Saturday 10 September 2011

No End of Spending

I know, I know, the Barclay Bros banned him from the Telegraph and the Speccie for producing much too heady a brew of no-nonsense dry conservatism for the modern pantywaist "centrist" liberal reader, but the bearded mountain man Mark Steyn writes a lot of good common sense from his hideout in New Hampshire. If, like Idle, you don't get bored by drilling down to the pesky numbers, I recommend After America.

Here's a taste:

"The Irish have a useful word for the times - flaithiulacht - which translates to ruinous generosity, invariably with someone else's money. There is nothing virtuous about "caring" "compassionate" "progessives" demonstrating how caring and compassionate and progressive they are by spending money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born"


4 comments:

Call me Infidel said...

The Telegraph should do the decent thing and beg Steyn to write for them again. His books are excellent, if somewhat depressing!

Thud said...

I like Steyn but he does go on a bit plus he has a back story that makes him slightly suspect, entertaining though.

idle said...

Agreed, he's not right about everything, thud. Hannan wrote a good post on it yesterday:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100105216/after-america-the-book-of-2011/

Hospitable Scots Bachelor said...

ie don't confuse compassion with weakness!!!