Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West

This book tells about Steyn's travails with the Canadian "human rights" racket. Most of the articles were about Islam, and Steyn's deep misgivings about the Islamic demographic takeover of the West. As if to confirm Mark's worst fears, the Muslims tried to shut him up by complaining of his "Islamaphobia" to the Canadian "human rights" tribunals. They ultimately failed, and not only did they fail, they caused section 13 of the relevant legislation, which gave the tribunals jurisdiction over alleged hate speech, to be repealed. I give Mark Steyn and publisher Ezra Levant a lot of the credit for that brilliant victory on behalf of free speech. But toward the end of the book, it became apparent that the plaintiff, Mohamed Elmasry, should really get most of the credit, because he didn't understand how the racket was designed to work. The game was to use the commissions against shallow pocket individuals who couldn't afford to defend themselves, and therefore had to knuckle under, but Elmasry, kept suing reputable publishers and newspaper, who had plenty of money to defend themselves, and a powerful incentive to end the whole kangaroo-court system.There are some great parts of this, one of which is Mark's take-down of a prissy journalism school professor who claimed that Mark did not properly fact-check a review of a book by Oriana Fallaci. The issue was Khomeini's ruling that a person should not eat a sheep after he has shagged the sheep. Steyn and Fallaci were right, and it was the J-school hack who couldn't do basic fact-checking. The punchline--about the j-school hack and his allies--was that "even though you've rogered them silly, they still keep bleating."Having read two Steyn collections in the last two months--this one a compilation of articles written from 2005 to 2008, and the other "the Face of the Tiger," a compilation of articles written in the year after 9/11--it strikes me that during both of those periods, it was the rest of the world that was generally poorly governed and having issues with free speech. The U.S., with its First Amendment, was seen as the bastion of the free press. How the worm has turned! Today, it's the U.S. that is governed more poorly than any other anglophone nation (and many other nations in the developed world). It's the U.S. that is ranked 46th in freedom of the press. It is in the U.S. that Mark Steyn is being sued for an short opinion piece about Michael Mann. It is in the U.S. where students at elite Ivy-league university express their contempt for freedom of speech. It is in the U.S where the FCC recently mooted putting government minders in news rooms across the country. It is in the U.S. where a documentary filmmaker critical of Obama is being federally prosecuted for helping his college friend. It is in the U.S. where the IRS is routinely used to harass those who exercise their freedom of speech to criticize the ruling party.I bought this book specifically to support Steyn in his current legal troubles, which perfectly encapsulate what's going wrong with Amaerica. Steyn is being sued by Michael Mann, who is most certainly a public figure, for a humorous opinion published in National Review. Given our First Amendment jurisprudence on libel of public figures, there's no way Mann can prevail, but even frivolous lawsuits cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Understanding these realities, about 27 jurisdictions have passed "anti-SLAPP" legislation that is intended to quickly shut down these suits. You file a special motion, discovery is stayed, the judge rules, the ruling is immediately appeal-able. But guess what? None of this works if the courts won't follow the law. The law that matters is the law that is written on the heart, and today's judiciary has been educated in a system that despises freedom of speech and despises law, sees law not as the savior from the tyranny of rule by man, but as the corrupt vehicle by which the ruling class controls everyone else. So when it comes to a conflict between the law and some left-wing value like the religious enthusiasm for anthropogenic global warming, the law doesn't stand a chance.

Mark Steyn is one of the true treasures writing today. He is funny, intelligent and gets to the heart of the matter. This book consists of many essays written about his bout with the speech police in Canada as they tried to censor his writing on the creeping Islamization of the West. His insights are brilliant and on target. The West will be defeated, by a thousand cuts and accomadations made to an idealogy which is determined to see it's vision for the world come to pass. See ISIS in Iraq for what he is talking about. And our cultural self loathing propogated by our elites will lead the way to the loss of our way of life. After 9-11 many people wondered "why do they hate us?" Well according to the leading intellectuals at our universities, media, and arts western white men are the fount of imperialism, racism, environmental destruction, slavery, discrimination, economic exploitation - why wouldn't they hate us? - our elites sure do. As I've said on other reviews if we don't muscularly assert the superiority of our western civilization we are destined to lose it.

I met Mark once and got his autograph - "Jim, let's win!" - inside the cover of America Alone. I now scan the Net eagerly nearly every day for his latest essays, often classics that snare collectivist politicians with double meanings and metaphors. He almost makes it possible to tolerate Obama because in an odd way, Obama and his minions inspire Mark to be brilliant!Lights Out is no exception as Steyn caricatures his life from October 2006 when MacLean's published clips from his America Alone and alerted Canadian Islam and the prissy leftists to his existence. A handful of Muslim students, the Canadian Islamic Congress, and the Canadian Human Rights Commission decided to examine Mr. Steyn's written thoughts. They needed several years and several lawyers. They also needed a case.Canadian justice, unfortunately, is like that in much of Europe: free speech is an old hound's bark, to be muzzled unless it is toothless. In contrast, America and most Americans still resist nasty collectivist webs and it's legitimate for therapists to make sensitive folks tougher rather than silencing the rude folks around them.Publishers, however, have interests in many countries and restrict publications in America if there is some chance for a law suit in London or Amsterdam. (Yes, Islamists have a reputation for "jurist shopping"!) Similarly, many academics and clerics in the United States now do the secularist thing and spout bland opinions but no children while Islam has conviction, enforced morality, and lots of hostile males. Islam, thus, wins often in our prisons and poor neighborhoods not on the basis of numbers but because of the absence of competing faiths. We are indeed "the hollow men."Lights Out makes its long argument again and again and again and I am amazed at the number of subtle ways that people repeat the same stupid tactics. I suspect that Mark "chained" Lights Out as he lived it. Of course, he found a tool for revenge, self-therapy, and making a bit of money as he confused his critics. (I get the same thrill from writing conservative columns in Starbucks!)Bottom line effect of Steyn's book: I'm glad for the United States Constitution and for those who wrote it. And I'm glad the Canadian legal apparatus finally had the good sense to be embarrassed!Cheers to Geert!James Brody, Ph.D.[...]

One of the disturbing aspects of todays society is the effort to "shut you up" if you don't agree with the prevailing (in the media) orthodoxy. I assumed (I know, I know) that free speech was accepted in Western Civilization. Wrong!! The United states has the First Amendment guaranteeing us the right to differ, and say so- out loud. That is NOT the case in Canada, England, France, and Australia among others. There you can be fined, and/or jailed for speaking your mind. It's called Hate Speech, so shut up! Mark Steyn was taken to court by the Canadian Islamic Counsel for quotingIslamic scholars about the meaning of their religion. Wait until you read about what the Imams have to say about what they truly believe! Definitely a MUST read.

Peu importe la couleur politique de son auteur, ce livre est à lire pour les situations absurdes et anti-intellectuelles qu'il rapporte.Je suis le premier à avertir d'amalgames désastreux et à prendre de tels avertissements au sérieux.Les musulmans sont si différents les uns des autres qu'on ne peut que considérer chacun d'entre eux individuellement.Mais tel n'est pas le cas de leurs fois.Il y a de vastes thèmes partagés entre elles.Et il suffit de regarder autour de soi pour voir de nombreux actes, pas seulement les terroristes, qui trouvent leurs justifications dans la religion elle-même, se tenant au-dessus des autres raisons quand elle n'est pas la seule et unique raison, ainsi que le rapportent les auteurs de ces actes eux-mêmes.Où se situe l'absurdité?Elle réside dans les gens qui cherchent à se tenir à l'écart du sujet religieux.Supposez que vous vouliez rester à l'écart d'un sujet quel qu'il soit.Première étape: ne pas en parler.Ne parler de rien qui puisse y mener non plus.Cela fonctionne-t-il?Pas le moins du monde.Seconde étape: faire en sorte que personne d'autre n'en parle.Là ça fonctionne!Car en tant que membre de la société vous ne pouvez pas rester facilement à l'écart de sujets importants.Donc vous devez faire en sorte que ces sujets restent à l'écart de la société.Certaines personnes ne semblent pas pas voir ici que ce genre de pouvoir est totalitaire.Pour en apprendre plus à propos de ces personnes, lisez ce que Mark Steyn documente avec Lights Out.

This book is an excellent expose of how Islam is destroying free speech in the west using the west's own mulitculturalism and political correctness to do so. It is a wake up call that needs to be heeded. Steyn uses humor to communicate a very serious situation. Every school should be made to have this boook in its classroom.

This is Mark Steyn's account of how he took on the multiculti thought police in Canada and won. For those who don't know, Mark Steyn is one of the wittiest and most perceptive contemporary writers in the English language, a native of Canada who has also lived in Australia, the UK and, for some years, the US. He can be equally withering about the deficiencies of all, not least Canada. Canada was plagued with catch-all "human rights" legislation, the kind that enabled the complainant to declare his/her rights had been infringed, or even that the rights of some other, entirely hypothetical, individual had been compromised. There are Human Rights Commissions (HRCs) in every Canadian province, each staffed with activist zealots, in a country where there have been no serious human rights issues for ages (even when the leader of the Parti Quebecois uttered the blatantly racist remark, to the effect that the Mohawk people didn't speak French, so shouldn't be allowed a vote in the ninety-ninth Quebec independence referendum, the Mohawks could and did vote and the secessionists lost, yet again). The result is bloated bureaucracies hunting around for supposed "human rights" violations, like Giant Anteaters who don't know when to give up. Steyn's case involved a book called "America Alone", in which he decried the collapse of Western culture and the demographic collapse of Western societies. The book had been widely available (and sold and probably read) in North America, Australia, the UK, Ireland and continental Europe. An excerpt was published in Maclean's magazine, a leading current affairs weekly in Canada. About six months later, the magazine and Steyn were reported to the federal HRC and to the HRCs of British Columbia and Ontario. The real instigator of these actions was an islamist with a penchant for very violent pronouncements about Israelis, so the actions were ostensibly moved by five recently qualified law students, whom Steyn refers to generally as "the sock puppets", or "the Socks". No accused ever came before a Canadian HRC (federal or provincial) and won. Every case was decided in advance. That was the nature of the underlying legislation: offence was in the eye of the complainant, or the advocate, even the eye of the self-appointed advocate. The Socks compiled a list of grievances against Steyn and Maclean's which went way beyond the original, supposedly offending, article, demanding a right of reply in the magazine, which might not be edited in any way and which would carry graphics and even a front page dictated by the Socks. That was pretty outrageous in itself, but the true implication was far worse: any time a publisher thought about producing a piece about hard-line islam, the thought that it could lead to a six-figure legal bill (Steyn points out that the HRCs, of course, have taxpayers' money to burn) would almost certainly terminate that thought pretty quickly - and not just in Canada. This book is partly a re-cycling of Steyn's articles. He does like doing that, but a writer as good as Steyn is entitled to, not least because his observations from five years ago remain entirely valid today. They are very readable and he pairs the "offending" articles with the complaints made against them, then adds his own rebuttal, expressed in prose at least as pugilistic as that of the original piece. Provocatively, he also supplies articles which the Socks might have added to the charge sheet, but somehow didn't, and he goes into the nonsensical world of the HRCs themselves, where, for instance, the Ontario HRC could refuse to hear the case, but still effectively declare Maclean's and Steyn "guilty", a bit like a primary school child in the playground who runs away and then turns around, saying, "Nur-nur, I won...", or the British Columbia tribunal could listen to "evidence" entirely from outside the legal jurisdiction of British Columbia. Overall, the book amounts to a lot more than a compilation. All the material written for the book is as powerful and as tenaciously argued as classic Steyn always is and it is meticulously marshalled. Steyn and Maclean's won the case. That was the first time ever that a Canadian HRC had ever conceded a case. Since then, Mark Steyn has campaigned, successfully, to remove some of the oppressive, so-called "human rights" furniture from Canada's federal law code. This is a very good book and, given Mark Steyn's current legal battle, a relevant one. That battle and this are all about free speech. (Keep an eye on the dates of the articles, because they are arranged thematically, not chronologically.)

Steyn has the remarkable gift of keeping me laughing as my terror at his analysis mounts. His broad historical perspective reminds me that civilisation that emerged from Western Europe is as wonderful and fragile as any ecosystem. Unfortunately, the diminishing number of inheritors (the majority of whom seem ungrateful to "the West" for anything other than a handout) will surely deny ever having been warned when their lights go out. Read this compelling book and laugh and cry simultaneously before analysis like this is banned.

Basically a rehash of America Alone. Still a good read