During the Cold War, the Soviet Union funded "peace movements" throughout the west - because for the Soviets "peace" meant "the absence of opposition".

In our time the new peace movement is Islam. And so we are told today, from the podium of a mosque with "extremist" "links", that the very word Islam means "peace". Actually, it means "submission" - ie, the absence of opposition.

The only difference between then and now is that instead of being chanted by scrofulous hippies protesting outside a Nato air base the old line's being peddled to us by the President of the United States. Odd.

~At the end of September, I spoke in the Danish Parliament on the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons. (See my speech here.) Afterwards I was hustled off-stage and, a little weary and the worse for wear, gave an interview in a rather handsomely appointed ante-room on the subject of Chancellor Merkel and her Million Muslim March. You might be interested in what I had to say - remember this was two months before the Paris attacks and three months before the New Year sexual assaults and the cover-up by German police and media. Click below to watch:

Thanks to Frau Merkel, everything old is new again:

Fears Mount for Jews in Germany

Just to reiterate a point I've made before: Two decades ago I met many refugees from Yugoslavia's descent into civil war - for example, a family from Mostar in Herzegovina. They'd spent months living in the roofless remains of a bombed house eating rats and whatever else they could find. And it showed. They were youngish people but they were war-ravaged: sunken-cheeked, slack-skinned, with rotting teeth and clothes that hung off their emaciated bodies. You didn't need to be told they were refugees from a civil war: They might as well have had a neon sign on their heads. Oh, and they were Muslim, too.

Twenty years on, their co-religionist "refugees" don't look like that at all. The ones I saw in Denmark and Sweden were well-fed, well-dressed - and fit and muscular, as German women discovered at New Year.

~Rand Paul came fifth in Iowa, which isn't bad. Nevertheless, he has decided to drop out of the presidential race. He's much more of a conventional politician than his father is and his finger-in-the-windy sail-trimming wasn't quite artful enough. And for whatever reason he never generated the cult-like levels of devotion that his dear old dad did. That said, in Iowa, he got as many votes as Bush and Christie combined. I spoke to him when I guest-hosted for Sean Hannity just before Christmas, discussing mainly US immigration in the wake of San Bernadino and Merkel's mass Islamization:

Rick Santorum is also out. He fought an honorable campaign on an innovative platform. But it's hard to make lightning strike twice. In Iowa in 2012 he came first. In 2016 only the presence of Jim Gilmore prevented him from coming last - and Gilmore got just 12 votes.

~It's hard to find an original angle on Donald Trump these days, but this certainly qualifies:

Trump support among Muslims towers over GOP rivals

'Remarkable' poll: More votes than all Republicans combined

It's true. As long as he remembers not to deport them all before voting day, the Michigan primary should be in the bag.

Douglas Ernst's column also brings us full circle, as he quotes me on why, to the average person, Trump's position on Muslim immigration sounds a lot less insane than the official lies of western leaders:

Conservative commentator Mark Steyn responded to the media outrage at the time by telling Fox News' Greta van Susteren that objective people understand there is a strong correlation between Islam and Islamic terrorism. "To most of the American people, Trump sounds a lot less insane about this than John Kerry standing up in Paris as they're still washing the streets clean of blood, saying [Islamic terrorism] has nothing to do with Islam," Steyn said Dec. 8, 2015. Steyn's comments were in reference to the Obama administration's reaction to the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris, France, that killed 130.

~On Thursday I'll be keeping my weekly date with Hugh Hewitt, live coast to coast at 6pm Eastern/3pm Pacific.