I was out hiking on the Big
Dry Creek Trail this week with Mark Steyn. Actually, I was
listening to his newest book, After America: Get Ready for Armaggedon.
Steyn is a Canadian-born
writer, conservative political commentator, cultural critic, and resident of
New Hampshire who has written five books including the 2008 bestseller, America
Alone: The End of the World as We Know It in which he predicted
the collapse of Europe. Now, he believes America has caught up with
Europe on the great rush to self-destruction. So, he has written After
America as a scary sequel.
With his trademark wit,
Steyn delivers the depressing news with raw and unblinking honesty.
What makes him the most entertaining, yet profound, columnist on the
planet. In his
previous book, America Alone, he promoted America
as the last hope for freedom and civil society while showing how Europe and the
rest of the world was falling apart. With After America, Steyn
claims that America too is bound to the same fate.
Steyn writes in a humorous,
provocative and entertaining manner. I agree with his opinions that America is
bankrupt, our federal government is too big and too inefficiency; and American
morality is declining.
Steyn presents a strong case that America
has screwed up and is on the same basic path followed by Rome, Athens, and
Great Britain.
He presents an alarming and
frighteningly convincing prophecy of where we’re headed. He says that
America is embracing the same doomed path as the failed European economies, and
all this decline and decay is not just about economics or politics. Steyn
emphasizes that the root problem here is a decline in faith and a decay of
values. He states, "Europe's economic crisis is a mere symptom of
its existential crisis. What is life for? What gives it meaning?
Post-Christian, post-nationalist, post-modern Europe has no answer to that
question, and so it has 30-year-old students and 50-year-old retirees, and
wonders why the small band of workers in between them can't make the math add
up." He says the choice is stark, and that we either listen to him
and act on his recommendations or face economic and cultural armageddon.
Alarmingly, he says that
America’s decline won’t be gradual and won’t be like “an aging Europe sipping
espresso at a café until extinction (and the odd Greek or Islamist riot). “ No,
America’s decline will be a wrenching affair marked by violence. We can
expect riots in the streets and worse.
Steyn claims that America has
gone from a nation of producers to a nation of borrowers, as he puts it,
"from a nation of aircraft carriers to a nation of debt
carriers." We have too many takers and not enough makers.
Steyn explains that American
federalism worked to preserve liberty by distributing power down toward municipalities
and individuals. When something goes wrong, a typical pre-safety net American
would simply solve the problem himself or at the lowest possible level. Today,
we behave like Europeans and demand to know what the government is going to do
about it. The so-called progressive desire for utopia has been destroying
liberty one step at a time through an unceasing centralization of power that
reduces and eventually eliminates non-government alternatives.
He
lays out all the indications of America’s decline. He begins by looking at the
teetering American economy and its crippling burden of debt, and he describes
how our reckless spending patterns are a recipe for national suicide. As he
says, "There's nothing virtuous about caring, compassionate progressives'
demonstrating how caring and compassionate and progressive they are by spending
money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born."
Steyn frequently jabs at
Obama's "Audacity of Hope," and refers to "The Stupidity of
Broke." But he doesn’t lay all the blame on Obama. He
chastises both major parties because neither has shown restraint on
spending. He also notes that "Barack Obama is a symptom rather than
the problem." If the president does not value liberty and limited
government, this is equally true of the citizens who elected him. He says
that the Obama Administration is only a manifestation of a much larger flaw:
American citizens no longer value those things which made America so great.
Steyn’s book is a critique of the soft socialism typified by Great Britain and Greece and that is now spreading throughout America. Since FDR at least, the US has been shedding its Jeffersonian principles for a Big Government patterned on those of Europe. This trend has only accelerated as of late, not only under Obama, but also under Bush, the "compassionate conservative" who gave the American people Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind.
Steyn’s book is a critique of the soft socialism typified by Great Britain and Greece and that is now spreading throughout America. Since FDR at least, the US has been shedding its Jeffersonian principles for a Big Government patterned on those of Europe. This trend has only accelerated as of late, not only under Obama, but also under Bush, the "compassionate conservative" who gave the American people Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind.
Steyn says that Greece and
Great Britain are both doomed, and for essentially the same reasons. Government
debt is overwhelming demographic reality. Their citizens have also lost the
will to perpetuate their civilizations. Both have weak productive sectors and
large parasitic class takers. According to Steyn, the real problem is
America has followed Europe into the Big Government Syndrome. He says
that history tells us this is unsustainable. It simply leads to the loss of
liberty, the collapse of the economy, and social disintegration. What we see
happening in England and Europe today is a textbook example of this.
He points out how America has been following one stupid idea after another from Europe. He shows that government health care, for example, is not really about health care but more about growing government control. He says that the "governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent leftist progressive political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make small government all but impossible ever again.
He points out how America has been following one stupid idea after another from Europe. He shows that government health care, for example, is not really about health care but more about growing government control. He says that the "governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent leftist progressive political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make small government all but impossible ever again.
Steyn then goes on to raise
concerns with the unredeemable deficit and debt, the threat of uncontrolled
illegal immigration, the rise of China as a military and economic power and the
challenge of a growing Islamic supremacist movement that “threatens free
institutions and civilization itself." He paints a very depressing
picture as he delivers diatribes on over regulation and over taxation with
well-sourced references. And don't get him started on government
mismanagement and ineptitude. "In one year (2009), Medicare handed out $98
billion in improper or erroneous payments.”
He foresees the
extinguishing of liberty, the virtual enslavement of the citizenry, and the
utter waste of human resources caused by the disastorous American educational
system. He also foresees demographic upheaval: the falling birthrate of native
Americans and the flood of illegal aliens who are hostile or indifferent to the
American history and culture. He calls out multiculturalism as a disease
that destroys our common values and heritage just as it has done in Europe with
its Muslim enclaves in many British and French cities.
Steyn also laments what he
sees as the loss of strong Judeo-Christian values and the rise of Relativism
that he says will be America’s undoing. As Steyn
puts it, "the story of the last forty years is the mainstreaming of rock
-star morality," not to mention the wreckage of traditional
marriage. In the US over 40% of our children are illegitimate.
"Entire new categories of crime have arisen in the wake of familial
collapse, like the legions of daughters abused by their mom's latest live-in
boyfriend."
I was intrigued by a theme
Steyn used in reference to H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine.
In that novel, the Time Traveler sees people living increasingly comfortable
lives yet disconnected from the world that sustains their comforts.
Eventually the Time Traveler discovers the human race evolves into two
separate species - the Eloi, a race of child-like adults living in an
above-ground paradise, and the Morlocks - an underground working-class race of
troglodytes. Steyn warned that we Americans are fast becoming the Eloi
with our infantile interests, creature comforts, and lack of fortitude.
The Morlocks who hate America will be glad to see us fail and be glad to devour
what remains after America.
He describes how Europeans and the American left imagined they could wrench
money from the wealthy, or just print money if they had to, and provide endless
nanny state happiness. He criticizes government promises and citizens
beliefs in free medical care, long vacations, assured jobs with little hard
work, bliss and free lunches for all. Steyn focuses on what went wrong in Europe where the
socialist paradise
worked for a while when there were between seven to ten young adults being
taxed for each senior citizen. Then a funny thing happened. The Europeans
stopped reproducing. It was as if all of Europe woke up one day having decided
to commit suicide. In Germany, for example, one out of every three women is childless.
And the women who do have a child frequently only have only one.
To avoid becoming
like Europe, Steyn believes that drastic course correction must by made in
America by 2015. He
provides sound policy recommendations for reclaiming the principles of the
American ideal given to us by the nation's founders and the faith in America
demonstrated by previous generations. Hhe
offers his own prescription for winning America back from the feckless and
arrogant federal government that has done its level best to suffocate the
world’s last best hope in a miasma of debt, decay, and debility.
Steyn writes that the one
hope that America has is that unlike Europe, where citizens are rioting because
their state subsidized fantasy world is being reduced, Americans are beginning
to see the handwriting on the wall. Steyn mentions movements such as the
Tea Party groups in various states that have risen up demanding that the
government stop spending and that the citizenry be left alone. Hopefully
Americans will start saying enough is enough, and the move to whittle down Big
Brother can begin in earnest. But it will be a struggle because bureaucrats and
central planners will resist this every step of the way.
Steyn also says that until
America and the West regain their Judeo-Christian foundations, the rush to
destruction seems all but certain. But
Steyn does offer some hope: "Americans face a choice; you can rediscover
the animating principles of the American idea - limited government, a
self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the
fullest - or you can join most of the rest of the western world in terminal
decline." He goes on to say, "We also need a new trust-busting
movement to bust the dominant trust of our time - the Big Government monopoly
that monopolizes more and more of life." He is somewhat optimistic
because he thinks Big Government types always go too far, "Statists
overreach. They did on climate change scare mongering, and the result is that
it's over. Hollywood buffoons will continue to lecture us from their
mega-mansions that we should toss out our washers and beat our clothes dry on
the rocks singing native chants down by the river, but only suckers are
listening to them."
Our walk on the trail came
to an end, and I told Steyn that he has written an important book, compelling
and at times frightening. I hope it will be widely read.
I said that I would encourage my friends to read this, and heed it as a
warning. So, I'm recommending this book to
everyone. You will not read a more thought provoking, more alarming, or
even wittier book all year than After
America.
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