"First They Came for Piglet"

You've got to hand it to Mark Steyn. I happen to agree with most of what he says, but putting that aside (although it's hard to do), the fact is that is that he's a superb writer with a brilliant ear for the absurd. I often find myself laughing out loud reading his columns.

In his latest production, for example, he discusses Britain's ludicrous decision to refer to Islamic terrorism as "anti-Islamic activity." After all, "'There is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorize, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief,' [British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith] told her audience. 'Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic.'”

Concerning which Mr. Steyn gently observes:

Well, yes, one sort of sees what she means. Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be “anti-Islamic” — in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an “anti-German activity.” But I don’t recall even Neville Chamberlain explaining, as if to a five-year-old, that there is nothing German about the wish to terrorize and invade, and that this is entirely at odds with the core German values of sitting around eating huge sausages in beer gardens while wearing lederhosen.