20140409_MS
Source: The Zoomer
URL: http://www.thezoomertv.com/videos/conversations-conrad-extended-mark-steyn-interview/
Date: 09/04/2014
Event: XXXX
Attribution: The Zoomer
People:
- Conrad Black: Former newspaper publisher, co-host of The Zoomer
- Denise Donlon: Business executive and TV producer
- Mark Steyn: Writer and political commentator
Denise Donlon: Welcome back. Conrad? Give us the back story on Mark Steyn. You used to be his boss, right?
Conrad Black: Yes, well I must say he's a delightful man, personally, but he's an uncommonly difficult employee. If an editor inadvertently drops a comma - he was writing for us in ten different publications in four different countries, he would just stop with everyone, and all of a sudden all the editors would say, you know, "Where's this copy?" and so he is a complicated person but a very loyal friend and a brilliant man, a very entertaining man. And he's now locked in a libel suit in the United States, and he's battling out for his right to debunk the famous media Hockey Stick of the global warming advocates.
Denise Donlon: Are we back on global warming, again?
Conrad Black: I'm afraid we're not going to get away from this until you global-warmers admit that there's no such thing as global warming. [They are laughing.]
Denise Donlon: Never! Never!
* * *
Conrad Black: My guest today is my friend of great many years and fellow columnist at the National Review and elsewhere - Mark Steyn. A legendary figure with an immense following, all over the English-speaking world, and indeed parts of the French-speaking world, too. [They are laughing.] Thanks for joining us, Mark.
Mark Steyn: I was sitting at the Tim Hortons at the Townships Autoroute in Magog, Quebec, and my sole francophone fan from Sherbrooke, Quebec, came up and buttonholed me at Tim Hortons. So you're correct to say that I'm a legend in the French-speaking world, too.
Conrad Black: Exactly. And they know you, but they don't remember who Tim Horton was. [They laugh.]
Mark Steyn: Right!
Conrad Black: Mark, you're now in the midst of some litigation. If it doesn't come from you, I'm afraid our viewers won't believe quite the absurdity of this latest manifestation of the workings of the American justice system. What's actually gone on, here?
Mark Steyn: Yes, I'm being sued in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Michael Mann, who's a climatologist, who's the man behind the famous Hockey Stick Graph that the Government of Canada, I believe, distributed to every man, woman and child in the country - basically showing that the 20th century is this blade of the Hockey Stick, shooting up out of the ceiling of the graph round about 1999, and plainly looking as if we're all going to be broiling by about 2014 - which we're not - and this was used by the IPCC to gin up the whole... basically, I would say, to change the level of debate about climate change and the environment.
Conrad Black: Into one of outright hysteria.
Mark Steyn: Yep. And the sky is falling, stuff. And he's now suing me - he claimed in the state- in the complaint, to - accused me of the crime of defamation of a Nobel Prize winner. Because it's - he's not a Nobel Laureate. [They laugh.]
Conrad Black: He no more won the Nobel Prize than we did.
Mark Steyn: No. Well, he won the Nobel Prize in the same sense that I did. He once wrote a report for the IPCC and they were co-awarded, they won half a Nobel Prize with Al Gore in 2007. In the same way, I'm a Nobel Laureate because my mother is Belgian and in 2012 the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Conrad Black: And I'm a UK citizen, so I feel that I'm a Nobel Laureate, also.
Mark Steyn: That's - that's true. This is the first time, I think, on your show we've had a Nobel to Nobel conversation.
Conrad Black: It's as if the inventor of insulin met with Lester Pearson.
Mark Steyn: Yes. [He is laughing.]
Conrad Black: Dr... Dr. Banting.
Mark Steyn: That's right, that's right. This will be an interesting case for the First Amendment, in that -
Conrad Black: British, Canadians might not - it's really the right to freedom of expression.
Mark Steyn: Yes, but the First Amendment really isn't worth that much, if it takes you five years and a seven-figure sum to establish your right to say something, which is what it looks like it's going to take, in my case. And that's a very high price to pay. And what is - what I find repugnant is - I mean, you know all this back-to-front, because your case was a highly evolved example of that - but what's fascinating me is about all the worst features of America justice, for example the "settlement", the assumption that you won't exercise your right to be tried by a jury of your peers, but that simply initiating the legal process will force you to so-called "settle", as they do. You know, I wrote a 200-word blog post, and - and there was, I think, at the moment, seven separate counts, that - seven separate complaints that Michael Mann has filed against me. And it's easy to foresee a jury saying "We'll acquit on six of them but we'll find him guilty on the seventh", and that in itself will be enough for a - damages in the high seven figures. I mean, it's very corrupt, that.
Conrad Black: It is. But the 99.5% success rate for prosecutions - it's about 61% in Ontario, it's a little over 50% in the United Kingdom - and that's not because our prosecutors are incompetent. It's because the defence has some rights. And the shocking thing, to me, is: of that 99.5%, 97% are without a trial.
Mark Steyn: Right.
Conrad Black: Because the plea-bargain system is so abused. If they target you, they go after the eight people closest to you in the activity they objected to, and they say "I'm sure you remember some incriminating evidence about Mr Steyn", and your friends will say "No, I certainly do not - he's an honest man, I don't believe he did anything criminal". They'll say "You'd better jog your memory, because if you don't, it's a conspiracy of silence, you're part of it and we'll indict you".
Mark Steyn: Right, right. I mean, I find it... At the time of your case, a neighbour of mine in New Hampshire was - attracted the attention of the United States Department of Justice, which is a corrupt institution -
Conrad Black: The greatest racketeering organisation in the world.
Mark Steyn: And the Department of Justice decides he's guilty of some contractual infraction. Seven years... Destroyed his marriage, drove him to, er - to, I think, two or three suicide attempts. He eventually winds up in Federal Court in Brattleboro, Vermont, and a jury tosses it out of there in 45 minutes.
Conrad Black: Given the correlation of forces between the United States of America and its local Canadian quisling acolytes [Mark Steyn is laughing] on the one side, and myself on the other, I counted as something of a success that, as you can see, I'm still married and not broke and my mental health is quite good.
Mark Steyn: No, no, you're still standing. But I mean, a lot of - the whole point of the system is to say "It's not worth you exercising your claim to innocence".
Conrad Black: It is a great country, and in my way I'm still pro-American, despite what they did to me. It's a wonderful country and they're right to be proud of it. But it isn't exceptional, other than in its scale - in all other respects, it is the supreme irony that we owe it the triumph of democracy in the world, but it isn't a very well-functioning democracy.
Mark Steyn: Americans are basically - the total debt level per family is about three quarters of a million dollars, so you're looking at a country that is on course to become the first nation of negative millionaires. I mean, it is... it is...
Conrad Black: [Inaudible] what you mean - every man, woman and child is a negative millionaire!
Mark Steyn: If you just run those - run those numbers: total Federal debt per person in Canada 12,000 dollars, total Federal debt in New Zealand 15,000 - in Australia 12,000, in New Zealand 15,000, in Canada 18,000. In America 54,000 dollars
Conrad Black: But in Germany, it's only about 7,000.
Mark Steyn: Right, right. At some point, people have to grapple with the fact that these, these numbers are - these numbers out-punch all your mythology. There's an assumption, I think, in Washington, among the political class, that nothing can be done, and that the institutions of Washington don't allow for meaningful course-correction.
Conrad Black: 233 years of American independence that built up a deficit of 10 trillion dollars in 2009, and now it's almost 18 trillion - it's just unbelievable. Well, America - do we or do we not agree that the United States will in fact pull itself together, at some point?
Mark Steyn: I'm torn. I love - I fell in love with New Hampshire, and I fell in love with the New England town meeting system of government. I believe in that system of a decentralised republic of self-governing citizens. You cannot amass power at the centre, the way Obama and others have done, in a nation of 300 million and not expect - and not expect it to transform itself into something utterly unrecognisable from the United States as it has been throughout its history, It has to be, I think, a decentralised republic or nothing.
Conrad Black: Mark, it's always lovely to talk to you, or with you.
Mark Steyn: It's lovely to talk with you too. And by the way, I must say something. I, I was completely disgusted by the actions of whatever committee advised the Governor General on the matter of the Order of Canada - it was absolutely disgraceful.
Conrad Black: Thank you, thank you. Can't say I disagree with you.