Mark Steyn, again

Here's how his latest column starts:

A couple of months ago, on our Letters page, Mr Tony Roberts of Cheltenham responded to my column on the Pope's death as follows: "Presumably Mr Steyn has never had casual sex, or, if he has, maybe his sensitivity to the 'splendour of truth' prevented him from deriving any pleasure from the experience."

I resisted the urge to respond, confident that within 48 hours the Daily Telegraph mailroom would be deluged by the maidenhood (if that's the appropriate term) of Britain rising to my defence, pointing out that memorable 20 minutes - well, okay, six - in the back of my second-hand Austin Princess in the lay-by on the B47932 just after the mini-roundabout for the industrial estate back in 1987.

Alas, there was only a deafening silence, as readers remained unaccountably preoccupied with war, elections and other trivia. It seemed faintly unbecoming for a Daily Telegraph columnist to protest about how much action he's getting, but, had I run into Mr Roberts in the Cheltenham singles bar, I would have endeavoured to explain that what's at issue is not which of us is getting more and better casual sex but whether it's an appropriate organising principle for society. Or at any rate whether a cult of non-procreative self-gratification is, as the eco-crazies like to say, "sustainable".

Read the rest here.

The column is about the prospects for the EU, and the money line in the conclusion is this:

A political entity hostile to the three principal building blocks of functioning societies - religion, family and wealth creation - was never a likely bet for the long term.

My own observation of Europe over the past few years, which has been very skewed simply because of where my business took me, is that the great hope for Europe lies in its east — in the new democracies, where I can see entrepreneurs hard at work building economies. Mark seems to think the hope for Europe lies in its west, with the United Kingdom. Hmmm....maybe we've got a pincer maneuver going there, and I didn't realize it!