homes in connecticut and on the way they decided this was great land and applied for a grants and were granted them by the colonial governor and they cleared land and build homes and they withstood tough winters, one of my neighbors, the first miller in town dragged his wheels up the frozen connecticut river. ..e first miller in town and he dragged his mill wheel of the frozen connecticut river from connecticut to his new home in new hampshire, and then build a mail in new hampshire in a brutal winter in 1765, i think it was. the idea that these people now, the descendents of these people think when you get a bad storm, get and i stormed or whatever you should apply for federal emergency management agency, they would be no america. there will be no america. the first bad winter in the new england colonies, they would send a complaint back to london

saying why hasn't king george, and the old federal emergency management agency done anything for us? they would be no america. it's not healthy, this stuff. >> host: market also mentioned tom friedman. not sure you shared her opinion of tom friedman. is want to read a little from "after america." talking about globalization. globalization is some kind of mysterious metaphysical force. that's not the remaking our assumptions about the planet. may the force be with you. because if it's not your just squares bill patio in the rearview mirror of history. hardly a week goes by without the times most frequent flyer finding from a state of the our departure lounge on the other side of the planet marveling at its complementary wi-fi, flight railing, and the way his luggage was brought in by cheery native bears in traditional dress

playing some raucous hybrid of gangsta rap on an affordable new expired i box you can wear under your sarong made at a state-of-the-art plant by a small weaker start up back to bite a hedge fund. all of which makes forlorn contrast with a scene that greets him when he glanced back at newark. >> guest: this is like journalism 101. here you are never right. whether you are a global trauma when you graduate never supposed about right with the taxi driver says. they fly you in, if you're a preflight you in two southern sudan, angel and and you get an cab, you are not supposed to write about the cab drivers says he. that's what they paid for. you're not supposed to write about the departure. thomathomas l. friedman is in ay

position in his highly successful post at the new your times. by jetting around the world he proposed a peace plan to king abdul a few years back. and the king said by coincidence that's like the biggest one i've got in my desk. so he goes to see king abdullah, then he goes to the airport applies up to see the sultan of brunei, and then he flies on and goes to see putin in moscow. he spent most of his time in airport culture line. and actually there are some fairly spectacular airports around the world. tom friedman's point is when you're in singapore, or hong kong, you fly back to lax or newer, as thomas l. friedman always said, it's like flying from the jetsons to the flintstones. this is his preferred pop-culture analogy. this is riding 101 by the way.

it's often a good way when you're getting with complex issues to find a pop-culture analogy that will make you giddy way -- the trick is not to use the same over and over which is what thomas l. friedman does with his jets in an flintstones. he said before 2001 after afghanistan, he said in america, in afghanistan the taliban were the flintstones and america were the jetsons. and the jetsons always beat the flintstones but actually that's not true. you know what the flintstones and the jetsons are. but in the flintstones are the classic. the jetsons are sort of cheesy knockoff with a bit of space-age with a bit of a space age getting attached to it. and where the limitation, the metaphor taken very early is in afghanistan, right now america, the jetsons, are desperate to get out and the taliban, the

flintstones, all the have to do is hide their time and all will be theirs. in afghanistan, the flintstones are beating the jetsons. it's not as simple as that all-purpose pop-culture analogy. >> host: live conversation with mark steyn, continues. we have about two hours left in the program. we will be right back.

>> award winning investigative reporter thomas peele tells the story of oakland, california n2007. pulitzer prize-winning journalist and first-time author katherine boo in "behind the beautiful forevers." in latin lessons, how south america stopped listening to the united states and started prospering, hal weitzman, financial times midwest bureau chief, examines the diminished role the united states is play anything south american trade and argues that the relationship needs to be reestablished. natalie dykstra takes a look at why the wife of henry adams decided to take her own life in clover adams, a gilded and

heartbreaking life. look for these titles in bookstores this week, and watch for authors in the near future on booktv. >> each yearbook tv brings you several events from across the country. here's a look atom the upcoming -- at some of the upcoming fairs and festivals we plan on covering this year. booktv's first stop will be the fifth annual savannah book festival over presidents day weekend. live, all-day coverage on saturday, february 8th. 18th. we'll feature s.c. quinn. on march 10th and 11th, booktv will be live on the campus of the university of arizona. our festival coverage includes numerous author talks and poets ranging from the great depression to forensic science. then in late march booktv visits charlottesville, virginia, for the virginia

festival of the book. for a complete list of upcoming book fairs and festivals, visit booktv of.org and click on the book fairs tab at the top of the page. also, please, let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area, and we'll add them to our list. e-mail us at booktv@cspan.org. >> host: and we are back live with mark steyn on "in depthment" we're going to put the numbers up on screen. pth." will put the numbers up on screen if you'd like to call in and talk with our guest, author of nine books. (202) 737-0001 in the east and central time zones. (202) 737-0002 mountain and pacific. e-mail booktv@c-span.org and twitter -- cycle and

twitter.com/booktv and we will start with san jose, california. mary, you're on with all the mark steyn. >> caller: thank you. i'm a first time caller and this will be about islam. many years ago an artist put a crucifixion -- there was no reprisal. synagogues were vandalized throughout the united states and other places and yet there's no riots in israel. and if you talk about burning the koran, halfway around the world they start chanting death to america and burning effigies. there's televised beheadings. and so, i guess, you know, since they declared jihad, if a cartoonist write some kind of cartoon of a islam or mohammed, and so i guess my question is,

what are we allowed ourselves to be so they are -- so terrorized and why is this type of religion given preferential treatment around the world? thanks. >> guest: just to make something you said, it was actually serrano he did the crucifix. robert mapplethorpe did the homoerotic photographs with pat buchanan. if memory serves, pat buchanan when he ran for president in 1992 against the first president bush put in a spectacularly inspired attack ad with president bush. it's the first of either saint george h. w. bush edited into a homoerotic video. it was a splendid stuff but it was serrano did the crucifix. as you know, when you do something like that, somebody did a play in which jesus was gay and having an affair with

judith iscariot. corpus christi it's called by terence mckellen on broadway a few years ago. and catholics held a placard on the sidewalk. if you have done that play about mohammad you would have had an entirely more motivated crowd waiting for you outside the stage door when you look any evening and that is why people don't do that kind of point about mohammed. i was at a conference in copenhagen a year and a half or so back with a fellow called -- he's not a right wing baca only thing. is a conventional year old lefty. and like many your left these of his generation, he has the right to insult everyone. every tradition in sweden where he lives of what they call roundabout dog. people put up this art at traffic rotaries of various odd kinds of dogs. it done one of mohammed. had just done a drawing of mohammed at around about dog. and since he has lived on a death threat, people shouting

death to him on the streets of pakistan but he came home one night and found a couple of people have firebombed his kitchen. unfortunately, they were rather incompetent fighter-bombers, and in setting his kitchen a light they also happened to set their pants on lead. shuffling across the field with their flaming treasures, eventually it got too hot for them and they've removed their waning treasures and abandoned them in the snow and pranced off across the snow in their dvds. unfortunately making mistake of leaving their drivers licenses and all kinds of other picture id in their smoldering fans. enabling the police to go arrest them. everyone had a very good laugh about it. because like a lot of these fellows they are incompetent. like we would've laughed at the 9/11 guys, had they been arrested on september 10 because they were incompetent. we all would've had a laugh about that.

these fellows always jokes until they pull that off. the tragedy is, he learned the hard way that the left -- the left would simply, all kinds of people, all kinds of people have said this. it's easier in the into knock jesus, to knock catholicism, to mock christianity, to do all those tedious jokes like the crucifix, because no one is going to come at you. if you going to be provocative it's best to do with people who can't be provoked. in that sense of episcopalians and congregationalists are the easiest target in the world. >> host: susan freiberg e-mails in, talk about the role religious faith has played in your life and do you believe civilizations can recover without a religious increment? >> guest: i was baptized a catholic, and confirmed an

anglican, and i currently am a member of a small american baptist church. and i may very, i'm the kind of unassimilated immigrant as far as the american baptist church is concerned. because when all said and done i have a preference for the old anglican hymns of my childhood. i regret what the anglican church has become. in fact, i think it's kind of sad and pitiful, but i still, the anglican hymns still stir me in a way that how great thou art doesn't quite do it for me in the same way. as far as the broader point, i think religious, i think it's very hard for any society to endure without some kind of transcendent purpose. all functions of societies are a compact between the past, the present and future. i don't think i'm the first to

say that. tom this, and all kinds of people have understood it. it's not a particularly religious, it's simply the fact in human history when it comes to that compact between the past, present and future, religious societies are the best foundation for that. just go back to what we're talking about in afghanistan. a line in "after america," it's an old talibans thing, not an old, a recent taliban saying. they say the americans have all the watches but we have all the time. i don't know if it is a genuine taliban saying it. sounds to me like a rather lame country's olympic but it might be. they have a point, in other words, they're taking the long view. and i think it is very hard to take the long view without religion. post-christian europe for example, it's fascinating to me.

post-christian europe, and to use that phrase not provocatively. i use that phrase because the european commission or use it to me once, when we talk about the state of the european union and called it post-christian europe and, in other words, we refer to all that mumbo-jumbo and we do not have a perfect society. and in the way they did but just one generation. because it has no transcendent purpose and it's very difficult, even atheists, even atheists, if they think about it, honest, will understand that their life will be more agreeable in certain kinds of society than it would, if you ask the average atheist he would rather live in a judeo-christian society than in the soviet union, for example, you have to have some kind of transcendent power. it's very difficult for that. >> host: mark steyn, rf field

tweets into you, if you would talk about about george macdonald fraser and why he wasn't influenced. >> guest: i think this was on my favorite authors. what i love about him, george macdonald fraser, people don't know come he's the author of the flashman books, about 40 years ago. the late '60s. he got the inspired idea to take a minor character in the 19th century novel, tom brown's school boys, the boy. and make them come and making the central figure in what was essentially a history of the british empire up to the early 20th century. in other words, george macdonald fraser inserted flashman into the first afghan war that i think actually in one in the u.s. civil war and into madagascar where he winds up having sex with the most the tories queen of madagascar.

so he did, he did against a forrest gump type of thing, that he inserted his character of his into all these real-life situations. woodhouse blunder that secret he read the first book, and he said something like the great sigh of contentment when you know that series is being born and you will love everyone of them. but what i learned about them, and the reason i like him is because when i come after the afghan invasion when everyone was suddenly an expert on afghan, graveyard of empire, posh turn, use backs, they are all, the dancing boys of kandahar, everyone isn't expert on kandahar -- afghanistan. i love reading george macdonald fraser phrases. and almost as i think of it, particularly after 10 long

years, 10 think this years, reading george macdonald fraser flashman on the afghans and the afghan society makes more sense in reading "three cups of tea." as a writer because the reason i mentioned this, he's beautifully specific. is there for 19th century vernacular english is marvelous. and his eye for detail is brilliant. i'm just going to go back to my little red west talking about ballet in the previous hour. unit, the terrible thing, peter, and i don't, i'm not a great one for teaching writing. i think it's very hard to teach but i do believe that the deeper you can dig, you know, you don't say a guy climbed into a car and drove away. it's better to identify what kind of car it is. and what i love about george

macdonald fraser is he is dealing with something several generations removed from his own time, and get the detail in the books is absolutely beautiful. >> host: in your book "lights out: islam, free speech and the twilight of the west" you have a column in there about a speech you make where you say that muslim is the new gay. what does that mean? >> guest: i was -- i was getting a's each at the heritage foundation, and somebody asked question about what was a venue canadian sitcom called little mosque on the prairie, which to go back to where we came in, i think it's a hit that i sorely think that is a great title. and i said, i said, believe i said i haven't seen the show, but my bet would be, i then said muslim is the new gay. that's to say, i would bet muslims get all the best lines, like the way that gay characters do, a gay best friend does in an

american sitcom, or an american movie. now, i said that because we were like in the room at the heritage foundation in washington, and i said jokingly, oh by the way, muslim is the new gay year that's off the record. i had to realize the way it works these days is the thing was being strived -- the thing was being streamed live on the internet. i had no idea. so it then turns up in the human rights complaint against the. the canadians, that among their complaints was that steyn had said muslim is the new gay. i then explained the point you're missing here, guys can is i make it as a comput which only, which only made things worse. but i do believe that. i think little mosque on the prairie is, one of the sad, one of the sad aspects of our time

is the effect of political correctness on comedy. i think little mosque on a per is exit a great idea. if you're honest about it. but if you do in the way the canadian broadcasting corporation does where by the moslems or the hip, cool characters, and the wives just knuckle dragging, in breads, prairie hicks, you are loading the dice and are making real comedy impossible. one of the depressing features about all the free speech wars that i've been involved in in the last few years is actually people who congratulate themselves on their edginess and transgressive this all the time, which is stand up comedians, comics in general. actually, the biggest wimps of the lot and i think that's a kind of tragedy. one of the most hilarious, i'm not a great internet surfer, but

one of the most letters types of sites is where some guy has made an allegedly homophobic prank in a comedy club and then you go to a so-called comedy website where comedians discuss whether he should actually back down and apologized and agreed to attend reeducation camp or whatever. these comedians, these comedians are ridiculous. they might as well be court jesters to change him tell him to assorted transgressions news and edginess of comedy. it illustrates the point i made that it's very hard, once the sort of counterculture becomes the establishment, it's very hard to have a genuine counterculture. but the ability correct cravenness of stand up comic is actually very depressing i think. >> host: chad ginn missoula, montana, thanks for holding. you're on with mark steyn. >> caller: thank you. it's been an honor and a pleasure listening to you, mark. i've been enjoying your views on

liberty, fiscal responsible governments and such. and i've been wondering where do you stand on the iran phenomenon? and also why is he reviled so much in circles of conservative commentary? >> guest: well, i'm glad to have ron paul there on the stage, and ron paul there in the debates. and i think he makes a contribution. i certainly think, i enjoyed marvelously the night of in hampshire primary, mitt romney gave his usual stump speech, generalities, i believe in an america where all americans can be as american league american as americans has ever been, or whatever and ron paul comes at a star-studded told by the federal reserve and the gold standard and it's kind of an impressive in a way. and the crowd is cheering.

i like, i'm all in favor of ron paul wendy's they are talking about small constitutional government, when he is hammering the federal reserve. everyone thought he was a metaphor years ago going on about the federal reserve. in 2011, the federal reserve bought something like 70% of the debt issued by united states treasury. suddenly ron paul is looking a lot less like a nut on that and there's a lot more people who share his views on the federal reserve. where i part company with ron paul is the idea of an america that can live aloof from the rest of the world. as a 19th century isolationist republic. there is no fortress america. this country can't even maintain its fortress against to relatively benign neighbors. basically half the population of mexico has moved to north, and 100% of every single disasters

canadian idea from multiculturalism to government health care has moved south of the board. so there is no fortress america. and even as a 19th century isolationist republic, america was only able to enjoy that role because the water may be maintained global order. the royal navy expunged slavery from pretty much most of the planet in the 19th century. royal navy cap the britannica on the seas. the idea that america can't retreat from the world and to be no consequences to that i think is a diluted. that doesn't mean, i happen to agree with him we're wasting an awful lot of blood and treasure in afghanistan to no particular purpose. i happened to agree with him that i think the pentagon would be able to operate with rather less resources than it does at the moment. but it's important that you have not just a leaner military, but they need a military and you have some sense of global

strategy. the problem in afghanistan is not that we haven't spent enough money but that we have wasted so much money. the reason we have is the lack of strategic clarity. and strategic clarity doesn't take a big budget it takes half a dozen guys sitting around a table bought at some staples office furniture discount somewhere in the basement of the pentagon. so it's the lack of strategic clarity, and ron paul's vision of a retreat from america i think it will not make the world safer and in the end will not make america safer because in the end as british learned in a real retreat you are still the biggest target, and in part of resentments linger long after the past. >> host: mark steyn is our guest this month on booktv's "in depth" program. and the next call for him comes from david in hampton falls new

hampshire. >> caller: hi, mark. >> guest: hey, greetings to fellow granite state or. >> caller: not i that what i had like to attend a one rule -- a one-room schoolhouse tragedy that's good. there's a lot more teaching going on in those one room school houses than the lavish facilities they're putting up these days. >> caller: not only that but i'm much more firmly attached to a one-room schoolhouse than -- >> guest: leave your worldly goods to your one-room schoolhouse. yale law school designated. >> caller: absolute right. the question i have for you is how closely do you identify with james burnsville, the suicide of the west, and which identify liberalism as the cause of the decline of america? >> tried to i think that's a book that stands out extremely well, that i think, and i would put it in the same category as

top phils pathetic remarks in democracy in america, that it's much easier to lose liberty incrementally. people i think have a deluded idea about how tierney shows a. is not always good steps and jackboots. it's often in subtler ways. and i think both burnham and tocqueville, and other writers share a sense of the innovation that comes with the incremental loss of liberty. i would nudge because i think one of the big problems, i talked about in america alone, and also in "after america" is the demographic weakness which is liberalism so corrodes even the basic survival instinct, for example, that in europe it's led to collapse.

in america we are not in the same situation but we have a basic problem that the baby boomers would not have enough children to pay for the mid-20th century entitlement programs. so in other words, we have had, we have very generous in time a program set up on the assumption of certain family sizes. and as those family sizes shrivel, they're simply not enough young people working around to pay for them. that goes back to what i was talking about in greece earlier. so i think, i think burnham is right on the, what he didn't foresee is 40 years later, half a century later, is we're in a situation now where even if you're trying to rebuild a society, you are starting off with far fewer young people and far more old people than you would wish to in a healthy demographic situation. >> host: this e-mail for you, mr. steyn, although i disagreed

with mr. steyn's political views with little exception, i admire his wit and even his writing but in a similar vein, are there any current riders of the left that he admires? is a certain rather famous editorialist that i can't help notice similarities. >> guest: well, you know, one of the things i do enjoy, i started reading when i worked street sweeping, is when i began as a journalist but i always enjoyed reading left hand, left wing critiques of me. and i think, i think that's actually very pleasurable to say, in fact i believe when i applied for my green card, i was obliged to send in some information about me. and just as a joke, i'm not sure, i don't know whether my immigration lawyer wound up submitting it in the end, i

wound up putting in a rather devastating left wing critique of my writing that i thought was actually fabulously written. and i always, i always look to find someone like that. and the problem, i have a problem with certain, certain liberal writers. i mean, i hate it if you can see for not come and i think any good writer does. i have a problem with, say, i really shouldn't be talking about this, but have a problem with maureen dowd at the new times. i'm sure some people would say that about me and there's times when, you know, i'm having to slough off a column in the 20 minutes at the airport after i'm rushing to catch a plane after a big three-hour special on c-span and i'm not putting the full juice into the.

so i write in the car on the way to the airport and could probably see the formula in the. my problem with a lot of left wing columnists is, where you can see the formula. having said that, one of the things i miss about one of things i miss about fleet street is i think it's nice to always mix it up a bit. i remember when i was in august guiding the national post in canada and john o'sullivan who was the editor of the op-ed editor up there, i remember him calling me before the paper started and he said, what left wing columnists can we get? this was 1998, and i think i suggested christopher hitchens because christopher hitchens was regarded as a man of the left been. and i loved, i loved reading christopher dasher he was a man of the left at the end really i think.

but he was a well read man. he was illiterate men. he did not have his talking points that he regurgitates. and had a kind of historical -- but john o'sullivan's point even if you're a writer at a newspaper you should have some left wing voices in there. i think he's right. i think likewise, if you're a left -- i mean, i think it's sad, you've got to have, i wrote for the spectator in britain for many years. the spectator always, you know, it was a broadly conservative paper but the use to get lefties in the i think that makes much more sense that what. >> host: this is probably a very unique e-mail here at c-span that we never gotten one that says what it says. dear mark, why do you think leftists hate western civilization so much? do you have a favorite american composer? [laughter] >> guest: that -- i'm not sure

what those two things, if he intends to connect them up. that's great. i love, if i was to name a composer, i love, i think i named on my list of favorite authors in their says dorothy fields wrote the words to the way you look tonight, and to pick yourself up, and the fine romance. the guy who wrote the music for that was jerome. and i love that music of richard rodgers said, jerome come one of the greatest american songs of all time, old man river from one of the greatest american shows of all time, show boat. richard rodgers said of him he had one foot in the old well and one for a new. is kind of the first great new

york composer but that is quite an astute observation by richard rodgers because it's kind of, he was influenced by a lot of london composer's but he's nudging, he's moving on before the. if you go back and you listen to they didn't believe me, that song is making 14. what you are we now? 2012. that song is 98 years old. they didn't believe me. and i was in a club not so long ago and someone sang that song and it sounded as fresh and timeless, and if you'd said this is something from 98 years ago, from a show no one remembers, it's beautiful. that's jerome kern. why leftists hate western civilization, which is a far less agreeable topic to me, look, here's the problem. you know, leftists are the beneficiaries of western

civilization, and you can't make a living as a multiculturalist anywhere except, it's a unique cultural phenomena. you're gonna make a living as a multiculturalist in western societies. you can't be a multiculturalist in rehab. it can't be done. and i think, and so celebrating diversity is, is a phenomenon that is only confined to a very narrow type of society. and i think these people, these people are the beneficiaries in a unique period of peace and prosperity which is so bored under -- boring. and i think, i think civilizational self-loathing gives you the free some without the consequences. we are not yet in this state of the french terror, or the october revolution when there's

blood running in the streets or whatever. so it's five years. what could be better than being a tenured, a tenured anti-western professor at a western university? you get four years living high off of without for a moment fearing that that society and what's holding it up is ever going to crumble away. there's not a lot holding it up. so these guys are going, these guys, and less their 106 years old, and the late stages of avian flu, are actually going to live to see the consequences of what they have advocated. but i think that's what it is, a kind of civilizational. >> host: man will come you've been very patient from cincinnati. please go ahead with your question for author mark steyn. >> caller: thank you. let's see, i'm a little nervous year, mark. hey, it's good to see on tv, market i look forward to when you substitute for rush.

>> caller: i enjoy doing that because that is one of the jobs americans will do. it's a great honor to get to host some of those kind of things. >> caller: yeah, hey, look, man, you're a patriot as far as i'm concerned. i'm a veteran, and i was brought up in rhode island, the liberal state transient that's certainly true of. >> caller: but here's the issues i have on a political platform. hypocrisy first of all in regards to transparency and the rule of law, and i'm just totally disgusted. i love this country, but, you know, i just i'm just about ready, you know, let them all have their way. you know.

>> guest: here's the problem. and actually it's the democrats who puts it bluntly. i mean, pat caddell he worked for jimmy carter many years ago, pat caddell thinks we are setting in motion prerevolutionary conditions. if you tell people, if you basically send people the message that elections and the action, and even the elections of their elected officials make no difference, you're giving people some very unpleasant options. in 2010, for example, there was a big, the tea party rallied their forces and achieved a result in the house of representatives. it was an unprecedented, at least for the last whatever it is, a decades. but then nothing happened. the data just goes on rising, no changes are made.

the people of arizona through their elected representatives passed a law on immigration, but a federal court strikes that down and says no, it can't be enforced. at a certain point if you keep telling people that no matter how the vote goes on the tuesday evening, on the wednesday morning afterwards, life just goes on, we go on with his multi-trillion dollar debt, the bureaucracy imposes a gazillion more regulation but you're telling people that serious course correction is impossible and that's actually a very dangerous message to send. and don't take it from me. taken from pat caddell. his analysis of that is sobering to say the least. >> host: mark steyn is the author of nine books, "broadway babies say goodnight" came out in 1997. "the face of the tiger" in 2002. "from head to toe," 2004. "america alone" in 2006.

"mark steyn's passing parade" in '06. mark steyn tobacco songbook in 2008. a song for the season 2008 as well. "lights out" into the house nine and afte "after america" is mosy someone came out in 2011. 2002 "the face of the tiger," where did that title come from? >> guest: it comes from a run. there was an old lady from niger they went for a ride on the tiger, she -- how does ago? she returned from the ride something inside, and a smile on the face of the tiger. i think that's how it goes but it doesn't really work because niger doesn't rhyme with tiger. but at any rate that, and i had called the title peace in that on the essay of the death of daniel pearl. the smile on the face of the

tiger, which i thought was, so people like daniel pearl, as you know, was a "wall street journal" writer who was headed, wound up beheaded in pakistan by khalid sheikh mohammed who is now in u.s. custody in conjunction with omar shaikh, a student of the london school of economics, a middle-class british subject. and it is, and daniel pearl again without any one idea of a right-winger, he loves muslim culture. he got a look and. he thought they trusted him. and he trusted them. and in the end they beheaded him. and the last words he said was my father is a jew, my mother is a jew, and i am a jew. indian, who he was, who he was out road his basic identities as an american jew. that was it. that overrode every other

consideration for the man that kidnapped him. they looked at him as a trophy but it was pathetic i think to read the pleadings of liberal columnists in a couple of weeks he was kidnapped before the video emerged saying release daniel, and he can help get you out, your message out to the world. it's horrible to be so stupid and misunderstanding to be beheaded, the decapitation is the message. and i use that, that image, the beguiling smile on the face of the tiger for a collection of my columns are basically from the year after 9/11, the year in which i think things, things look rather bad for us than this stage. but that is sensibly, you know, islam, ayatollah khamenei we think of as a joke but is not actually a joke. when he called america the great

satan, the idea there is that america is a seducer, like satan is a seducer. that's quite a sophisticated understanding of america's appeal to people around the world. but in the same way that coexist, and multiculturalism reduces to. and sometimes the delusions reduce people to the death. and the smile on "the face of the tiger" is a good look at that. >> host: mark steyn rights even after september 11, we can't revoke the central fiction of multiculturalism. >> guest: and i think his line

is actually very good. we see that in the willingness to concede core western believes, such as freedom of speech, rather than risk allowing someone to publish a cartoon that provokes people in the streets the edges to go back to what we were talking about on that, i get i think it's in every different message. if people threaten to kill you, and that threat is taken serious the, you don't actually have to kill anybody. you don't have to kill in the cartoon is because the publishers and the government ministers and the police will all instinctively preemptively surrender on these core western values like freedom, such as freedom of speech but is quite disgraceful what's happened in europe particularly in the last decade.

in the face of explicit threats of violence, and that's not something i, as contemptuous as i am of institutional leftism, i hadn't expected them to cave quite so naked on things like that. >> host: wesley roth from sturgis, south dakota, e-mail trying to listen to on tv when you are on rush. your last book "after america" was terrifying and informative, and one that every american should read. my question to you is, on any given day, where do you get your news from? what are your favorite news sites? >> guest: we were talking about daniel pearl just now. i love reading, i like to scan the pakistani newspapers just before i go to bed. one of the great things on the internet. because they are written in that slightly heightened indian english that i enjoy, i enjoy reading. for the same reason i love

listening to general the sheriff. even if i disagree with what he says but i love the way he phrases it but i think it's one of the great things of the internet. what surprised me was when hollywood lefties like tim robbins used to reveal that before 10 turns in each night in beverly hills he likes to check out "the guardian" and independent in london because he thinks "the boston globe" or the new times are just government mouthpieces. he wants to get his real news from genuine left wing social. and i like that. i like reading a story and paper to i like reading the pakistani papers and then i've got a select few internet sites i like to go to. but that's one of the great gifts of the internet is being able to read tomorrow's papers before we go to bed. >> host: judith and alaska, we've asked mr. steyn when he speaks with a distinctly un-canadian accent. >> guest: that's from, as i

said, from being in high school in britain. and i then returned to canada when i was 18 and i worked as a disc jockey for the. i remember, i had gone, done a little course in how to talk with whatever they call, a standard north american broadcast ask if it show i did was like five hours long and i couldn't keep the action of for more than 25 minutes to i ended up lapsing into more or less how it presently talk. and it's unfortunate because wherever i am, when i set like i'm from somewhere else, and i worked briefly for the bbc and they were always, they were never happy with the way i pronounce certain words. some people think i'm australian. some people think, they can hear a bit of zimbabwe and south africa. but the net result at this point in my life, i've been in new

hampshire for a long time now, and my north country yankee accent is coming along so great that it now takes about, you know, 1.3 seconds before people can figure out i'm not from the white mountains. i mean, to take that point seriously for a bit, i think one of the things it does to come and i think it sometimes helps to look at a society, slightly outside it, so if as in my situation one is condemned by one's crippling vocal in furman v. for ever passing for native, it does also offer the advantage that you can see a society slightly different perspective. and i think that can sometimes be helpful for a writer. >> host: is a little over an hour left with a guest mark steyn this month on "in depth." date in grantsburg wisconsin please go ahead with your question. >> caller: hi, mark.

my question is this. what are your views in the future relations between the u.s., russia and china? >> guest: well, i think china as i mentioned earlier is any position come agreed to the imf to be the world's dominant economy by the year 2016. this is the world we made, and you can imagine, if you were somebody, say, in 1918, reading that news story that china is on course to become the worlds number one economy, you'd be like charlton heston in the plant of the apes. he would not recognize your own world. you think you would have landed in some alternative is our future scenario. but that is the world we made. and for 35 years, all the clever guys at the think tanks have been telling us that the economic liberalization would bring political liberalization

to china. in fact, the opposite has happened with help them come up with the only economically viable form of communism, and the idea if it's true they will become the dominant economy, that will impose severe changes on the world. now, and china is demographically week. they're great issue is under their one child policy they have tens of millions of young men, and generally speaking millions of young men who can't get any action is not a recipe for social stability. i think in "america alone" that unless there's a disaster stretch from alice to becoming the first day superpower since sparta. and become it's basically going to cause huge problems for them. they have an aging population. so people think that's good news and china will not be the next united states. in fact, it's actually bad is because it means china has to use its moment. china has compelling reasons to

act in what it perceives to be its own interest very fast. those interests are unlikely to align with those in the united states. russia is also demographically week, but russia, russia in a sense has stabilized and is actually making some significant mischief for the united states around the world. i mean for example, russia is quietly reestablishing part of the eastern europeans at least us energy independent on russia, on moscow, and actually taking come here, taking the view that, at some point it's going to be able to reconstruct the old soviet style empire. i don't know if to get to that but that's their long-term strategic goal. and again, we existence were

happy face about this chick we approach these issues in still think it's 1919 and we're in a polar were. we're in a multi-polder work for the united states faces a very tough strategic challenges. >> host: in the "america alone" mark steyn writes nothing makes a citizen more selfish and socially equitable >> host: gw burkhart dean mills thank you, mr. steyn, wouldn't the 1890s vermonter the most astounded by the scientific advances beyond 1950, such as the ability to treat

illnesses that could be diagnosed in 1990? guess that i don't think that's true. if you compare the 1920s, for example, with the 1990s, there were far more actual advances in medicine in the 1920s than there are in the 1990s which we are very low to show for it except viagra. if you go back to frederick panting from for example, in london, ontario, when he developed the treatment for insulin and diabetes, i mentioned in "after america," it was basically a year and a half from him in painting it in london, ontario, to it being on the counter in pharmacies in new york city, you can do things like that now. to enter, to enter the fda approval process is to pass through the gates of hell. everything takes -- that's why we are not -- that's why we have

this little fracas between susan g. komen foundation and planned parenthood. susan g. komen foundation is the breast cancer people who have the race for the cure, the pink ribbon. i was on something a while ago, the stewardess, flight attendant i should say, the flight attendant comes out and says it's breast cancer awareness month, so for your dreams come if you chip in an extra $5 on this little commuter flight, taking off for hours late from laguardia as usual, we will give it to raising awareness for breast cancer who isn't aware of breast cancer? americans need to be aware, of actually how little we're doing to cure all these diseases. the whole disease curing process has ground to a halt. mapping the human genome, for example, was supposed to cure all these diseases and, in fact, it didn't. they stumbled on things by accident. it's like disease curing now is like when you put a target on

the side of a barn, and you throw an arrow at it and it misses the target but it lands three feet away from the target and it happens to skew some bug. look at this bug. all the beneficiaries of human genome project are entirely accidental because systematic, there's a reason why we have ground to a halt on the approval process. we need fewer pink ribbons, fewer of these awareness raising and actually get down to doing more of what frederick did in london, ontario, at the end of the first world war. >> host: steve in springfield e-mails, as post posterity amec approach for the essentials for stocking the steyn bunker? anything besides great american songbook recordings? how is new zealand looking? >> guest: you don't want to be thinkingut