I am fated to defend the US in Europe and to defend Europe in the US. The task is usually one of leaning into prevailing opinion. When large groups of people think alike there tends to be underexposure by idées fixes to counterarguments. This is fertile ground for cultural stereotyping, and a great place to blog.

The Spectator‘s Mark Steyn cannot claim ignorance in defense of his opinions, nor can he plead absence of critical faculties, so you have to conclude he is either malicious, or a pathological troll masquerading as a columnist. In case he is not the latter, I’ve taken the bait — This recent piece by Steyn is not just a crime against nuance, it’s an embarrassment that should be in little need of exposition, though it seems to be getting widespread and uncritical play.

I’d call the following Fisking, but it’s less challenging than that. It’s more like shooting fisk in a barrelThat, by the way, I believe to be my second pun ever involving Swedish..

Once, Steyn could be quite hysterically funny with his clever putdowns of clear idiots, but now he is merely hysterical, foaming at the bit to outdo the National Review’s Denis Boyles labelling Europeans as “cockroaches”. In a literary feat, Steyn declares Europeans “worse than cockroaches.” Evidence of this: Four news items, each of which in turn betrays evidence of a hastily scribbled column.

Just look at them. Item number 1 is about Canada, not Europe. Wrong tree. The kindest we can say about item number 3 is that his reporting is shoddy: The statement “59 per cent of Europeans think Israel is the biggest threat to world peace” is not true. Not caring to fact-check is shoddy, while knowing it’s not true and still using it would be worse. It reminds me of stovepiping, though perhaps that is a word not likely to find its way into Steyn’s vocabulary any time soon.

Item number 4 gets bizarre. We now have the spectacle of Steyn flaunting his cavalier approach to fact checking:

The other day I accidentally referred to Tariq Ali as Tariq Aziz and within minutes had a little flurry of emails from correspondents sneering that evidently all these guys sound alike to me. Well, I wouldn’t say that. But Tariq Ali and Tariq Aziz are sounding very much alike.

Aside from that, what the opinion of one left-wing commentator is meant to infer about the rest of the world is a mystery to me, but it comes effortlessly to Steyn:

For him, and for Mr Collenette [a Canadian], and for Goran Persson and Nelson Mandela and many many others, even on 11 September, the issue was never terrorism; the issue was always America.

Steyn must have done some remarkable research to ensure that the above sentence is not as utterly stupid as it appears.

Which leaves item 2, the nationality of missiles used in attacks against Americans in Iraq.

Much of the death and destruction was caused by French 68mm missiles Îin pristine condition’, according to one US officer who inspected the rocket tubes and assembly. In other words, they’re not rusty leftovers Saddam had lying around from the 1980s.

No, those would have been American. Why they would rust in a desert I don’t know, and the same goes for French arms. I also doubt the US officer inspected the missiles before they blew up. In any case, blaming the French for the attack is like blaming Boeing for 9/11. Who knows how the missiles got there, and how old they are? This is the flimsiest of grounds for outrage, and a dangerous precedent. If American weapons are ever used by the enemy, will Steyn be consistent and denounce America?

The point of all this? “Europe is dying.” The continent is importing too many Muslims, they’re breeding, and they’re radical. Yes, all of them, if Steyn can help it. “Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans, and what’s left in Europe will either be very old or very Muslim. That’s the Europe that Britain will be binding its fate to.” No Muslims in Britain, of course, thank God, and not enough in America for them to poison the well with their incessant plotting. But everything bad in Europe is due to these Muslims and their tolerators.

I’ve heard that kind of argument before. At least Mr. Steyn is decent enough not to offer a solution.