As Mona says, Tony’s death is a particular shock to those of us who enjoyed his company on the NR cruise just a few weeks ago. He was his usual convivial self, and fully engaged in the 2012 campaign season.
Back in 2005, Tony wrote a book called The West’s Last Chance. It opens with a sharply prescient prologue set in the London of the near future in which a Finsbury Park imam launches a protest against “sacriligious” art and sets off a chain of events leading to a brutal attack on a Tate Modern curator, the firebombing of the “Little David” in Florence, attacks on art galleries in Spain and France, etc. A few months after publication, the Danish cartoons crisis erupted and, in its combination of Islamic intimidation and Western capitulation, followed pretty much the trajectory foreseen by Tony — as has happened at other cultural pressure points in the years since. Tony anticipated all this, and wrote it up brilliantly. It would have made a marvelous movie.
To continue reading Mark Steyn's reflection on the life of Tony Blankley, click here to continue to the National Review Online.
