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Mark Steyn
Steyn at CPAC 2008
Born	(1959-12-08) December 8, 1959 (age 65) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation(s)	Author and Commentator
Website	http://www.steynonline.com

Mark Steyn (born 1959) is a Canadian writer, political commentator and cultural critic. He has written five books, including America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller. He is published in newspapers and magazines, and also appears on radio shows such as those of Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt.

Steyn, a Canadian citizen, now resides mainly in New Hampshire in the United States. He is married with three children. Irish artist Stella Steyn is the great-aunt of Mark Steyn.

Life and career

Steyn was born in Toronto. He was baptized a Catholic and later confirmed in the Anglican Church; he was educated at the King Edward's School, Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. He has stated "the last Jewish female in my line was one of my paternal great-grandmothers and that both my grandmothers were Catholic". He left school in 1978 at 18 and worked as a disc-jockey before becoming musical theatre critic at the newly established The Independent in 1986. He was appointed film critic for The Spectator in 1992. After writing predominantly about the arts, Steyn's focus shifted to political commentary and moved to the conservative broadsheet The Daily Telegraph which stopped carrying his column in 2006.

Since then, he has written for a wide range of publications, including the Jerusalem Post, The Orange County Register, Chicago Sun-Times, National Review, The New York Sun, The Australian, Macleans, Irish Times, National Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Western Standard and New Criterion.

Steyn's website "SteynOnline" provides special commentary and access to many of his columns and other published work. He occasionally posts to the National Review Online group blog, The Corner.

Steyn's books include Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (a history of the musical theatre) and America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, a New York Times bestseller. He has also published collections of his columns and his celebrity obituaries and profiles from The Atlantic.

Steyn is a visiting professor at Hillsdale College.

Writing style

Steyn's writing draws supporters and detractors for content. His style was described by Robert Fulford as “bring to public affairs the dark comedy developed in the Theatre of the Absurd." Longtime editor and admirer Fulford also wrote, "Steyn, a self-styled 'right-wing bastard,' violates everyone's sense of good taste." According to Simon Mann, Steyn “gives succour to the maxim the pen is mightier than the sword, though he is not averse to employing the former to advocate use of the latter."

Susan Catto in Time noted his interest in controversy, "Instead of shying away from the appearance of conflict, Steyn positively revels in it." Canadian journalist Steve Burgess wrote "Steyn wields his rhetorical rapier with genuine skill" and that national disasters tended to cause Steyn "to display his inner wingnut." Lionel Shriver wrote, "I love Mark Steyn ...however you may deplore his opinions, Steyn is funny." Others have been less approving. For instance, Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic wrote that Steyn was, "...long on colorful rhetoric but short on dry facts." British journalist Johann Hari wrote in the New Statesman: "Steyn's prose has a jangling musicality; like Ann Coulter, he writes in a demonic demotic that makes you chuckle even as you retch." (However, he also accused Steyn of racism.)

Positions

Criticism of media

In a May 2004 column Steyn commented that editors were encouraging anti-Bush sentiments after The Daily Mirror and the Boston Globe had published faked pictures, originating from American and Hungarian pornographic websites, of British and American soldiers purportedly sexually abusing Iraqis. Steyn argues that media only wanted to show images to westerners "that will shame and demoralize them." Boston Phoenix media critic Dan Kennedy said that Steyn's column was an effort to "rally the spirits of his fellow warmongers: by demonizing anyone who dared to criticize the war."

In a July 2005 column for National Review, Steyn amplified his dislike for the media. He criticized Andrew Jaspan, the editor of the Australian newspaper, The Age. Jaspan was offended by Douglas Wood, an Australian kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq, who after his rescue referred to his captors as "arseholes." Jaspan claimed that “the issue is really largely, speaking 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.” Steyn responded in his column by arguing that insensitivity toward captors is not the most important, and that it was Jaspan, not Wood, who suffered from Stockholm syndrome. He said further, “A blindfolded Mr. Wood had to listen to his captors murder two of his colleagues a few inches away, but how crude and boorish would one have to be to hold that against one’s hosts?”

In a January 2007 column in the Chicago Sun-Times, Steyn wrote that Barack Obama was “black, and white, and Hawaiian, and Kansan, and charismatic, and Congregationalist, and Muslim. He was raised in an Indonesian madrassah by radical imams, which is more than John Edwards can say.” He added, “The madrassah stuff was supposedly leaked to Insight Magazine… by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s team.” Two days later, Lynn Sweet of the Sun-Times responded to Steyn regarding what she called the smear on Obama and the attack on Clinton. She wrote, “And there is no evidence whatsoever that Clinton's campaign had anything to do with spreading the damaging rumor that Obama hid a Muslim background.” Sweet noted the visit by CNN's John Vause to the state-run elementary school in Indonesia that Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

Conrad Black trial

Steyn wrote articles and maintained a blog for Maclean's covering the 2007 business fraud trial of his friend Conrad Black in Chicago. Questions were raised in the media over the objectivity of Steyn's coverage, for example Andrew Clark of The Guardian, referring to Steyn as one of Black’s "loyal supporters", quoted from Steyn’s Blog, “If it is bad news, I'm sorry I won't be there to support my old boss…” Suanne Kelman wrote in the Literary Review of Canada that the leader of Black's media cheering section at his Chicago trial was "above all Maclean’s Mark Steyn, in both the magazine and his logorrheic blog." Kelman stated that Steyn began coverage with the view that Black's trial was a "cruel farce".

After Black's conviction, Steyn published a 7,500 word post mortem in Maclean's, excoriating Black's defense team and blaming them, with a list of others, for the outcome. Describing the article, Toronto Star business columnist Jennifer Wells said, "... columnist Mark Steyn lifts his leg and relieves himself with the force of a Clydesdale in the direction of Greenspan and his co-counsel Eddie Genson." Wells concludes that Steyn was "... stingingly absurd to suggest that Conrad Black was done in by his lawyers. He was done in by the facts."

Eurabia

Mark Steyn believes that Eurabia – a future where the European continent is dominated by Islam – is an imminent reality that cannot be reversed. "The problem, after all, is not that the sons of Allah are 'long shots' but that they're certainties. Every Continental under the age of 40 – make that 60, if not 75 – is all but guaranteed to end his days living in an Islamified Europe." "Native populations on the continent are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic." Steyn claims that Muslims will account for perhaps 40 percent of the population by 2020, but Globe and Mail correspondent Doug Saunders labels the assertion false:

Slightly more than 4 percent of Europe's population is Muslim, as defined by demographers (though about 80 per cent of these people are not religiously observant, so they are better defined as secular citizens who have escaped religious nations).

It is possible, though not certain, that this number could rise to 6 percent by 2020. If current immigration and birth rates remain the same, it could even rise to 10 percent within 100 years.

But it won't, because Muslims don't actually have more babies than other populations do under the same circumstances. The declining population growth rates are not confined to native populations. In fact, immigrants from Muslim countries are experiencing a faster drop in reproduction rates than the larger European population.

In his book "America Alone", Steyn posits that Muslim population growth has already contributed to a modern European genocide:

Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since the second World War? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can't buck demography — except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out, as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you cannot outbreed the enemy, cull 'em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia's demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.

Author and U.C.L.A. Public Policy Professor Mark Kleiman fears that Steyn is "justifying genocide, both retrospectively in Bosnia and prospectively in the rest of Europe." Andrew Sullivan calls Steyn's book "an intellectually vulgar diatribe based on the crudest demographic reductionism" and also wonders, "is Steyn actually advocating genocide? When you read the full context of the paragraph in the book (pages 4-6), there are no exculpatory words around it."

Steyn responded to such criticisms by saying:

My book isn't about what I want to happen but what I think will happen. Given Fascism, Communism and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, it's not hard to foresee that the neo-nationalist resurgence already under way in parts of Europe will at some point take a violent form.

Criticism of multiculturalism

Steyn has commented on divisions between the Western world and the Islamic World. He criticizes the tolerance of what he calls "Islamic cultural intolerance." Steyn explains that multiculturalism only requires feeling good about other cultures and is "fundamentally a fraud... subliminally accepted on that basis." In Jewish World Review, Steyn argues "Multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women - combine with the worst attributes of Western culture - licence and self-gratification." He states, "I am not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture - rule of law, universal suffrage - is preferable to Arab culture."

Christopher Hitchens believes that Steyn errs by "considering European Muslim populations as one. Islam is as fissile as any other religion, and considerable friction exists among immigrant Muslim groups in many European countries. Moreover, many Muslims actually have come to Europe for the advertised purposes; seeking asylum and to build a better life." Nevertheless, Hitchens' review of his book America Alone was extremely favorable, calling it "admirably tough-minded."

After a piece in which Steyn ridiculed Ayatollah Khomeni for giving advice on child abuse and bestiality, Scott Horton, lawyer and Harper's writer, commented on Steyn's writing, saying "it would be quite an understatement to call this language intolerant. Indeed, it can easily be paralleled with ethnic stigmatization that has occurred in the most vicious societies in modern times." Steyn replied to this commentary, and others like it, by illustrating that his reference was founded in factual citation of the writings of Ayatollah Khomeni.

Support of Iraq invasion

Steyn was an early proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2007 he reiterated his support while attacking Democrat John Murtha, stating that his plan for military action in Iraq was designed “to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don't have to share the blame for the defeat. … doesn't support them in the mission, but he'd like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years”.

Steyn on President Carter

On Friday, 6 Nov 2009 Mark Steyn substituted for Rush Limbaugh. During one segment Steyn berated President Jimmy Carter for having been a weak President, in contrast to the supposedly strong President Reagan. According to Steyn, Carter's weakness was responsible for, among other things, emboldening the Iranian government to occupy the American embassy in Teheran and to take the U.S. hostages. Steyn went on to say that not even in Moscow was the U.S. embassy ever occupied, nor was the U.S. interest section in Havana ever occupied. Steyn failed to mention that the Teheran embassy was occupied by university srudents and that all the hostages were eventually released. Moreover, Steyn conveniently ignored that, under Reagan, 241 American servicemen were killed in Beirut Lebanon on 23 Oct 1983. Also in 1983, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. In addition, many American and western hostages were taken in Lebanon, some of whom were murdered.

Canadian Islamic Congress human rights complaint

In 2007, a complaint was filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission related to an article "The Future Belongs to Islam," written by Mark Steyn, published in Maclean's magazine. The complainants alleged that the article and Maclean’s refusal to provide space for a rebuttal violated their human rights. The complainants also claimed that the article was one of twenty-two (22) Maclean’s articles, many written by Steyn, about Muslims. Further complaints were filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission refused in April 2008 to proceed, saying it lacked jurisdiction to deal with magazine content. However, the Commission stated that it, “strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims ... Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism.” Critics of the Commission claimed that Maclean’s and Steyn had been found guilty without a hearing. John Martin of The Province wrote, "There was no hearing, no evidence presented and no opportunity to offer a defence — just a pronouncement of wrongdoing." The OHRC defended its right to comment by stating, "Like racial profiling and other types of discrimination, ascribing the behaviour of individuals to a group damages everyone in that group. We have always spoken out on such issues. Maclean’s and its writers are free to express their opinions. The OHRC is mandated to express what it sees as unfair and harmful comment or conduct that may lead to discrimination."

Steyn subsequently criticized the Commission, commenting that "Even though they (the OHRC) don't have the guts to hear the case, they might as well find us guilty. Ingenious!"

Soon afterwards, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission issued a public letter to the editor of Maclean’s magazine. In it, Jennifer Lynch said, "Mr. Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be give free reign. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred." The National Post subsequently defended Steyn and sharply criticized Lynch, stating that Lynch has "no clear understanding of free speech or the value of protecting it" and that "No human right is more basic than freedom of expression, not even the "right" to live one's life free from offence by remarks about one's ethnicity, gender, culture or orientation."

The federal Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed the Canadian Islamic Congress' complaint against Maclean’s in June 2008. The CHRC's ruling said of the article that, "the writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike." However, the Commission ruled that overall, "the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court."

Steyn later wrote a lengthy reflection of his turmoil with the commissions and the tribunals. The reflection appears as the introduction to The Tyranny of Nice, a book authored by Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere on Canada's human rights commissions. In it, Steyn writes:

I’ve learned a lot of lessons during my time in the crosshairs of the Lynch mob. Although the feistier columnists have spoken out on this issue, the broad mass of Canadian media seems generally indifferent to a power grab that explicitly threatens to reduce them to a maple-flavoured variant of Pravda. One boneheaded “journalism professor” even attempted to intervene in the British Columbia trial on the side of the censors. As some leftie website put it, “Defending freedom of speech for jerks means defending jerks.” Well, yes. But, in this case, not defending the jerks means not defending freedom of speech for yourself. It’s not a left/right thing; it’s a free/unfree thing. But an alarming proportion of the Dominion’s “media workers” seem relatively relaxed about playing the role of eunuchs to the Trudeaupian sultans.

Award

Mark Steyn was awarded the 2006 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism for writing which "best reflects love of this country and its democratic institutions". The announcement quotes from Steyn's syndicated column for 26 June 2006, "Be Glad the Flag Is Worth Burning":

One of the big lessons of these last four years is that many, many beneficiaries of Western civilization loathe that civilization, and the media are generally inclined to blur the extent of that loathing.

Roger Ailes of Fox News presented the prize, which included a $20,000 check.

Bibliography

• The Story of Miss Saigon (by Edward Behr and Steyn; 1991, ISBN 1-55970-124-2)
• Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (1997, ISBN 0-415-92286-0)
• The Face of the Tiger (2002, ISBN 0-9731570-0-3; collected columns)
• Mark Steyn From Head To Toe: An Anatomical Anthology (2004, ISBN 0-9731570-2-X; collected columns)
• America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006, ISBN 0-89526-078-6)
• Mark Steyn's Passing Parade (2006, ISBN 0-9731570-1-1; collected obituaries)
• Tyranny of Nice (2008, ISBN 978-0-9780490-1-0; introduction)
• Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West (2009)

References

1. Russell Shorto (2008-06-29). "No Babies? - Declining Population in Europe". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-08-25.
2. ^ "SteynOnline", FAQs February 14, 2007. Accessed August 24, 2008
3. http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/TalkRadio/Show.aspx?RadioShowID=5&ContentGuid=5a09faeb-8c06-4e9f-bf6f-71f8b3349ae7 Mark Steyn on Hugh Hewitt's radio show on the 27th of August 2009
4. "Happy Warrior - Espying the Jew". National Review Online. 2006-08-28. Retrieved 2009-10-27.
5. ^ Mann, Simon: "A critic proud to quote his critics" theage.com August 19, 2006. Retrieved June 11, 2008.
6. ^ Fulford, Robert"Mark Steyn, opinionmonger" robertfulford.com (Published by National Post, November 19 2005)
7. Catto, Susan: "Canada's Conrad Black Controversy" TIME, June 27 2007
8. Steve Burgess: "Mark Steyn's Latest Victims" Mediacheck, thetyee.ca April 24 2007/
9. Shriver, Lionel: "The abortion row in the US... ", The Guardian, March 9, 2006
10. Follman, Mark, Right Hook, September 29, 2004, salon.com
11. Hari, Johann, Apocalypse Now, The New Statesman March 12 2007
12. Gossett, Sherrie Bogus GI rape photos used as Arab propaganda WorldNetDaily, May 04 2004
13. Papers Run Fake Abuse Photos, May 31, 2004
14. Steyn, Mark Now's not the time for Bush to go soft Jewish World Review, May 17 2004
15. Dan Kennedy, "Steyn's way" The Boston Phoenix June 24 2004
16. Steyn, Mark. "A Weird Stockholm Syndrome" (subscription required) National Review, July 18, 2005.
17. Steyn, Mark "Media are gonna Barack around the clock Chicago Sun-Times, January 21 2007
18. Sweet, Lynn, Barack Attack Unfounded Chicago Sun Times, January 23 2007
19. Steyn, Mark Maclean's Blog Central
20. Media on trial, J-Source.ca
21. Andrew Clark on America series, Guardian
22. Kelman (September 1, 2007). "The Trial Coverage on Trial". Literary Review of Canada. Retrieved 2009-08-26. {{cite web}}: Text "firstSuanne" ignored (help)
23. Steyn, Mark "The Black Trial: The human drama the jury didn't see"McLean's, July 30, 2007
24. Wells, Jennifer "While Rome burned, Black's lawyers napped" Toronto Star, July 21, 2007
25. Steyn, Mark, "She Said What She Thought", SteynOnline.com, December 2006, Archived (Date missing) at steynonline.com (Error: unknown archive URL) (Edited version published by theatlantic.com December 2006)
26. Steyn, Mark: "The future belongs to Islam", Maclean's, October 20, 2006
27. Saunders, Doug, "The 'Eurabia' myth deserves a debunking", Globe and Mail, 2008-09-20
28. Steyn, Mark: "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It", Regnery Publishing, 2006
29. Kleiman, Mark: "Mark Steyn's Solution to the Euro-Muslim Problem", The Reality Based Community, February 18, 2007
30. Sullivan, Andrew: "Steyn, Reynolds, Geonocide", The Daily Dish, February 21, 2007
31. Sullivan, Andrew: "Steyn and Genocide"; see also Christopher Hitchens, Facing the Islamist Menace, City journal, Winter 2007 edition, Template:Sv Andreas Malm, "De Räddas Revelj", Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, 2008-02-10 and Eva Ekselius, "Bli Moderna Nu, Annars...", Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, 2008-03-27
32. Steyn, Mark: "A mass murderer-in-waiting writes", The Corner on National Review Online, February 19, 2007
33. Steyn, Mark: It's the demography stupid The Wall Street Journal January 4, 2006
34. Steyn, Mark: "Battered western syndrome..."Jewish World Review, August 23, 2002
35. Hitchens, Christopher: "Facing the Islamist Menace" City Journal, Winter, 2007
36. Facing the Islamist Menace
37. Steyn, Mark: "Celebrate tolerance, or you're dead" Macleans magazine April 28, 2006
38. Horton, Scott: "Jonah's Fascism" Harper's Magazine, February 17, 2008
39. http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/1516/26
40. Steyn, Mark "Why the Iraq war is turning into America's defeat", Chicago Sun-Times, February 18, 2007
42. Steyn, Mark (October 20, 2006). "The Future Belongs to Islam". Maclean's. Retrieved 2009-08-25. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
43. "Commission Statement Concerning Issues Raised by Complaints against Maclean's Magazine" (Press release). Ontario Human Rights Commission. April 9, 2008. Retrieved 2009-08-25.
    Statement on Decision in Maclean’s Cases, Ontario Human Rights Commission. April 9, 2008
44. "Commission Issues Statement on Decision in Maclean's Cases" (Press release). Ontario Human Rights Commission. April 9, 2008. Retrieved 2009-08-25.
45. Martin, John (May 9, 2008). "I'll take Mexican 'justice'..." The Province. Retrieved 2009-08-25. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
46. Hall, Barbara (April 22, 2008). "Letter to the Editor published in Maclean's Magazine". Ontario Human Rights Commission.
47. Brean, Joseph (April 9, 2008). "Rights body dismisses Maclean's case". National Post.
48. Lynch, Jennifer (May 5, 2008). "Letter to the editor of Maclean's magazine". Canadian Human Rights Commission.
49. "A bit late for introspection". National Post. June 19, 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
50. "Canadian Human Rights Commission dismisses complaint against Macleans". Canadian Press. June 28, 2008. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
51. Shaidle, Kathy; Vere, Pete (2008). The Tyranny of Nice. Interim Publishing. p. 82. ISBN 0978049012.
52. "The Breindel Award Winners". New York Post. 8 June, 2006. Retrieved 2009-08-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
53. Mark Steyn (26 June, 2005). "Be Glad the Flag is Worth Burning". The Orange County Register. Retrieved 2009-08-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

• Mark Steyn's web site
• C-SPAN Interviews with Mark Steyn
• Kathy Shaidle, The Kafkaesque Show Trial of Mark Steyn, 2008-06-11

• 1959 births
• Living people
• British columnists
• British film critics
• British music critics
• Canadian columnists
• Canadian expatriate writers in the United States
• Canadian film critics
• Canadian journalists
• Canadian music critics
• Canadian political pundits
• Canadian political writers
• Writers from New Hampshire