RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.steynonline.com/8895/the-majority-as-identity-group

The sold-out Mark Steyn Club Cruise departed Quebec City just as a wild tsunami of an election result crashed on the Plains of Abraham and washed away the National Assembly. On Monday François Legault’s brand new party, the CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec), won 74 out of 125 seats and became the first government in half-a-century to be neither Liberal nor separatist. The CAQ is described as “center-right”, but that term doesn’t really cover it: Like many of the emerging parties in the new Europe – from Sweden to Italy, France to Hungary – M Legault concluded that the sweet spot on the spectrum lay in being both fiscally protective and socially protective. That’s to say, these new parties are not “center-right” in terms of Milton Friedman economics – they do not seriously challenge expectations of the big welfare state – but they are nationally assertive on the cultural front.

And so it was that Quebec’s new premier, in his first press conference, pledged to cut immigration by twenty per cent and to use the Notwithstanding clause to uphold the government’s ban on the niqab in the public service. Once again we see a clear difference between the English world (America, Britain, anglo-Canada) and the rest of the west (continental Europe, Quebec) when it comes to the rights of the majority versus the provocations of Islam. Here’s what I had to say on the subject in Maclean’s in 2010 :

The other day, a reader wrote to say that, while en vacances au Québec, he had espied me in a restaurant. With a couple of obvious francophones. And, from the snatches of conversation he caught, I appeared to be speaking French. “Appeared” is right, if you’ve ever heard my French. Nevertheless: “You’re a fraud, Steyn!” he thundered. The cut of his jib was that I was merely pretending to be a pro-Yank right-wing bastard while in reality living la vie en rose lounging on chaises longues snorting poutine with louche Frenchie socialists all day long.

I haven’t felt such a hypocrite since I was caught singing The Man That Got Away in a San Francisco bathhouse two days after my column opposing gay marriage. But yes, you’re right. I cannot tell a lie. I have a soft spot for Quebec. Not because of its risible separatist movement, for which the only rational explanation is that it was never anything but one almighty bluff for shakedown purposes. Yet, putting that aside, I’m not unsympathetic to the province’s broader cultural disposition. I regard neither Trudeaupian Canada nor Quietly Revolutionary Quebec as good long-term bets, or even medium-term bets. But, if I had to pick, I’d give marginally better odds to the latter. And the reasons why can be found in the coverage of Ms. Naema Ahmed and her “illegal” niqab, the head-to-toe Islamic covering that only has eyes for you.

The facts—or, at any rate, fact—of the case is well-known: a niqab-garbed immigrant from Egypt has been twice expelled from her French-language classes at the Saint-Laurent CEGEP and the Centre d’appui aux communautés immigrantes by order of the Quebec government. That much is agreed. Thereafter, the English and French press diverge significantly. The ROC reacted reflexively, deploring this assault on Canada’s cherished “values” of “multiculturalism.” In the Calgary Herald, Naomi Lakritz compared Quebec’s government to the Taliban. So did the Globe and Mail, in an editorial titled “Intolerant Intrusion.” In La Presse, Patrick Lagacé responded with a column called “The Globe, Reporting From Mars!”

The headline was in English, and on the whole M. Lagacé’s English is better than the Globe’s French. He began by noting their unbelievably stupid editorial on O Canada, in which they endeavoured to balance their charge of sexism in the English lyrics (“in all thy sons command”) by uncovering sexism in the French—”terre de nos aïeux” or “land of our forefathers.” Where, fretted the Globe for a couple hundred words, are the foremothers? This is what happens when your claims to be Canada’s national newspaper rest on the translation services of Babel Fish. As M. Lagacé pointed out, “aïeux, en français, englobe hommes et femmes.” Englobe maybe, but not in Globe.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271473/speech-i-never-gave-bruce-bawer

A few prefatory words: I was invited to give a talk in Gothenburg, Sweden, on Saturday, September 29, as part of an “Alternative Book Fair.” The Gothenburg Book Fair was being held that weekend, and the point of the alternative event was to highlight books – mostly about Islam, I gathered – that the official fair had rejected. I was asked to talk about freedom of speech, a freedom that is in increasingly short supply in Sweden, as elsewhere in Western Europe. As if to prove the point, civic officials – at the urging of police, who were spooked by Antifa threats – banned the “Alternative Book Fair.” Here’s what I planned to say.

When I was twenty years old, there was a famous free-speech case in the state of Illinois. Nazis wanted to march in a Chicago suburb called Skokie, which had a large population of Jews, many of them Holocaust survivors. Skokie sued successfully in county court to prevent the march. The Nazis, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, took the case to the state appellate court and the Illinois Supreme Court. Long story short, after the case had gone to the United States Supreme Court, the Nazis were allowed to march.

As I say, I was twenty years old at the time. The Supreme Court’s decision filled me with admiration. Not because I liked Nazis, but because that ruling demonstrated that in the United States of America, even the most reprehensible expression was protected. Innocuous speech doesn’t need protection. What requires protection is controversial speech, extremist speech, speech that perhaps everyone on earth except the speaker finds offensive. Without such protections, any dissent from received opinion is in danger of being shut down. It’s a simple point but a crucial one. Without absolute freedom of speech, freedom itself – all freedom, every freedom – is threatened, period.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13064/turkey-alliances-russia-china

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Chinese President Xi Jinping are discussing more trade — and in their local currencies, rebuffing the dollar.

As of now, Turkey sees the United States as an ungrateful ally and Russia is Turkey’s new love affair. For Erdoğan, it is still “Russia time.”

Germany needs Turkey’s cooperation in halting the flow of Islamic jihadists currently stationed in Syria but who may always use Turkish territory to reach the EU. Turkey needs German technology, investment and money.

Turkey’s President does it all the time. In 2009, then-prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused China of genocide for the deaths of hundreds of Uighur Turks. Less than a decade later, with his newfound “Eurasianism,” Erdoğan’s Turkey and President Xi Jinping’s China are discussing more trade — and in their local currencies, rebuffing the dollar .

In 2015, the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian Air Force fighter jet along Turkey’s troubled border with Syria. Russia responded strongly in 2016 by imposing punishing sanctions on Turkey. At the time, Erdoğan was courting Washington. In fear of further — and even military — punishments from Moscow, Erdoğan described Turkey’s relations with Washington as a “strategic partnership.”

A Turkish apology for the downed Russian plane eventually ended sanctions in 2016 and Erdoğan, once again, rediscovered his anti-Western, pro-Eurasian self. This time, Erdoğan described Turkey’s relations with Russia as a strategic partnership. This strategic partnership will probably survive until Erdoğan will have to turn to his NATO partners after potential — and possibly serious — divergences with Russia over the future of Syria.

As of now, Turkey sees the United States as an ungrateful ally and Russia is Turkey’s new love affair. Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum at a time when Turkey’s national currency had lost 40% of its value since the start of the year. The nominal NATO allies had found themselves in a multitude of geostrategic and other disputes, including Turkey’s arrest of an America pastor on bogus terrorism and espionage charges (he is now under house arrest in Turkey).