Yes, Our Efforts Do Count

A small pause from the feeling of gloom that contemplating this war causes:

Mark Steyn silences the left (WorldNetDaily, November 18, 2006)

Passages that caught my eye:

Steyn's book soared immediately to the Canadian best-seller list and was running No. 3 on Amazon – though the country's ultra-liberal biggest book retailer drastically under-stocked it, for reasons it found difficult to explain.

What intrigued me, however, was how the liberal media would respond to it. Typically, up to this date anyway, the Toronto Star and most of the old Southam chain have ignored it. The Globe and Mail, however, faced up to the challenge. The reviewer they chose was William Christian, a much-published professor of political science from Guelph, Ontario. He writes a very strange review. It consists of two elements – a ferocious denunciation of Steyn's book – "possibly the most crass and vulgar book about the West's relationship with the Islamic world I have ever encountered" – and a recitation without comment of some of the alarming demographic and theological facts that Steyn presents.

Now this is mystifying. Look at the awful things this man is writing, says the reviewer. How crass! How vulgar! But you want to take Dr. Christian by both shoulders and demand: "Yes, but are they true? And, if they are not true, why don't you say so? And if they are true, what do you suggest we do about them?"

And if you think blogging and publishing books are different, then I should point out that in our time the appearance of web writings on print can take a short time. Blog essays, such as those of Fjordman, can be collected and published in print as a book.