About book America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It (2006)
One of the more fascinating attempts at explaining the decline of the West is Mark Steyn's "America Alone." Though the main thrust of the book is the threat of Islam, Steyn examines numerous sources of decay in Western society, the upshot being that we are vulnerable to the threat only because of our weakness, confusion, and self-defeating behavior.Steyn offers the reader reams of evidence to back up his assertion that a "significant strain of Islam" (which today happens to be the overwhelmingly dominant one) is wreaking havoc across the planet. Everything from riots in the Parisian banlieue to the massacre of schoolchildren in Beslan to the Palestinian death cult is exposed in all its horror. It is virtually everywhere, and it is constant:"We switch on the news every evening and, though there are many trouble spots around the world, as a general rule it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in 'Palestine,' Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali, Muslims vs. Danish cartoonists in Scandinavia."Instead of confronting the threat, or even acknowledging it for what it is, Western elites drag their populations into an anesthetized state of denial. Discussion of the issue (if it exists at all) is filtered through the layers of the multiculturalist narrative, which leaves it sanitized and devoid of real content. Says Steyn:"Bomb us, and we agonize over the 'root causes.' Decapitate us, and our politicians rush to the nearest mosque to declare that 'Islam is a religion of peace.' Issue blood-curdling calls at Friday prayers to kill all the Jews and infidels, and we fret that it may cause a backlash against Muslims. Behead sodomites and mutilate female genitalia, and gay groups and feminist groups can't wait to march alongside you denouncing Bush and Blair. Murder a schoolful of children, and our scholars explain that to the 'vast majority' of Muslims 'jihad' is a harmless concept meaning 'healthy-lifestyle lo-fat granola bar'."As Steyn makes clear, the problem would never have gotten so out of hand were it not for the meltdown of intellect that has occurred among the "educated" portion of the Western world. The jihadis take full advantage of this breach, and they are aided and abetted at every turn by their "progressive" enablers.The West has lost its will to fight. We consistently defeat ourselves. The Islamists"know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western Civilization collapses on itself and Islam inherits by default. An army is only one weapon a civilization wields, and the weapon of last resort, too. But when you add up those elements of national power--military, judicial, diplomatic, economic, informational--it's hard not to conclude that (as was said of the British after the fall of Singapore) at least four of those five guns are pointing in the wrong direction. The point of the media is to speak truth to (domestic) power, the point of transnationalism is to constrain American power, the point of law is to upgrade the defendant--and the upshot of economic power in a time of plenty is that every time you gas up you're funding an enemy who's flusher than he's been since the fall of Constantinople. Meanwhile, we fight the symptoms--the terror plots--but not the cause: the ideology. The self-imposed constraints of this war--legalistic, multilateral, politically correct--are clearer every day."Steyn devotes quite a bit of ink to the issue of demography. The Muslim world, including the recent transplants into Europe, are benefiting from a high birthrate (the "upper reaches of the fertility hit parade") whereas the native populations--especially in Spain, Italy, and Greece--are falling far below replacement rate. The U.S. is chugging along at slightly above replacement level.This phenomenon is of vast historical significance:"In the fourteenth century, the Black Death wiped out a third of the Continent's population; in the twenty-first, a larger proportion will disappear--in effect, by choice. We are living through a rare moment: the self-extinction of the civilization which, for good or ill, shaped the age we live in."Steyn points out that in Europe, the Muslims are young; they are also energetic, confident, aggressive, and ready for sacrifice. The native populations are aging, and they are sluggish, guilt-ridden, fat, and dependent upon the welfare state. It does not take a sophisticated analyst to project scenarios one or two decades into the future. The picture is not pretty.America Alone is a good read. Steyn's wit lies in wait at every turn of the page, and his observations on a wide range of peripheral topics are thought-provoking, to say the least. Take, for example, this perceptive comment on anti-Americanism:"All dominant powers are hated--Britain was, and Rome--but they're usually hated for the right reasons. America is hated for every reason. The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lap-dancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too godless, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your bugbear you will find it therein, whatever you're against, America is the prime example of it."Which is followed by this marvelous segue:"That's one reason why [America's:] disparagers have embraced environmentalism. If Washington were a conventional great power, the intellectual class would be arguing that the United States is a threat to France or India or Gabon or some such. But because it's so obviously not that kind of power, the world has had to concoct a thesis that the hyperpower is a threat not merely to this or that rinky-dink nation state but to the entire planet, if not the entire galaxy. 'We are,' warns Al Gore portentiously, 'altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe.' ... You wouldn't happen to have the statistical evidence for that, would you?"If things continue on their course, predicts Steyn, we may find that"the world will be well on its way to a new Dark Ages. Now, as then, Europe has its do-nothing kings--les rois fainéants--thought these days we call them European commissioners and chancellors and prime ministers. Now, as then, we have a Great Plague--the virus of Islamism--and the great migrations--the continent-wide version of 'white flight' already under way in Holland, as the beleaguered Dutch leave their native land for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Now, as then, we must all bow before the 'edict of toleration'--as laws and customs are rearranged to abase themselves before the gods of boundless multicultural tolerance."A classic case of this abasement is detailed in the recently added introduction, "Soon to be Banned in Canada." When excerpts from the book were published by the news magazine Maclean's, the Canadian Islamic Congress filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The Muslim group objected to the "flagrant Islamophobia" contained in the book.The Canadian Human Rights Commission has established itself as an extra-judicial star chamber for the enforcement of politically-correct orthodoxy. These little Soviet-style kangaroo courts, staffed by bureaucrats and specializing in "hate speech," have cast serious doubt over the future of Canadian democracy.Discussing the complaint over his "flagrant Islamophobia," and the ensuing witch hunt, Steyn remarks:"The head of the Canadian Islamic Congress is a man called Mohamed Elmasry. In a TV interview in 2004, Dr. Elmasry said it was legitimate to kill any Israeli civilian, male or female, over the age of eighteen. He is, thus, an objective supporter of terrorism. Yet he's accusing me of 'hate speech,' and is apparently the new poster boy for liberal progressive 'human rights' in Canada."And, in a nutshell, that paradox is what this book is about: What happens when a Western world so in thrall to platitudes about boundless 'tolerance' allows the forces of intolerance to carve it out from the inside? In seeking to stifle the arguments of America Alone, the Canadian Islamic Congress is making my point more eloquently than I ever could--that a significant strain of Islam is incompatible with the rough and tumble of a free society."Food for thought.
Mark Steyn isn't a great writer, in fact his book, America Alone isn't a very good book. I think he's way better as a radio commentator and columnist. So this effort seems a bit scattershot for me. But I think it's just the kind of book that someone like me needs to have read. It gives me a handful of double-ought shotgun shells of red hot facts to spew. By 'someone like me' I mean someone with a reason to defend America in the face of all the gibberish that passes as constructive dissent.The other day, I was talking with some friends about global warming. 'Jack Jones', is Boy's best friend's dad. We're kind of 'best neighbors'. Jack's an investment adviser with a rather serious portfolio of clients. So he gets paid to make sense of global events. He reminded me that there's some interesting things going on in the commodities markets with corn. I told him that I look to the supermarket shelves: when we're down to just 3 kinds of corn flakes, then I worry. He agreed. More likely the price will go to 7 bucks a box first. On global warming, he reminded me of something we can all try at home. Put ice cubes in a glass, then fill it with water. When the ice melts, the level of the water goes down, not up. So let's not worry about flooding Manhattan.Mark Steyn has given us a signal to worry about and it is the fall of Europe. If there's anything completely coherent in 'America Alone' it is that it paints a bleak picture for the EU's undeclared war against Islamism. The EU, according to Steyn, is outsourcing its democracy to Muslim youth. So what we Americans need to watch, instead of corn flakes and coastlines, are what concessions EU ministers will do in the face of its losing demographic battle against Muslim youth and how bold the radical Islamists will be in that rising tide. Here are some buckshot for you, the most popular name for male babies in Amsterdam is Muhammed.The current talking point on Right Radio these days is whether or not Liberals and Democrats have any idea of the size of the Islamic foe. The answer is no, of course not. The correct estimate is that it may or may not matter because nobody, it seems, has any strategy to help 'Moderate Islam' actually moderate the rest of Islam. But the syllogism works something like this:Who is the enemy? Jihadis?Where do they get support? IslamistsWho are the Islamists? People who want to live under sharia.Where do Islamists get support? From all sorts of Muslims.There are dots to connect for sure. Let the FBI do that. But the fact of the matter is that Jihadis only get support from Muslim communities, and Muslim communities in the West are working their way towards and through all sorts of concessions via a multicultural imperative of Western liberals. The only chance to have Jihadis are through politically active Muslim population bases. And these bases are all over Europe.Steyn isn't long on solutions. He tends to offer a rather dim outlook. His gripes are classically conservative but he doesn't do so much to rally the troops. He speaks in the voice of someone who thinks it should be obvious that what we have in the West is worth preserving, so he doesn't go into all that. In that regard he's not got a popular book. He's not likely to win any converts to his vision through any cheerleading, however he does show a hundred different examples of what we generally understand in the conservative movement. That's good enough.What Steyn gives me is a reason to be a bit more strenuous in my questioning of our ethics with regard to the tolerance of Islam. I've never bought into the 'Clash of Civilizations' theory, primarily because I don't regard Islamists as particularly civilized, nor do I give much credit to the Iraqi militants in their free for all. So I am more likely to ask whether or not the momentum in political Islam is pro- or anti-Western and who arises to block or accommodate cultural concessions. I think that my experience with emergent American populations will be instructive in this, especially since I believe I see clearly through the hokum of multicultural politics. I know a self-hating, self-destructive white liberal when I see one, and I know exactly how loud minority activists walk all over them. And I see their mutual disinvestment in patriotic faith work its retarded miracles. So I'm watching, and guess what? I'm not beyond consideration of loyalty oaths.I have a great deal of confidence that American prejudices against Europeans can and will be easily awakened from slumber if we see more of the sort of sissyfied crumbling that Spain demonstrated in the wake of the Madrid bombings. And I now expect to see more of that sort of event in the near future. What 'America Alone' does is prepare me to understand how it was that the British allowed their sailors and marines to be captured, Europeans truly are far along the road towards capitulation. They're much worse than we are. We at least still have red states, whereas all of the EU has seemed to have gone baby soft blue.Americans on the whole will recognize what's up. Half of us do already. It's not close to being too late.
Do You like book America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It (2006)?
I can't express my happiness about being finished! Hallelujah!The intolerance and Islam bashing in this book soured any points where I would have agreed with him and made this a noxious read I couldn't wait to get through. Seriously, the fact that any educated person propagates such crap flabbergasts me.I agree with maybe 1% of the notions in this book and those relate to strengthening patriotism in Canada so that home grown people aren't so easily indoctrinated by fundamentalists.I'm hoping to write a real review on this in a bit. A book like this requires a real analysis, I think.
—Elisa
Is the Welfare State leading us down the road to extinction? You bet, says Mark Stein and then he proceeds to make such a good case for that and the resulting Islamicization of Europe that he has been hauled before the Ontario Human Rights Commission on a charge of anti-PC heresy. This is a chilling and wonderfully written book, filled with Steyn's humorous barbs, directed against the timorous PC functionaries of the sort who would turn around every commode in the UK prison system so that Muslim convicts wont have to face Mecca while they take a crap (and also have taken the Union Jack down because it contains the Cross of St George, a foe of Islam). He serves up the crushing demographic numbers of European decline with a soupcon of wit and warns of the end to come if we continue on the present course. A must read.
—Phil
Mark Steyn hits a home run. He will definitely dent the minds of pacifists with this new book. His writing is literally laugh out funny and hard hitting at the same time. Everything he points out in the book is factually accurate. Islamofascism is 'THE GREATEST' threat facing the free democratic society in this post 9/11 world. Mark packs this book with factual examples and lays the regressive trends that Europe and Canada are following. Read it now and I promise you'll enjoy it, even if you disagree with him!
—Jacob
