The Undocumented Mark Steyn (12 page)

The news that the NRA’s getting into the theme-restaurant business came as no surprise to my old friend Armand Croissant, New York’s top theme-restaurant consultant. “I’ve been working on it for months, darling!” he told me excitedly. “It was my idea to put the ‘e’ on the end of the ‘Grill.’ Like spelling caliber ‘calibre.’ Makes it more sophisticated. More European. Gourmet dining. Cordon bleu.”

“Gordon blew what?” said his NRA liaison man Bud, skimming
Guns & Ammo
as he waited for Armand to finish ordering the flower arrangements. “Gordon blew away a couple of punks who wanted to shake him down for drug money?”

“Cordon bleu,” sighed Armand. “Or, as I like to think of it, Carbine Bleu. It’s a whole new concept: Fine dining for gun nuts.”

“A gun restaurant, Armand?” I said, frankly unpersuaded. “Planet Hollywood, the Hard Rock Cafe, that’s one thing. But surely this is a bit controversial at a time when politicians are calling for mandatory trigger locks.”

“We have trigger lox,” he beamed. “Served on a poppyseed bagel with an avocado dip. But it’s not mandatory. It’s just one of many exciting menu options.” He suggested we wander over and take a look at the restaurant itself.

But Bud raised his hand. “Hold it right there, boys. You know they won’t let you in if you’re not wearing an ammo belt.”

“This is my favorite bit,” giggled Armand, as Bud fitted us out with a couple of stylish bandoliers from his couturier. As we strolled over, my old pal, one of New York’s shrewdest trend-spotters, explained his thinking. “The celebrity restaurants are all played out. The big growth area in theme eateries now is political lobby groups. I’ve just been pitching the idea of a restaurant to the National Organization of Women.”

“And what did they say?”

“Well, to be honest, they said, ‘Spend all day and night slaving over a hot stove? Typical bloody men. Try cooking it yourself, you sexist bastard.’ Then they hung up.”

We were in Times Square now, and, as we entered the NRA Grille, a grisly sight confronted us. At the very first table, two couples lay sprawled in their chairs, their faces spattered with red, their shirts turning a dark, remorseless crimson. The men were screaming, the women wailing in agony.

“Oh, my God!” I cried. “This is exactly what the gun-control groups are talking about!”

“It’s their own fault,” said the waiter. “I warned them: Never shake a full ketchup bottle.” As the stricken diners were helped to the bathroom—or, as the NRA calls it, the powder room—Armand and I were shown to our banquette.

“Hi, I’m Earl and I’ll be your shooter today. I mean, your server. Can I interest you in a beverage option?”

Armand was in a generous mood, so he ordered a .22 magnum of champagne.

“What’s your special today?” I asked.

“It’s the Saturday Night Special.”

“But it’s Wednesday lunchtime.”

“Sorry, but that’s the special every day,” said Earl. “Oh, and just so you won’t be embarrassed, it’s our policy to have one standard tip.”

“And what’s that?”

“‘Always sleep with a firearm under your bed.’”

“But we’re in a restaurant,” I pointed out.

“In that case, always sleep with a firearm under your bed of lettuce.”

As we waited for our beverages, Armand kept a close eye on his latest venture, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ new federal theme restaurant across the street. “It’s a sidewalk café called the Steakout!” he said. I looked out the window and, sure enough, behind a screen of protective shrubbery, the pavement was lined with attractive wrought-iron tables, underneath which several federal agents were lying on the ground staring directly at us while enjoying a rib eye with mashed potato.

Armand had the gun rack of lamb. I ordered the sea bass in a red pepper sauce served on arugula. But apparently I’d misheard: it turned out to be sea bass in a red pepper sauce served on a Ruger. “You know this is rather good,” I told Armand, thinking I might review the place for
The National Post
. “Has the chef been recommended by any magazines?”

“No, but several magazines have been recommended by the chef.” He snapped his fingers and Earl reappeared with a tray of assorted ammunition clips.

“For dessert,” he said, “may I recommend the assault trifle?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

The kitchen door swung open and four sous-chefs sprayed us with whipped cream, custard, and sponge. Then it was time for coffee and a complimentary Soldier Of Fortune Cookie. “Care for a reload?” asked Earl, topping up the cup.

“What a great place,” I said as we left. But Armand was already on to his latest project, for the Trial Lawyers Association.

“What is it?” I asked. “A bar and grill?”

“It’s The Bar,” he said, huffily. “And they don’t grill, though they will cross-examine you lightly for a modest four-figure fee. It’s the hottest restaurant in New York.” And he was right: when we reached the door, the maître d’ refused to admit us. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you can’t come in without a suit.”

IV

THE BUREAU OF COMPLIANCE

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

National Review
, November 9, 2011

WHENEVER I WRITE
about the corrosive effect of Big Government upon the citizenry in Britain, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere, and note that this republic is fairly well advanced upon the same grim trajectory, I get a fair few letters on the lines of: “You still don’t get it, Steyn. Americans aren’t Euro-pansies. Or Canadians. We’re not gonna take it.”

I would like to believe it. It’s certainly the case that Americans have more attitude than anybody else—or, at any rate, attitudinal slogans. I saw a fellow in a “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt the other day. He was at LaGuardia, and he was being trod all over, by the obergropinführers of the TSA, who had decided to subject him to one of their enhanced pat-downs. There are few sights more dismal than that of a law-abiding citizen having his genitalia pawed by state commissars, but having them pawed while wearing a “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt is certainly one of them.

Don’t get me wrong. I like “Don’t Tread on Me.” Also, “Don’t Mess with Texas”—although the fact that 70 percent of births in Dallas’s largest hospital are Hispanic suggests that someone has messed with Texas in recent years, and fairly comprehensively.

In my own state, the Department of Whatever paid some fancypants advertising agency a couple of million bucks to devise a new tourism slogan. They came up with “You’re Going to Love It Here!,” mailed it in, and cashed the check. The state put it up on the big “Bienvenue au New Hampshire” sign on I-93 on the Massachusetts border, and ten minutes later outraged Granite Staters were demanding it be removed and replaced with “Live Free or Die.” So it was. Americans are still prepared to get in-your-face about their in-your-face slogans.

No other nation has license-plate mottos like “Live Free or Die.” No other nation has songs about how “I’m proud to be a Canadian” or “Australian” or “Slovenian”—or at least no songs written in the last twenty years in a contemporary pop vernacular. And yet, underneath the attitudinal swagger, Americans are—to a degree visiting Continentals often remark upon—an extremely compliant people.

For example, if you tootle along sleepy two-lane rural blacktops, the breaks in the solid yellow line are ever farther apart. One can drive for miles and miles without an opportunity to pass. Motoring around Britain and Europe, I quickly appreciate being on a country lane and able to see the country, as opposed to admiring rural America’s unending procession of bend signs, pedestrian-approaching signs, stop signs, stop-sign-ahead signs, stop-sign-ahead-signs-ahead signs, pedestrian-approaching-a-stop-sign signs, designated-scenic-view-ahead signs, parking-restrictions-at-the-designated-scenic-view signs, etc. It takes me a little longer to get used to the idea that I’m free to pass other cars pretty much whenever I want to, as opposed to settling in behind Granny for the rest of the day as the unbroken yellow lines stretch lazily down broad, straight, empty rural blacktop, across the horizon and into infinity. Want to pass on a blind bend in beautiful County Down or the Dordogne? Hey, it’s your call. Your decision. Fancy that.

Italian tanks may have five gears for reverse and only one for forward, but in a Fiat the size of your cupholder it’s a different story. The French may plant trees on the Champs-Élysées because the Germans like to march in the shade, but they’ll still pass you at 120 on the Grande Corniche. When you’ve done your last cheese-eating surrender-monkey crack, that cloud in your windshield is a dinged deux chevaux leaving your fully loaded SUV for dust. Continentals would never for a moment tolerate the restrictive driving conditions of the United States, and they don’t understand why Americans do. Mon dieu, is not America the land of the car chase?

         
Gitcha motor running

         
Head out on the highway

         
Looking for adventure. . . .

Actually, America is the land of the car-chase movie. Off-screen, it’s a more sedate affair. Gitcha motor running, head out on the highway, shift down to third gear as there’s a stop-sign-ahead sign ahead. At dinner in Paris, I listened to a Frenchman and an Italian while away the entrée chortling at how docile and deferential Americans are.

Most of all they were amused by the constant refrain from the American right that if the nation doesn’t change course it will end up as mired in statism as Europe. “Americans love Big Government as much as Europeans,” one chap told me. “The only difference is that Americans refuse to admit it.” He attributed this to our national myth-making—“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” Yet, on that two-lane blacktop, unlike the despised French surrender monkeys, Americans are not to be trusted to reach their own judgment on when it’s safe to pull out and leave Gran’ma eating dust. Odd.

But these days what
can
Americans be trusted with? The U.S. has more highway signs than almost any other country: not just mile markers but fifth-of-a-mile markers; not just “Stop” signs, but four-way “Stop” signs. America also has the worst automobile fatality rate in the developed world, in part because there’s so much fascinating reading material on the shoulder. Our automobile fatality rate is three times that of the Netherlands, about the same as Albania’s, down at sixty-second in the global rankings, just ahead of Tajikistan and Papua New Guinea. President Obama warns that unless we “invest” more in roads, we risk becoming “a nation of potholes”—just like Albania. Except that there’ll be federally mandated “Pothole Ahead” signs in front of each one.

You may have noticed those new lime green pedestrian signs sprouting across the fruited plain, in many cases where no pedestrian has been glimpsed in years. Some new federal regulation requires them to be posted wherever pedestrians are to be found, or might potentially be found in the years ahead. I just drove through Barre, Vermont, which used to be the granite capital of
the state but, as is the way, now offers the usual sad Main Street of vacant storefronts and non-profit community-assistance joints. For some reason, it has faded pedestrian crossings painted across the street every few yards. So, in full compliance with the Bureau of Compliance, those new signs have been stuck in front of each one, warning the motorist of looming pedestrians, springing from curb to pavement like Alpine chamois.

The oncoming army of lurid lime signs uglies up an already decrepit Main Street. They dominate the scene, lining up in one’s windshield with the mathematical precision of Busby Berkeley’s chorines in
Gold Diggers of 1935
. And they make America look ridiculous. They are, in fact, double signs: One lime green diamond with the silhouette of a pedestrian, and then below it a lime rectangle with a diagonal arrow, pointing to the ground on which the hypothetical pedestrian is likely to be hypothetically perambulating. The lower sign is an exquisitely condescending touch. A nation whose citizenry is as stupid as those markers suggest they are cannot survive. But, if we’re not that stupid, why aren’t we outraged?

What’s the cost of those double signs—three hundred bucks per? That’s the best part of four grand wasted on one little strip of one little street in one small town. It’s not hard to see why we’re the Brokest Nation in History: You can stand at almost any four-way across the land, look in any direction, and see that level of statist waste staring you in the face. Doesn’t that count as being trod on? They’re certainly treading on your kids. In fact, they’ve stomped whatever future they might have had into the asphalt.

A variant of my readers’ traditional protestation runs like this: “Americans aren’t Europeans, Steyn. We have the Second Amendment, and they don’t.” Very true. And Vermont has one of the highest rates of firearms ownership in the nation. And Howard Dean has a better record on gun rights than Rudy Giuliani. Or Chris Christie. But one would be reluctant to proffer the Green Mountain State as evidence of any correlation between gun rights and small government. And Continentals don’t see a gun rack in your pickup as much consolation for not being able to pass for the next twenty-eight miles.

If I’ve sounded a wee bit overwrought in recent columns, it’s because America is seizing up before our eyes. And I’m a little bewildered by how many Americans can’t see it. I think about that chap at LaGuardia with “Don’t Tread on Me” on his chest, and government bureaucrats in his pants. And I wonder if America’s exceptional attitudinal swagger isn’t providing a discreet cover for the withering of liberty. Sometimes an in-your-face attitude blinds you to what’s going on under your nose.