David Solway and Mark Steyn: the West has jihad it!

In the December issue of Books in Canada – the one with that 27,000-word (!!) defence of Conrad Black – there is a review by poet David Solway (also an associate editor at BiC) of Mark Steyn's America Alone. It's a doozy.

Solway wastes no time calling Steyn "intrepid and politically incorrect" – so almost immediately, even somebody with fading batteries in his bullshit detector should know what he is in for.

Solway chastises squishy-liberal rags like, um, the Globe for not taking seriously Steyn's message, which is essentially that (American) might makes right, and that unless Judeo-Christians start breeding faster than the ullulating hordes, we're going to be up to our ears in car bombs and burqas. Solway also makes clear he's with Steyn on the idea that "moderate" Islam is only vicious, murderous jihadi Islam with a smiley face.

In this view, the term "Islamic fundamentalism" is a kind of tautology. Since Muslims believe the Koran is the literal word of Allah which pronounces on matters both sacred and profane and governs their conduct in the world, it follows that all genuine Muslims are by definition fundamentalists who, as Muslims, must consent to the indivisible unity of religion and politics. "Moderation" merely provides the framework within which the ostensibly "extreme" forms of Islam can prosper and, so to speak, receive scriptural asylum. For Steyn and his congeners, the distinction we like to make in the interests of political correctness between Islam and Islamism is a specious one.

So the problem is that Muslims "consent to the indivisible unity of religion and politics?" Given that the U.S. had an Attorney General for five years who used to anoint himself with cooking oil and who once said "I don't particularly care if I do what's right in the sight of men. The important thing is for me to do right in God's sight. . . The verdict of history is inconsequential; the verdict of eternity is what counts," I'm guessing that Solway used up all of his appreciation for irony in his poetry.

The whole thing is worth reading as well as marvelling over for its breathtaking ignorance and naïvety. The best part, for me, comes right near the end:

For the decadent benevolism of the modern state deprives the individual of his autonomy and thereby infantilises him, reducing him to a supine appendage on a vast administrative organism. If we do not recover our backbone as responsible citizens, we will find ourselves living in an invertebrate world that is no match for a supple and aggressive antagonist who has our demise at heart.

Or, as Steyn himself says: "The majority can never replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards."

Oh no wait, that was Hitler, who also said "Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggle, and only in eternal peace does it perish." Which is not at all akin to Solway writing that

by expropriating many of the basic "functions of adulthood," the welfare state has proceeded to neuter its citizens, creating an inverted pyramid or Ponzi scheme in which fewer children support more and more oldsters while simultaneously sapping their will to confront an implacable adversary.

Actually, to be honest, it wasn't the image of Hitler that kept coming to mind while reading Solway's review, it was the one below: