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Originally Posted by The Brute
I wasn't one of the people asked for a comment, but I'll do so anyway. I read this book about a year ago. Despite some very loose reliance on fact, Steyn raises some very startling demographic possibilities. At points I found myself cringing at his right wing bias, but I must say the book makes you wonder about what the future will hold for some countries.
I won't argue the "loose reliance on fact" but in large part it appears to me his mis-statements are on the margins. For example, Steyn wrote the Italian birth rate as 1.2 births per woman; someone countered that it was really 1.25. Looking at
this wiki chart I'd say he's close enough (and the rest of the chart is certainly alarming considering the replacement rate is about 2.1 children per woman).
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Also Steyn is a Canadian and is often an embarrassment to us. When he visited Guatanemo Bay and wrote an article about how the detainees should be happy that they got waterboarded because they were allowed to stay in such fabulous conditions that it was like a spa. Nice.
Well he lives in New Hampshire now so any embarrassment is shared among a much larger population so perhaps Canadians shouldn't feel so bad.
Obviously he uses rhetoric designed, to put it mildly, to get ones attention. But based on my recent reading of
The Case Against Steyn is appears the so called "slurs" or "outrageous statements" attributed to Steyn read in full and in context aren't quite as inflammatory.
Bottom line is I'd like to read the exact column/essay where he said what you attributed to him as opposed to a possibly loose and/or out of context paraphrase (which I admit is common on the right and the left). Perhaps someone can find the link; I can't at least today.
~ Rick
PS Didn't mean to mention Andy Fox and John Cole to be exclusionary; rather they are old friends who I think would at least get a rise from Steyn. Once you get our age any rise is welcome