The Canadian journalist and conservative columnist Mark Steyn, whose biographical data are, according to Wikipedia, “difficult to check. He has not published biographical details, such as his date of birth or employment history,” reveals some while referring on his website to our piece earlier this week about a Flemish train conductor who died after being kicked on an Antwerp bus by Moroccan youths. The piece mentions a bus drivers’ strike in the Flemish town of Sint-Niklaas, 20 kms to the west of Antwerp, where buses are routinely terrorised by immigrant youths. “That’s my mother’s and grandparents’ home town,” writes Steyn. “I have many childhood memories of visiting a place that, at the time, struck me as about as drearily Flemish as you could get. It’s been utterly transformed in a generation.”

I have always thought I was the only Flemish conservative journalist. Now there appears to be another one who, though he lives in the U.S., is at least half Flemish. Flanders, freedom and America go back a long way.