Free Republic

... I went to see Interstellar mainly because I was tickled by the fact that the bad guy is called "Dr Mann". But I took along my kids, and I'm glad I did because it's a good film to see with children or parents. Underneath all the saving-humanity space-travel stuff, the only relationship that matters in the movie is between dad Matthew McConaughey and his daughter. I'm tiptoeing around the startling evolution of that relationship, but let's just say that the, ahem, role reversal of their final scene together had my boys talking all the way home. Interstellar is directed...

Mark Steyn has written an apocalyptic best-seller that every Conservative wishes didn't need to be written. Because scales covered the eyes of the American electorate in 2006 and 2008, it chose a government on the basis of hot air and hope rather than reality and reason. Consequently, America is racing full throttle over the edge of a cliff. Steyn makes a number of observations in the prologue that are worth sharing. The first is about America's moral crisis, and its connection to the Armageddon awaiting us. [quote] When government spends on the scale Washington's got used to, that's not a...

Even when Mark Steyn is utterly wrong, he's a delight to read. In 2002, for example, he convinced himself that Osama bin Laden had been turned to talcum powder by an American missile. For years, it was one of his favourite motifs ('he's bin Laden to rest and is pushing up the daisies' etc). So, when the old monster was actually dropped in May, I went immediately to the Steyn website to see what he'd make of it. Sure enough, he was ready with a well-crafted gag: 'I jumped the gun, much like Osama's missus in Abbottabad'. No one else...

The trick in this business is not to be right too early. A week ago I released my new book — the usual doom 'n' gloom stuff — and, just as the sensible prudent moderate chaps were about to dismiss it as hysterical and alarmist, Standard & Poor's went and downgraded the United States from its AAA rating for the first time in history. Obligingly enough, they downgraded it to AA+, which happens to be the initials of my book: "After America." OK, there's not a lot of "+" in that, but you can't have everything. But the news cycle...