Circles Round the Killers

The great Mark Steyn's latest Daily Telegraph column, for those of you who devour his work: Blair must overturn 40 years of mistakes. Among other insights:

It's not black (the bomber) and white (the rest of us); there's a lot of murky shades of grey in between: the terrorist bent on devastation and destruction prowls the streets, while around him are a significant number of people urging him on, and around them a larger group of cocksure young men gleefully celebrating mass murder, and around them a much larger group of people who stand silent at the acts committed in their name, and around them a mesh of religious and community leaders openly inciting mayhem, and around them a savvy network of professional identity-group grievance-mongers adamant that they're the real victims, and around them a vast mass of progressive elites too squeamish about ethno-cultural matters to confront reality, and around them a political establishment desperate to pretend this is just a managerial problem that can be finessed away with a new bureaucracy and a bit of community outreach.

You can find a lot more of his writing at SteynOnline. For example, Mugged by Realityhis entertaining dissection of Canadian health care, for some inexplicable reason admired by American liberals, or his dissection of multiculturalism, The Smallness of the Big Idea, which begins with the horrifying but funny story of Mohammed Atta's meeting with a Department of Agriculture employee named Johnelle Bryant. It includes the horrifying and blackly funny story of the editor of the big Melbourne (Australian) newspaper:

The Age's editor Andrew Jaspan still lives in another world. You'll recall that it was Jaspan who objected to the energy and conviction of certain freed Australian hostage, at least when it comes to disrespecting their captors: "I was, I have to say, shocked by Douglas Wood's use of the '********' word, if I can put it like that, which I just thought was coarse and very ill-thought through ... As I understand it, he was treated well there. He says he was fed every day, and as such to turn around and use that kind of language I think is just insensitive."

And heaven forbid we're insensitive about terrorists. True, a blindfolded Wood had to listen to his jailers murder two of his colleagues a few inches away, but how boorish would one have to be to hold that against one's captors?

As I've said before, read Mark Steyn.

Comments

[ralphg]

Canadian health care is pretty good, and should not be smirked at by Americans. There are line-ups, true, for non-emergency surgery, but you get instant care -- at no charge -- when it is an emergency.

Private clinics are growing to take care of non-emergency care.

[Missourian]

RaphG: Americans get "instant care" at no charge when it is an emergency. Emergency rooms in the United States are compelled to provide care to all who need it. Although they mail bills to the recipients they make virtually no effort to collect from those who do not voluntarily pay. Those who do not voluntarily pay their emergency rooms bills generally are allowed default without consequence.