively, it contained a quarter-page ad, a rare sight these days. The rest of the page was made up by in-house promotions for the advertising department’s special offer on yard-sale announcements, etc. But the one real advertisement was from something called SEVCA. SEVCA is a “non-profit agency,” just like the New York Times, General Motors, and the State of California. And it stands for “South-Eastern Vermont Community Action.” Why, they’re “community organizers,” just like the president! The designated “anti-poverty agency” is taking out...

I was in Vermont the other day and made the mistake of picking up the local paper. Impressively, it contained a quarter-page ad, a rare sight these days. The rest of the page was made up by in-house promotions for the advertising department's special offer on yard-sale announcements, etc. But the one real advertisement was from something called SEVCA. SEVCA is a "nonprofit agency," just like The New York Times, General Motors and the state of California. And it stands for "South-Eastern Vermont Community Action." Why, they're "community organizers," just like the president! The designated "anti-poverty agency" is taking out...

Maybe if they’d covered the love child instead of a fast food foray, papers wouldn’t be dying John Edwards’ adultery was back in the news last week. Well, okay, “back” is probably not le mot juste, given that the former presidential candidate’s mistress cum campaign videographer wasn’t exactly front-page news even in the days when he was coming a strong second in the Iowa caucuses or being tipped as a possible vice-presidential nominee. Every editor knew the “rumours” (i.e., plausible scenario with mountains of circumstantial evidence), but, unlike, say, Sarah Palin’s daughter’s ex-boyfriend’s mother’s drug bust, this wasn’t one of...

Over and Out [Mark Steyn] Following California's "tax revolt" and the usual editorials from a dying media sneering at the electorate as tantrum-throwing kindergartners, we now move on to the swimsuit round, in which the Golden State's woes are federalized and redistributed to the nation at large. In the states' version of the Obama model for everything from mortgages to credit cards, the feckless will have their pathologies rewarded and the prudent will get stuck with the tab. The Atlantic's Megan McArdle cuts to the chase: California is completely, totally, irreparably hosed. Up next: New York. As Miss McArdle notes,...

Well, of course it is. Everyone from James Carville to Colin L. Powell says so. "The Republican Party is in deep trouble," Mr. Powell told some group willing to pay him serious money to deliver this kind of incisive insight. "Americans do want to pay taxes for services. Americans want more government in their lives, not less." Whether or not they want it, they're certainly going to get it. And, if you like big government now, just think how big it'll be once both parties are fully signed up to the concept. You'll recall that Mr. Powell voted for Barack...

Uh-oh. Nancy Pelosi’s performance at her press conference re waterboarding has raised, according to the Washington Post, “troubling new questions about the Speaker’s credibility.” The dreaded T-word: “troubling.” I doubt it will “trouble” the media for long, or at least not to the extent of bringing the Pelosi speakership to a sudden end — and needless to say I’m all in favor of Nancy remaining the face of congressional Democrats until November 2010. But her inconsistent statements do suggest a useful way of looking at America’s tortured “torture” debate: Question: What does Dick Cheney think of waterboarding? He’s in favor...

HH: Because it is Thursday and we are lucky, we begin with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn. You can read all of Mark’s work at www.steynonline.com. Mark, an amazing press conference today by the Speaker of the House, who apparently is not opposed to waterboarding, depending upon what year you talk to her in. MS: Yes, it’s interesting to me the evolving defense mounted by Mrs. Pelosi. She’s effectively digging down, I think, here, and absolutely denying what would seem to be the version of events recounted by the CIA and other parties that she was aware not only,...

Let's just cut to the chase and handcuff Cheney and Pelosi to a radiator in a CIA safe house somewhere. Uh-oh. Nancy Pelosi's performance at her press conference re: waterboarding has raised, according to The Washington Post, "troubling new questions about the Speaker's credibility." The dreaded T-word: "troubling." I doubt it will "trouble" the media for long, or at least not to the extent of bringing the Pelosi Speakership to a sudden end – and needless to say I'm all in favor of Nancy remaining the face of Congressional Democrats until November 2010. But her inconsistent statements do suggest a...

HH: Because it is Thursday and we are lucky, we begin with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn. You can read all of Mark’s work at www.steynonline.com. Mark, an amazing press conference today by the Speaker of the House, who apparently is not opposed to waterboarding, depending upon what year you talk to her in. MS: Yes, it’s interesting to me the evolving defense mounted by Mrs. Pelosi. She’s effectively digging down, I think, here, and absolutely denying what would seem to be the version of events recounted by the CIA and other parties that she was aware not only,...

MARK STEYN'S column appears in several newspapers, including the Washington Times, Philadelphia's Evening Bulletin, and the Orange County Register. In addition, he writes for The New Criterion, Maclean's in Canada, the Jerusalem Post, The Australian, and Hawke's Bay Today in New Zealand. The author of National Review's Happy Warrior column, he also blogs on National Review Online. He is the author of several books, including the best-selling America Alone: The End of The World as We Know It. Mr. Steyn teaches a two-week course in journalism at Hillsdale College during each spring semester. The following is adapted from a lecture...

HH: It’s Thursday, and every Thursday when we are lucky, we begin with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn, whom I learned today from his latest magazine article at Commentary Magazine is an old chum with Lionel Bart, the author of Oliver! I never knew that, Mark Steyn. MS: Oh, no, he was a wonderful man. He ended up broke pretty much, because he wound up giving up all his copyrights after squandering so much money in the 60s. He once said to me, we were talking about the 1970s, and he said well, basically, I did so many drugs...

This essay is taken from Mark's book, A Song For The Season: With Mother's Day approaching (in North America, anyway: in Britain, it’s the fourth Sunday after Lent), a young lad’s heart naturally turns to thoughts of serenading his mom. And, when it does, he quickly discovers the heyday of mother songs was a century ago. From the Gay Nineties to the Great War, mother songs were a Tin Pan Alley staple and among the biggest hits of the day: “Always Take Mother’s Advice”, “A Boy’s Best Friend Is His Mother”, “Your Mother Is Your Best Friend After All”, “That...

Conservatives always face uphill climb The Left's devotion to government gives it a unity of purpose the Right can't match. Is conservatism over? Well, of course it is. Everyone from James Carville to Colin Powell says so. "The Republican Party is in deep trouble," Gen. Powell told some group willing to pay him serious money to deliver this kind of incisive insight. "Americans do want to pay taxes for services. Americans want more government in their lives, not less."

Thursday's Guest Host -- Mark Steyn