Cultural Masochism. (the Public Square: A Continuing Survey of Religion and Public Life)

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The New Criterion and Mark Steyn are well matched. The former, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball, delivers each month a sophisticated thumb in the eye to the several cultural elites who exuberantly undermine culture in the cause of anti-elitism. Steyn, who, in addition to his contributions to the New Criterion, appears regularly in the London Spectator, Canada's National Post, and almost everywhere else worth reading, wields what may be the most humorously devastating pen in today's culture wars. Kramer and Kimball invited him to be part of their series on "the survival of culture," and in the course of his contribution on multicultural madnesses Mr. Steyn illustrates his argument by reference to a strange development that has been discussed from time to time in these pages. Steyn notes that shortly after September 11, a resolution came before Congress to observe "Native American Month." The resolution contained the usual platitudes, and then this: "Native American governments …