Iran is calling its client groups out into the streets to remind members of the Sec Council that if they want a clash of civilizations, bring it on!

Mark Steyn on the kitchen remodeling going on today by the Extreme Islamist Makeover crowd, Europe edition.
Thursday, February 9
02-09steyn.mp3

Hugh Hewitt: Joined by Mark Steyn, columnist to the world, all of which you can read at Steynonline.com. Mark, we'll get to the uproar in the Arab world. But first, the uproar in Atlanta, the King funeral. Your commentary on its unfolding?

Mark Steyn: Well, I think Jimmy Carter is a disgraceful ex-president, and I thought it was just plain tacky what he did there when he's got...you know, the president of the United States can't be like most of us. He can't just walk out when somebody's being that boorish. He has to stand there and take it. And I think one of the agreeable things about George W. Bush, and I know it irritates a lot on the right when he does these rather fraternal buddy jokes about Bill Clinton, like he did in the State of the Union, but I think it is the essence of a democratic society that the other party is not your enemy. They're your political opponents. But at the end of the day when they've served as president and you've served as president, then you're brothers in the same office in some banal level. That's the difference between a civilized state and an uncivilized one. And Jimmy Carter's behavior at that funeral, I thought, was completely contemptible.

Hugh Hewitt: And when Joseph Lowrey was speaking, if looks were daggers, he'd have been a bad carnival act, ending in disaster, from Laura Bush, because of course, he launched into weapons of mass destruction. What that had to do with the war, I'm not sure, or with Coretta Scott King. Of course the excuse being offered by pro-Lowrey, pro-Carter people is that oh, she was a political activist. She would have wanted it this way.

Mark Steyn: Well, I think you can make that argument. I think the point is that whatever one feels about Martin Luther King's legacy, and I must say. I'm a resident of the last state of the Union to observe Martin Luther King day. We signed on to it about two or three years ago. Before, we didn't have a Martin Luther King day. We called it Civil Rights Day. And the idea being that you remember the cause rather than the celebrity associated with it. And personally, I think there's something to be said for that, because it's certainly the case that whatever his views on civil rights, Martin Luther King, and his wife, had extreme left-wing views, quite independent from their views on civil wars. They were opposed the Vietnam War, and that sort of thing. But when you have a national occasion where someone is being celebrated as a national figure, in the presence of the serving president, I think you should honor them on that basis, and I think it's tacky and crass to be unable to do it. And the fact...when you see this, you realize that the Democratic Party, all their icons, are either really old or dead. And that's why every time they have a funeral...this wasn't as bad as the Paul Wellstone one, but every time they have a funeral, they seem to be kind of using it as some sort of frenzied Dr. Frankenstein thing to sort of jump start the corpse into serving their political purpose for one last time. It's really grotesque.

Hugh Hewitt: But it doesn't work, and after Ken Mehlman began what I think is a very deliberate effort to define the Democratic Party appropriately as angry, and thus, not trustworthy, it played right into the Rove/Mehlman mantra.

Mark Steyn: Well, I think it did, actually. They react...in a sense, it was the domestic version of the Danish cartoons crisis, because you had the Democrats going bananas about being caricatured as guys who go bananas. And that's exactly what happened in the Danish cartoon thing. And I think that is...you know, when Nancy Pelosi said that basically, yeah, the tank's running on empty, but we're fine with that, we figure we sort of just...we've got no ideas, we're all out of gas, but we figure we can just roll gently down the hill across the finish line of the November elections. She was more or less saying that this is a party that is completely intellectually bankrupt.

Hugh Hewitt: Right.

Mark Steyn: And that is actually at the core of it, that they do not have...and that is why these things like the King funeral are such a tragedy for them, because you realize that they're...all that is important to them are the battles they won thirty and forty years ago. And the battles that need to be fought now, they're making no contribution to.

Hugh Hewitt: Yeah, they've mistaken a museum for a party. Mark Steyn, now let's turn to the Danish cartoons. Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims turned out in Beirut today to protest the cartoons. The head of Hezbollah told George Bush to shut up over Syria and Iran fueling protests. And in Gaza, a quaint little story of entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Daya, who has laid in a hundred hard to find Danish and Norwegian flags for sale to flag burners.

Mark Steyn: Yeah.

Hugh Hewitt: What's going on?

Mark Steyn: Well in a sense, that sums up the economic energy in the Muslim world, that they're actually great for...if you want to start a flag business for people to burn flags, that's a viable business in the Muslim world. Not a lot of other things are. That's one of the problems. You know, I disagree with the line you've taken on this, Hugh, and I do accept that in the simple politics of it, there's something actually quite useful in the United States detaching itself from Europe's position. But from Europe's point of view, the problem is that the basic narrative here in all these stories, the French riots, the murder of the Dutch filmmaker, the banning of Pooh and Piglet mugs in English municipal government offices, all these little nothing stories all basically derive their energy from the same point, that the fact that the Europeans are weak and elderly and fading, and their Muslims populations are young and surging. And in all these clashes, they're basically putting down markers for the way things are going to be the day after tomorrow, in the way that if you're a new owner, you may buy a house and have the kitchen remodeled before moving in. I mean, a lot of the things they're putting in place now, the Muslims are demanding, the Muslim lobby groups are demanding. They're basically putting in place the remodeled kitchen before they move in and take over.

Hugh Hewitt: So I've not persuaded you with my analogy to Churchill's treatment of Franco during the War, that we've got to worry about Pakistan's stability, we don't really want Danish newspaper editors making these calls for the Pentagon. We would...I want our government to engage this world and these fanatics on their terms and their timing, not the timing of Danish out of touch cultural editors, which is what this all began with.

Mark Steyn: Well, I wouldn't actually call those guys out of touch, because in some ways, they're living with far...in a far worse situation than people are in parts of the Muslim world. And again, I would slightly disagree with you there, because I think Muslims in the Muslim world are actually far more culturally reformable than Muslims in Europe are, because they're living in relatively homogenous societies that can be shifted culturally in significant ways. The problem in Europe is that Muslims feel alienated, because they regard Western culture as an abomination, it's all around them. They regard them as soft, decadent, narcissist fornicators and sodomites, and they loathe the society they're living in. And I think in a sense, that's a much more problematic thing. You know, whether there...I think there are moderate Muslims in Jordan. Whether there are moderate Muslims in the Netherlands is a much more problematic question.

Hugh Hewitt: You know, I asked Dennis Prager this week. I don't know if you had a chance to read that interview with Prager, Medved and Joe Carter.

Mark Steyn: Yeah, that was a great show, actually.

Hugh Hewitt: Well, I thought so, too, but I was a little stunned when Dennis said he thought 20% of the Muslim world was radicalized, and that it would go to more than 50%. Do you agree with those numbers?

Mark Steyn: Well, I think the thing is you have to distinguish between...the proportion of Muslims who are prepared to fly planes into skyscrapers is incredibly small. But when you take polls...they took a poll in Britain this week of British Muslims, and basically found that 2/5ths of British Muslims regard Jewish civilians as legitimate targets. Now that provides a huge comfort zone for Muslim terrorists to operate in.

Hugh Hewitt: Yes.

Mark Steyn: It means that they can go and set up in Manchester or Birmingham or Rotterdam or Copenhagen or Buffalo or Seattle, knowing that within those communities, there's a very huge comfort zone for them to be able to operate in. And in that sense, I think Dennis may be, in fact, underestimating the number a little.

Hugh Hewitt: Now what do you make, though, of hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah followers in Lebanon? Is this conflict unavoidable with Hezbollah?

Mark Steyn: Well, I think that is part of something that's slightly more calculated. Spontaneous demonstrations don't erupt in that part of the world.

Hugh Hewitt: That's right.

Mark Steyn: They're basically as stage managed as the opening ceremony at the Moscow Olympics. And what is happening is that Iran is putting pressure, because there's this parallel situation going on with Iran's nuclear program being referred to the U.N. Security Council, and Iran is basically calling some of its client groups out into the streets to remind some of the weaker members of that Security Council that in fact, if they want a clash of civilizations, bring it on, baby. That's the message these groups are making.

Hugh Hewitt: I want to close on a lighter note. Last night, American Idol outperformed in the ratings the Grammy's. The lesson to be drawn from this cultural first, Mark Steyn?

Mark Steyn: Well, I think in a sense, that's the...anyone can be a celebrity now. That's the great...you know, Noel Coward said years ago that television is for being on, not looking at. And that was fine when you were Noel Coward, and the ordinary people...Ella Fitzgerald or Bob Hope, and the ordinary people watched you. Now, you don't have Bob Hopes and Ella Fitzgeralds and Noel Cowards, and the ordinary person has rightly figured out that he can be as good as them. And those ratings demonstrated it, compared to the Grammy's.

Hugh Hewitt: Absolutely. Mark Steyn, always a pleasure. Steynonline.com.