I was reading this piece on Mary Mark Steyn’s site the other day and I could not help but wonder how these guys do it. Steyn had a prominent spot at National Review and a syndicated column. I think he had a contract with Rush Limbaugh as a guest host. I seem to recall him doing TV, but I don’t watch enough TV to be certain of it. The point being that he had a bunch of good revenue streams going until he took a stand against that odious con-man Michael Mann.

I may be reading it wrong, but it appears that Steyn has tossed a lot away in order to fight this lawsuit on principle. No matter how you feel about Steyn, you have to admire the guy for his guts. He’s not alone, of course. There’s a long list of guys who have refused to go along and found themselves exiled to the badlands. Steyn is an international character with a lot of revenue sources so I’m sure he is doing fine. Still, it is not easy to face the wife and tell her to stretch the budget until things blow over. It’s even harder when you have kids.

Steyn is the most famous case and probably the least harmed. I’m a fan of Steve Sailer and he’s a guy who appears to have paid a heavy price for sticking to his guns. I remember reading Sailer years ago in National Review. I guess that was the high point of his earning years as a writer. That was a long time ago. I don’t know if he makes much from his site or for his work for sites like Taki and VDare, but I’m guessing it is not much. Maybe there’s a rabbi somewhere making it all work. I don’t know.

Of course, all of the people writing for VDare and Taki are forever off-limits now for mainstream publications. That means the money will always be scarce. For guys like John Derbyshire, sent into exile last year, it probably does not matter much. He’s made his money and lived his life. In his dotage, he can afford to not care what the beautiful people think. The others have wives and families and that means bills to pay, appearances to keep up and all that comes with it. It’s tough to do that out there on the fringe.

Exile is a real fear amongst the chattering classes. Years ago I mentioned something from VDare in an exchange with Jonah Goldberg and he broke out in hives. He responded with a rant about how I should never even read that site, much less mention it. I still chuckle thinking about it. At the time Goldberg was trying to build up the National Review website, by being a little edgy and hip. It was a nice reminder that there’s edgy and hip in the buttoned down conformist sense of the phrase and then there’s jumping over the wall and running for freedom.

The fear is well founded. No one ever makes it back from exile. Joe Sobran and Sam Francis were great polemicists, yet they were never rehabilitated. They were the sort of gifted writers who made batshit crazy arguments fun to read. Maybe that’s what made them so dangerous, I don’t know, but if great writers never make it back from the gulag, the lesser talents have no chance. That’s what came to mind reading the latest from John Derbyshire, regarding the banished Richard Lynn. Maybe when you are no longer a threat, they bring you back.

Another side to this is what happens to former snitches who then find themselves in trouble for crime think. Dinesh D’Souza was the guy who put the shiv in the back of Sam Francis two decades ago. It was his report of Francis at American Renaissance that got Francis fired from the Washington Times. Now, D’Souza is facing jail time and reaching out to his friends on the right to save him. As a guy who hates rats like D’Souza, I’m taking a great deal of pleasure in seeing Team Obama put the screws to him. I’m also liking the fact Conservative Inc has turned their back on him. There’s something poetic about it.

I do wonder if Charles Murray is right and the ground is about to shift. There are so many people on the fringe now, it is getting crowded. Al Gore’s Contrivance makes it easier for these people to work together and build a new audience. We live in interesting times. No one seems to think the current arrangements hold much longer and no one can agree on what comes next, other than it won’t be more of the same. Maybe what comes next is the exiles come home. Smarter people than me will have to work that out.

All that said, dark travel is the best travel, at least for me. On the edge of the ghetto, life is more vibrant, even though it is more dangerous. Years back I was doing some business in DC and stopped for a coffee in Chevy Chase. All the women looked and dressed the same. They were all driving high end SUV’s. Standing in line for a five dollar coffee, seeing all the of the women with the same haircut was a bit unnerving. How could they not notice it?

But, they do notice such stuff. They notice when you don’t drive the same car or wear the same clothes or think the same thoughts. That’s how you get sent to the fringe. The pod-people running this country are a herd animal. Maybe on their home planet they graze like cattle. I don’t know. I do know the action is all out on the fringe these days. Maybe that has always been the case;  it is certainly true today. Life amongst the exiles is not remunerative, but it is rewarding.