America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (Hardcover)
by Mark Steyn
n this, his first major book, Mark Steyn--probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world--takes on the great poison of the twenty-first century: the anti-Americanism that fuels both Old Europe and radical Islam. America, Steyn argues, will have to stand alone. The world will be divided between America and the rest; and for our sake America had better win.
From the Inside Flap
Itâs the end of the world as we know itâ¦
Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are.
And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"âwhile Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesnât violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy.
If you think this canât happen, you havenât been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steynâthe most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking worldâshows to devastating effect in this, his first and eagerly awaited new book on American and global politics.
The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the Westâwedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivionâis looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization.
Europe, laments Steyn, is almost certainly a goner. The future, if the West has one, belongs to America aloneâwith maybe its cousins in brave Australia. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the worldâs last best hope.
Steyn argues that, contra the liberal cultural relativists, America should proclaim the obvious: we do have a better government, religion, and culture than our enemies, and we should spread Americaâs influence around the worldâfor our own sake as well as theirs.
Mark Steynâs America Alone is laugh-out-loud funnyâbut it will also change the way you look at the world. It is sure to be the most talked-about book of the year.
At least, that's how he signed my copy. I'd call Mark Steyn's essay the single best distillation of the challenge posed to the West by radical Islam that I have ever read.
Regular readers of Mr. Steyn will not be unfamiliar with his central points:
1) In the ongoing conflict between the West and Islam, both the demographics and the will to power favor the Islamists. That a country like Spain, with a birth rate of 1.15 children per adult women, will extinguish itself in a few generations, while immigrants from countries such as Pakistan (birth rate 4.53) will move in to fill the vacuum.
2) That as an aggressive, unassimilated minority edges closer to a majority (as in France, with an estimated 30% Muslim population in the under 20 age group), the character of the democratic institutions will become more closely aligned with Islamic law and culture.
3) That the post-Christian welfare state is largely to blame for the pessimism and failures of will demonstrated by Europe.
4) That America represents the primary exception to this trend, if only by degree, and that only a concerted effort to save our society stands a chance of reversing these trends.
That's a reasonable précis of Steyn's book, and he is certainly not unique in either his diagnosis or his prescription for the West. What sets this apart is his writing. The argument is made in a way that is the most engrossing and entertaining presentation of these ideas I've ever read. Steyn, as part of his superhuman writing regimen, is the obituarist for The Atlantic Monthly, and he puts that talent on display. This is not just a description of a set of demographic realities, but a loving, if premature (he hopes), obituary to a dying great culture. It's Steyn's ability to blend humor with the terminal diagnosis that sets him apart.
Take the following, from letting the book fall open at random (pages 60-61), where Steyn weaves together these seemingly disparate ideas: a photo of Lincoln with his future assassin in near proximity, the globalization at the root of a bird flu scare ("Any minute now there would be toxic cockatoos over the white cliffs of Dover, and the East End would be reeling under a blitzkrieg of sneezing parakeets"), the Black Death in Europe in the 1340s, the exportation of radical Islam from the Bedouin to the West, and finally a quote for Dean Martin's old nightclub act. I can't even describe it adequately; Steyn actually pulls it off, brilliantly.
Finally, I'd like to try to approach the book from the opposite direction. Invariably, political book reviews become contentious. It may be apparent that I came to this book predisposed to agree with the thesis, and I would not argue. That said, I think this is one of the rare political books that could be read and enjoyed regardless of personal politics. Dare I say it, but Steyn might even change some minds. Between his inventive turns of phrase, his references to pop culture and classic Americana, and his interesting digressions on topics as diverse as the heyday of French television and European history in the Middle Ages, Steyn offers something for everyone. And that's appropriate. Unlike many political books, this does not seem written to say "I'm right and you're wrong", but rather "we're all in this together".
---
Most are by now aware of the demographic implosion stalking the West. Fewer have given it the consideration that it deserves. Patrick Buchanan's recent "State of Emergency" is must reading on the topic and with his new book, "America Alone" Steyn enters the pantheon of insightful writers addressing the problem of demographic atrophy plaguing the West. Steyn's analysis goes far beyond a simple statement of the harrowing fertility rates in Western nations. As is his usual wont, Steyn brings to the table an important, unique and fresh perspective intermingled with his usual refreshing wit.
According to Steyn, this book is about "the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world, including the United States, Canada and beyond. The key factors are: Demographic decline; The unsustainability of the advanced Western social-democratic state; and Civilization exhaustion."
Steyn pokes fun at the leftist doomsayers' preoccupation with global warming and resource exhaustion, for which there is little or no hard evidence, in favor of the very real and unequivocably established collapse of Western fertility rates. As Steyn points out, "A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in." And guess who those people are who ARE reproducing? Why the Muslims of course.
The Western world has become enervated and overcome by civilizational ennui which should come as no surprise since the "state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. In the American context, the federal deficit isn't the problem; it's the government programs that cause the deficit. These programs would be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They corrode the citizen's sense of self reliance to a potentially fatal degree. Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it."
Europe has all but succumbed to the dull opiate of multiculturalism. Caught between the rock of collapsing fertility rates and the hard place of their increasing dependence on a government which has annexed most of the core functions of adulthood, Europeans cannot muster either the will or the babies to resist the inexorable collapse of their civilization. Their plight is compounded by the fact that Islam is providing the babies and the will to fill that vacuum. Europe is for all practical purposes lost.
The central thesis of this book is that demography IS destiny. For without favorable demographics a civilization cannot long survive. And with favorable demographics, even the crude, brutish and largely unproductive can prevail. What single factor led to the civilizational dominance of England in the 1820s? A bursting population brought about by the conquest of infant mortality allowing England to send her sons and daughters to populate America, Australia, New Zealand and countless other outposts as well as civilize many many others. All of mankind owes a debt of gratitude to providence that so benign and beneficial a civilization as that of 19th century Britain first achieved demographic critical mass. Today we face a much more pernicious civilization wielding the demographic sword. That would be the sword of the prophet.
There are two points that Steyn makes in "America Alone" that I take issue with. He says we have one of three options in dealing with Isalm: Surrender; Reform Islam; or Destroy Islam. Steyn says that we must work to reform Islam since the other two options are unthinkable. I believe there is a fourth option: Defeat, contain and isolate Islam. Islam cannot be reformed as history has taught us. Islam is a vicious circle of violence, mayhem and destruction called jihad. Attempts to alter this vicious circle in any way is short circuited by the Koran which asserts that any deviation from the its teachings is punishable by death. This is not a religion in any legitimate sense, but rather a death cult combined with a political ideology. It can be thought of more appropriately as the perfection of the Nazi creed. Could we have reformed Nazism?
Steyn says that we Americans have failed to export our magnificent American political innovation of limited republican constitutional government which theoretically reins in the appetites of the mob. And while I generally agree with this sentiment I think it is important to point out that Americans themselves no longer share a common civilizational vision nor accept the founding tenets of our republic. Steyn believes that to consider an exit strategy in Iraq is tantamount to a shirking our civilizational responsibilities and he points to the British who managed to successfully export their form of government to the world to the benefit of mankind. But, we live in different times, and as I pointed out above, Islam cannot be reformed. Attempts to do so are a foolhardy waste of time.
So, we are left with isolation, containment and the defeat of Islam as a challenge to our way of life. This will require in itself considerable will. And while we do not currently have the will to defeat Islamic supremacism and their desire for worldwide hegemoney that will come. Hopefully sooner rather than later for the longer we wait the further the scales will be tipped in Islam's favor.
This is an exceptional and important book that should be read by anyone interested in the impending civilizational collapse and what, if anything, that can be done to reverse the trend. It is already too late for Western Europe. Hopefully America, civilization's last great hope, can stave off the rot of leftism and multiculturalism.
by Mark Steyn
n this, his first major book, Mark Steyn--probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world--takes on the great poison of the twenty-first century: the anti-Americanism that fuels both Old Europe and radical Islam. America, Steyn argues, will have to stand alone. The world will be divided between America and the rest; and for our sake America had better win.
From the Inside Flap
Itâs the end of the world as we know itâ¦
Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are.
And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"âwhile Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesnât violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy.
If you think this canât happen, you havenât been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steynâthe most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking worldâshows to devastating effect in this, his first and eagerly awaited new book on American and global politics.
The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the Westâwedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivionâis looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization.
Europe, laments Steyn, is almost certainly a goner. The future, if the West has one, belongs to America aloneâwith maybe its cousins in brave Australia. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the worldâs last best hope.
Steyn argues that, contra the liberal cultural relativists, America should proclaim the obvious: we do have a better government, religion, and culture than our enemies, and we should spread Americaâs influence around the worldâfor our own sake as well as theirs.
Mark Steynâs America Alone is laugh-out-loud funnyâbut it will also change the way you look at the world. It is sure to be the most talked-about book of the year.
At least, that's how he signed my copy. I'd call Mark Steyn's essay the single best distillation of the challenge posed to the West by radical Islam that I have ever read.
Regular readers of Mr. Steyn will not be unfamiliar with his central points:
1) In the ongoing conflict between the West and Islam, both the demographics and the will to power favor the Islamists. That a country like Spain, with a birth rate of 1.15 children per adult women, will extinguish itself in a few generations, while immigrants from countries such as Pakistan (birth rate 4.53) will move in to fill the vacuum.
2) That as an aggressive, unassimilated minority edges closer to a majority (as in France, with an estimated 30% Muslim population in the under 20 age group), the character of the democratic institutions will become more closely aligned with Islamic law and culture.
3) That the post-Christian welfare state is largely to blame for the pessimism and failures of will demonstrated by Europe.
4) That America represents the primary exception to this trend, if only by degree, and that only a concerted effort to save our society stands a chance of reversing these trends.
That's a reasonable précis of Steyn's book, and he is certainly not unique in either his diagnosis or his prescription for the West. What sets this apart is his writing. The argument is made in a way that is the most engrossing and entertaining presentation of these ideas I've ever read. Steyn, as part of his superhuman writing regimen, is the obituarist for The Atlantic Monthly, and he puts that talent on display. This is not just a description of a set of demographic realities, but a loving, if premature (he hopes), obituary to a dying great culture. It's Steyn's ability to blend humor with the terminal diagnosis that sets him apart.
Take the following, from letting the book fall open at random (pages 60-61), where Steyn weaves together these seemingly disparate ideas: a photo of Lincoln with his future assassin in near proximity, the globalization at the root of a bird flu scare ("Any minute now there would be toxic cockatoos over the white cliffs of Dover, and the East End would be reeling under a blitzkrieg of sneezing parakeets"), the Black Death in Europe in the 1340s, the exportation of radical Islam from the Bedouin to the West, and finally a quote for Dean Martin's old nightclub act. I can't even describe it adequately; Steyn actually pulls it off, brilliantly.
Finally, I'd like to try to approach the book from the opposite direction. Invariably, political book reviews become contentious. It may be apparent that I came to this book predisposed to agree with the thesis, and I would not argue. That said, I think this is one of the rare political books that could be read and enjoyed regardless of personal politics. Dare I say it, but Steyn might even change some minds. Between his inventive turns of phrase, his references to pop culture and classic Americana, and his interesting digressions on topics as diverse as the heyday of French television and European history in the Middle Ages, Steyn offers something for everyone. And that's appropriate. Unlike many political books, this does not seem written to say "I'm right and you're wrong", but rather "we're all in this together".
---
Most are by now aware of the demographic implosion stalking the West. Fewer have given it the consideration that it deserves. Patrick Buchanan's recent "State of Emergency" is must reading on the topic and with his new book, "America Alone" Steyn enters the pantheon of insightful writers addressing the problem of demographic atrophy plaguing the West. Steyn's analysis goes far beyond a simple statement of the harrowing fertility rates in Western nations. As is his usual wont, Steyn brings to the table an important, unique and fresh perspective intermingled with his usual refreshing wit.
According to Steyn, this book is about "the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world, including the United States, Canada and beyond. The key factors are: Demographic decline; The unsustainability of the advanced Western social-democratic state; and Civilization exhaustion."
Steyn pokes fun at the leftist doomsayers' preoccupation with global warming and resource exhaustion, for which there is little or no hard evidence, in favor of the very real and unequivocably established collapse of Western fertility rates. As Steyn points out, "A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in." And guess who those people are who ARE reproducing? Why the Muslims of course.
The Western world has become enervated and overcome by civilizational ennui which should come as no surprise since the "state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. In the American context, the federal deficit isn't the problem; it's the government programs that cause the deficit. These programs would be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They corrode the citizen's sense of self reliance to a potentially fatal degree. Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it."
Europe has all but succumbed to the dull opiate of multiculturalism. Caught between the rock of collapsing fertility rates and the hard place of their increasing dependence on a government which has annexed most of the core functions of adulthood, Europeans cannot muster either the will or the babies to resist the inexorable collapse of their civilization. Their plight is compounded by the fact that Islam is providing the babies and the will to fill that vacuum. Europe is for all practical purposes lost.
The central thesis of this book is that demography IS destiny. For without favorable demographics a civilization cannot long survive. And with favorable demographics, even the crude, brutish and largely unproductive can prevail. What single factor led to the civilizational dominance of England in the 1820s? A bursting population brought about by the conquest of infant mortality allowing England to send her sons and daughters to populate America, Australia, New Zealand and countless other outposts as well as civilize many many others. All of mankind owes a debt of gratitude to providence that so benign and beneficial a civilization as that of 19th century Britain first achieved demographic critical mass. Today we face a much more pernicious civilization wielding the demographic sword. That would be the sword of the prophet.
There are two points that Steyn makes in "America Alone" that I take issue with. He says we have one of three options in dealing with Isalm: Surrender; Reform Islam; or Destroy Islam. Steyn says that we must work to reform Islam since the other two options are unthinkable. I believe there is a fourth option: Defeat, contain and isolate Islam. Islam cannot be reformed as history has taught us. Islam is a vicious circle of violence, mayhem and destruction called jihad. Attempts to alter this vicious circle in any way is short circuited by the Koran which asserts that any deviation from the its teachings is punishable by death. This is not a religion in any legitimate sense, but rather a death cult combined with a political ideology. It can be thought of more appropriately as the perfection of the Nazi creed. Could we have reformed Nazism?
Steyn says that we Americans have failed to export our magnificent American political innovation of limited republican constitutional government which theoretically reins in the appetites of the mob. And while I generally agree with this sentiment I think it is important to point out that Americans themselves no longer share a common civilizational vision nor accept the founding tenets of our republic. Steyn believes that to consider an exit strategy in Iraq is tantamount to a shirking our civilizational responsibilities and he points to the British who managed to successfully export their form of government to the world to the benefit of mankind. But, we live in different times, and as I pointed out above, Islam cannot be reformed. Attempts to do so are a foolhardy waste of time.
So, we are left with isolation, containment and the defeat of Islam as a challenge to our way of life. This will require in itself considerable will. And while we do not currently have the will to defeat Islamic supremacism and their desire for worldwide hegemoney that will come. Hopefully sooner rather than later for the longer we wait the further the scales will be tipped in Islam's favor.
This is an exceptional and important book that should be read by anyone interested in the impending civilizational collapse and what, if anything, that can be done to reverse the trend. It is already too late for Western Europe. Hopefully America, civilization's last great hope, can stave off the rot of leftism and multiculturalism.