Mark Steyn: It Was. Were You?

Mark Steyn has had it UP TO HERE with the constant drain that Islam is putting on the heart and soul of Western civilization, and the toll it has been taking on his personal life, personal freedom and pocket book.

The 'Fighting the Islamization of the West' club is a pretty exclusive little club, with very few members and no known HQ, leader and certainly, no known membership dues.

Aside from the fact that I would never, ever want to be a part of a club that would have me as a member, it takes a certain amount of unmitigated gall to accuse Mark Steyn of being 'insufficiently butch' on what he rightly characterizes as "the biggest story of our time". 

STEYN: 

"...I'm disinclined to get into a Who's Got The Biggest Swinging Islamophobic Dong? contest with you. In that Easter piece I said that Islam cannot abide the other and is incompatible with a pluralist society, and throughout last week I reiterated my call for an end to mass Muslim immigration. If that's insufficiently butch for you, if that's "hampering attempts to stop the Islamization of the west", then please bugger off and get on with stopping the Islamization of the west your own way. And then you wouldn't need to mischaracterize what I wrote and put your words in my mouth, would you?"

Now, I cannot, unfortunately, speak from first hand experience, but I'm quite certain that Mark Steyn must have at the very least been a finalist, if not a Grant Prize winner in the last episode of Who's Got the Biggest Swinging Islamophobic Dong. 

FOR REAL AND NOT FOR JOKING ABOUT THAT. 

SORRY IS IT HOT IN HERE OR IS IT JUST ME?!??!?!

*waves*

*composes self*

Still, it must be absolutely exhausting in every way to be fighting the beast every waking moment. 

(I thought the first sentence of this next bit said "kvetchier" than usual, but that was silly me projecting JEWISH MOM JUJU ONTO MARK THE PHILOSEMITIC GENTILE "NOT A JEW BUT HAS A JEWISH LAST NAME" GIANT STEYN. SILLY ME!!!)

"If I sound a little tetchier than usual, it's because Sebastian Faulks' farewell to The Independent put me in a wistful and somewhat elegiac mode, mourning my carefree younger self. So I hope you'll forgive me if a guy who lives with death threats, and "human rights" complaints for "flagrant Islamophobia" with attendant legal bills, and tedious expenses like having to switch hotels at the last minute for security reasons, and US State Department and British Foreign Office advisories warning their nationals it's unsafe to go anywhere near my events, and even crappy restaurants deciding it's too dangerous to honor dinner reservations resents being told he's not puilling his weight and is "hampering attempts to stop the Islamization of the west". If you'd asked me back when I was "dazzling" Sebastian & Co, it would never have occurred to me that just moving around could get so complex and expensive, and that (with a few exceptions such as Michel Houellebecq) almost every influential voice in western culture would choose to sit out the biggest story of our time."

For what it's worth Mark Steyn still dazzles yours truly with every essay and to channel the great Margaret Thatcher, may she rest in eternal peace, MARK STEYN this is no time to go wobbly! 

So all you folks out there send Mark Steyn your prayers and support, and better yet-buy some Steyn store stuff.

Do your part, doing what you can-not what you can't 

Choose to live free. 

Live well. 

Speak up. 

Speak loudly. 

Don't be afraid. 

Time is of the essence.