My Apocalyptic Evening With Mark Steyn

Driving through foreboding fogginess Wednesday, I was struck with a creeping sense of lurking doom, which naturally put me in the perfect humor to hear Mark Steyn’s speech at Hillsdale College that evening. Luckily, he was in an “apocalyptic mood” and delivered on a promise to give listeners something to think on, or at least drink on, depending on individual preference. Introducing his topic, he said, “If you’re planning on drinking to forget, I’ll try to give you plenty you’ll want to forget.”

Steyn disclosed the brutal truth of America in decline; the insatiable appetites of activist bureaucracy, moronic budgetary philosophy, an insouciant attitude toward debt and credit, the divorce of social conservatism from fiscal conservatism, and the unpalatable fact that we choose this reality freely. He also revealed a brief glimpse of that most rare of public Steynian moods, optimism.

Reanimating the “death panel” provision of Obamacare framed Steyn’s discussion of the monstrous growth of bureaucracy, and the onerous rules pertaining to every facet of our lives. Kathleen Sebelius, he said, “didn’t consult anyone” when she put the provision for end of life counseling back into Obamacare after it had been stripped out. With hundreds of references in the law handing her the power to make rules, “..the Secretary may and shall determine pretty much anything she wants, plucked at random from the Obamacare law.” Steyn said. Bureaucratic rule making is supplanting the people’s law making process in the legislature.

“It starts with the money, it always does.” Using examples like The Cowboy Poetry Festival, The Great lakes Restoration Initiative, and NPR, Steyn mocked the spending impulses of the government, with the attendant debt burden, and warned, “America is sending a consistent and very dangerous message to the world;... its governing mechanisms and political culture do not allow for meaningful course correction. And without meaningful course correction, America is doomed.”

Fiscal conservatives often don’t understand that easy credit and irresponsible debt burdens are not just accounting issues, said Steyn, “There’s nothing virtuous about caring, compassionate progressives demonstrating how caring and compassionate they are by spending money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born.” It’s a moral issue revolving around the relationship of trust and responsibility.

Steyn notes that the effect of shoveling money at people without burdening them with responsibility for their actions yields a culture devoid of self-reliance and liberty. He insisted that the issues of fiscal conservatism and morality cannot be separated, “Entire new categories of crime have arisen in the wake of familial collapse. Millions and millions of American children are raised in transient households and moral vacuums that make just not social mobility, but even elemental character formation all but impossible.”

Decline is not a foregone conclusion, he said, even when the political class and too many people have chosen it; when everyone in Europe was rioting and demanding more government money and government programs as, “insulation from the realities of life, this was the only country in the developed world where millions and millions of people took to the streets to say, ‘No! We could do just fine, if you, the government, would get out of our pockets, get out of our lives...and stay out!’ That’s the America that has a fighting chance.”

After the speech, I scampered to the reception, where Mark was entertaining a constantly rotating knot of fans. He graciously took the time to sign books, pose for photos and expand upon his earlier remarks, as well as answer all kinds of questions. Chatting with him, I’m always struck by his generous good humor and kindness toward others. Burdened with the tasks of a cultural Cassandra, he keeps us alert to the disaster we’d rather ignore. Thank you for all that, Mr. Steyn, and I’ll see you next year.