HH: The main event is Mark Steyn is back. That’s right, journalist to the world, columnist to the globe, Mark Steyn, as in www.steynonline.com. Mark, I was getting ready for today’s show and I saw that the annual Special Olympics Christmas album, which I like, is being advertised by Time-Life on the telly. And I thought I wonder if Steyn has been recording the basement tapes edition of his latest Christmas release?

MS: Oh, you do this every…starting in kind of early August now, every year you try to tempt me into giving you a sneak preview of this year’s Christmas holiday party sensation, and I’m not going to be talked into being indiscreet, Hugh.

HH: You’re not going to play that game?

MS: You’re going to have to contain your excitement.

HH: If Time-Life can start advertising their albums, I think you’ve got to start building audience anticipation.

MS: No, no. There’s a reason why Time-Life needs to start rolling it out this early. I’m confident that my Christmas sensation doesn’t need that kind of treatment.

HH: Well, welcome back, and congratulations on the much-deserved award in Denmark. And tell people about that, Mark.

MS: Well, it’s the Sappho award that was given, which lots of people seem to assume is some kind of lesbian award.

HH: Yes.

MS: Believe me, I could do with it at this stage in my career. But in fact, it turned out to be just the usual business on standing up for free speech. And it was interesting to me that I happened to get it at a time when there are, I think, I used to be reasonably confident about the 1^st Amendment preventing America from going down the path that much of Europe has gone down. I’m less confident about that these days. In fact, these days, after reading about these various exemptions for certain companies on the Obamacare previsions in the New York Times, I’m less and less confident that the United States will remain a republic of laws rather than a republic of men, because it’s becoming a big issue here, I think, that the equality before the law, which is the basic principle of law, I think is definitely in jeopardy under the Obama administration.

HH: Mark Steyn, I was with Michael Medved and Steve Emerson on Tuesday night in Atlanta, and I made the statement, and I want your reaction to it, that we suffered a strategic defeat, a strategic defeat, defenders of free speech, when the cartoonist in Seattle, Washington was advised by our government to abandon her identity.

MS: Yes.

HH: This is staggering to me. We gave up.

MS: And this is a lady called Molly Norris, who is a liberal. And what was fascinating to me about that was the way her own newspaper just reported this in a matter of fact way. I think I’m using the direct quote here. “There is no more Molly.”

HH: Yes.

MS: So in effect, in effect, some thugs have managed to erase this woman’s identity simply because she didn’t even draw anything. She simply proposed an idea that earned her the usual death threats and fatwas, and all the rest of it. And if you compare the reaction of her liberal pals to the reaction of Salman Rushdie’s fellow novelists twenty years ago in London when the first, in the modern era, when the first fatwa was issued on this thing, we have seen a severe deterioration. And the lesson of this is that the liberal state will not be there for these people. I was reading something today about somebody complaining that the only people who stick up for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch Somali lady, complaining that it’s only right-wing think tanks in America who stick up for her. That’s because liberals will not defend their own. Multiculturalism trumps feminism, multiculturalism trumps free speech. Where are the liberal pals of Molly Norris?

HH: Yeah, she’s been disappeared, and without word from the White House, without anything. And our friend, Hitchens, cannot rally to her. He’s under the weather. But I just wonder about the left. And it was a dark day, but there are going to be some good days this month, Mark, and I want to ask you about what your sense is from the great North woods, of the political momentum right now, because it’s one of two ways, and I’ll ask everyone today, Barone and the Young Guns and everyone else, does this, because of the size of the Republican lead in the polls, do Democrats begin to rush out? And if they do, are they like Wile E. Coyote in front of the snowball coming down the hill?

MS: I think at this stage, it’s very hard to rally Democrats, because I think a lot of them recognize, I think a lot of them are actually ashamed of what happened in 2008. it’s fascinating to me, I was driving earlier today through a little liberal enclave of New Hampshire. And I do not recall in any electoral cycle seeing so few Democratic Party signs. I mean normally, the Democrats in that particular town outnumber the Republican candidate signs very considerably. The Democrat signs are conspicuous by their absence. And I think people understand that they were taken for a ride in 2008. I saw this ridiculous video on the internet earlier today of some nude students protesting don’t take away our coverage, meaning you know, Obamacare covers them until the age of 26, supposedly. And I was rather touched by it, because these must be the last twelve people, twelve young people still singing the starry-eyed, hopeychangey balderdash from 2008. This is a tremendous fall, and comprehensive fall, in almost record time. I mean, this is beyond Carter. Carter was not a messiah. And what has happened to Obama is remarkable.

HH: Can Humpty Dumpty’s men put him back together again, Mark Steyn?

MS: Well, Humpty Dumpty hasn’t got any men. That’s the point.

HH: (laughing)

MS: You know, when people use to go on about Bush being a moron, the left conceded that the moron was at least surrounded by these cunning Machiavellian, sinister figures like Cheney and Rumsfeld. Cheney and Rumsfeld could hold their particular Humpty Dumpty together. Who are the wise old birds in the Obama administration? Joe Biden was insulting the crowd at some speech today. He gave some line that he thought would get a big bunch of applause, and it was received in silence, and he said boy, you’re the dullest audience I’ve ever worked.

HH: I know, I saw that.

MS: That line may work at Atlantic City and Vegas, but it’s not when you’re on the campaign stump.

HH: I’ve got to see if Duane can pull up Joe Biden talking about the new Republican Party, because the Vice President is unique. If they switch out, if Bob Woodward is right and it’s on the table that they switch out, it won’t be a mortal blow to talk radio, but it will certainly be a knockdown. I’ll have to lay me down and cry a while before to rise again. This is Joe Biden on the new Republican party, Mark Steyn.

JB: This is not your father’s Republican Party. This is the Republican tea party. No, this is a different deal, guys. This is not Bob Dole. This is not Howard Baker. This is not straightforward conservative, conservative Republicans like the Tafts of the world. This is a different breed of cat.

HH: You’re a different breed of cat, Mark Steyn. What do you make of that?

MS: (laughing) I would like to believe that was true.

HH: (laughing)

MS: I would love to believe that this is not Bob Dole and Howard Baker, but I worry, in fact. I worry that after November, the sort of natural Dole/Bakerization ratchets will take effect, and we will, and this, the so-called new breed of Republican cat will turn out to be just some, you know, moth-eaten pussy that purrs with delight when the Democrats roll him over on his back and scratch his tummy.

HH: (laughing)

MS: Because if that happens, we are going to be, as I said the last time I was on your show, Hugh, I think we are setting up prerevolutionary conditions if that were to happen.

HH: Don’t you think it’s just so amusing, though? John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are some kind of Thomas Paine-like proto-revolutionaries?

MS: Yeah, and I think this is not really going to, really not going to work. I mean, I think it’s fascinating the limited number of candidates they’ve been able to demonize. You know, they may be able to have some impact on the race in Delaware, and maybe in Nevada, although that his not clear. But what is fascinating is that this time round, the disaster of what the Democrats have done is so great that the old, good time politics of personal destruction that’s worked so well for Bill Clinton, that just is not going to work this time.

HH: And Mark, are we going to get you on Election night? Are you going to be available? Or are you working somewhere that night?

MS: (laughing) Well, you mean by that, am I accepting a lesbian award somewhere in Scandinavia that night?

HH: No, I mean if you’re…

MS: I’ll interrupt the lesbian award festivities and join you if I can.

HH: I thought you might be opening the new act for Christmastime off Broadway somewhere, but we will continue to pepper you with an assault to get a preview of the Steyn Christmas release as soon as possible. Welcome back, Mark. It’s a pleasure. Mark Steyn, always, always fun to have you here, www.steynonline.com.

End of interview.