The Sinking of the West

Steyn Online ^ | 15 Jan 2022 | Mark Steyn

[Rummyfan]

Further to the state of our world as discussed with David Starkey and Douglas Murray on the Friday Mark Steyn Show, here is a rather too obvious bit of symbolism. A decade ago - January 13th 2012 - the cruise ship Costa Concordia sank off the coast of Tuscany. As you can read below, Abe Greenwald more or less taunted me that I would be unable to resist the awesome metaphorical power, and so I rose to the occasion. I think the column holds up pretty well, especially the latter half on manhood and manly virtues, both of which are in ever shorter supply in an age of identity politics. As David Starkey was saying last night, we are becoming ever more drearily literal, even in our objections. So we talk about chromosomes and genitals, but there's far more to it than that. Here's how it looked to me exactly ten years ago:

Abe Greenwald of Commentary magazine tweets:

Is there any chance that Mark Steyn won't use the Italian captain fleeing the sinking ship as the lead metaphor in a column on EU collapse?

Oh, dear. You've got to get up early in the morning to beat me to civilizational-collapse metaphors. Been there, done that. See page 185 of my most recent book, where I contrast the orderly, dignified, and moving behavior of those on the Titanic (the ship, not the mendacious Hollywood blockbuster) with that manifested in more recent disasters. There was no orderly evacuation from the Costa Concordia, just chaos punctuated by individual acts of courage from, for example, an Hungarian violinist in the orchestra and a ship's entertainer in a Spiderman costume, both of whom helped children to safety, the former paying with his life.

[Rummyfan]

[Basket_of_Deplorables]

“Today there is no social norm, so it’s every man for himself — operative word “man,” although not many of the chaps on the Titanic would recognize those on the Costa Concordia as “men.” From a grandmother on the latter: “I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls.”

Whenever I write about these subjects, I receive a lot of mail from men along the lines of this correspondent: “The feminists wanted a gender-neutral society. Now they’ve got it. So what are you complaining about?”

A Man is a position of Honor, that requires Honor. Honor is internal. And it must be earned. Nobody can give it to you; nobody can take it. But you can give it away in a heartbeat.

Honor, once turned from, is very difficult to get back. It takes a lifetime commitment. Most of us fail at some point, but we vow to be better, and become better for next time. And there will always be a next time.

We don’t just do it for them. We do it for ourselves. I hold doors even if I get a scowl. Because I do it for me.

Read the poem, “If.”