Customer Reviews

After America: Get Ready for Armageddon

5 star:		(84)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Steyn takes aim at the people who have driven the US to this economic Armageddon with his usual razor wit. The man seems incapable of writing a dull sentence.

The cover of Steyn's book shows a dead Uncle Sam, flat on his back and with a toe tag. Steyn is not warning about a coming American decline. "We're already in it" he announces with gloomy relish, "What comes next is the fall--fast, sudden, off the cliff" (p 13).

And who is at the helm as this wreck is taking place, it's ... wince...Obama. Obama, who promised us hope and change and gave us that wild, draconian suggestion--in his Debt Commission--to raise "the age of Social Security eligibility to sixty-nine...By the year 2075" (p 8).

Gee. Imagine the courage it took to suggest that dramatic change.

To think that Michael Beschloss said about Obama the day after his election, "He's probably the smartest guy ever to become president" (p 55). I wouldn't be surprised to hear Beschloss has retired to France under an assumed name.

The Barackracy, as Steyn puts it, is going to lead us as far and as fast as they can away from the American Dream. In twenty years like this Steyn predicts we'll be "living the American Nightmare, with large tracts of the country reduced to the favelas of Latin American, the rich fleeing for Bermuda....and the rest trapped" (p 22).

Europe and all 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. Free medical care. Long vacations. Assured jobs with little hard work. Bliss and free lunches for all.

And it even worked for a while in Europe, 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.

So all too soon, across Europe there will be two young adults supporting every retired senior citizen.

Oh, and did I mention the debt the two young adults will also have to pay off due to the ever profligate welfare state?

Furthermore, Steyn points out how uncontrollable medical costs have been even for the most strictly controlled economies. In Canada the health budget "increased from nearly 35 percent...in 1999 to 46 percent today. In Ontario...it is set to reach 80 percent by 2030" (p 228).

Somehow I doubt those` two young adults in Ontario will be able to afford many vacations.

All this perfect storm of economic bad news is coming at the worst time possible, given our cultural state.

As Steyn puts it, "the story of the last forty years is the mainstreaming of rock -star morality" (p 232), 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" (p 234).

What will happen to all the children raised in fragmented families if the economy really collapses?

This is an important book, compelling and at times frightening. I hope it will be widely read.

It is eerily prophetic that Steyn's book was released August 8th, 2011, the first business day after Standard and Poor downgraded America from a AAA credit rating. Sadly, per Steyn, it is only the first, and mildest, of the blows America is to receive in the near future. The outcome will likely not be pretty.

Still, if you must cross the River Styx, it is at least enjoyable to have Steyn as your ferryman. With his trademark wit, he manages to leaven the bad news. It makes for an enjoyable book, if not an inviting future.

If you have been reading or listening to Steyn, his complaints are not new. The United States has been developing an ennervating, over-regulated, freedom -stifling, and ultimately unsustainable welfare state for generations, and that process accelerated under Pelosi's Congress and Obama's Presidency. It has long been said that things that can't go on forever, won't. Well, the U.S. economy is leaving the town of Can't in the rearview mirror as it accelerates headlong into to the uncharted land of Won't.

However, just because it is uncharted, don't think that it can't be predicted, and Steyn manages to do this as well. The world after America will be a Hobbesian thing, with life that is "nasty, brutish, and short". And sadly, there probably won't be too many Steyn's around to lighten the mood. The last time Steyn broached the decline of the West, in America Alone, he was dragged before the Canadian Thought Crimes Tribunal (or whatever they called it) for criticizing Islam. Don't imagine that satire will flourish After America.

For all that, though, I believe Steyn wants desperately to be wrong (as I pray he is). It is possible to view this as a visit from America's Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (except a talkative ghost, who's good with the one liner). Read this, get your friends to read this, and heed it as a warning. It doesn't _have_ to end this way.

Finally, from Robert Heinlein, an appropriate quote:
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as `bad luck'."

Look for a run of "bad luck" in the future, if we don't heed the warning.

Canadian-born Mark Steyn has long been one of the top conservative wits and most acerbic critics of modern liberalism. One of my favorite lines from the immigration debate is his: "When in Rome, do as the Visigoths do." Up through his last book, America Alone, he has promoted the U.S. 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.

His argument is straightforward, and familiar to anyone paying attention to the debt crisis--he 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." And he brings this fact into stark perspective--China can and will have the power to overtake America in all economic and military capacities. This is not a far-fetched prospect since China owns so much of our debt. Steyn notes that our debt service alone could fun China's military--even if China quadrupled its military budget.

He sums up the situation with one great Steynism after another. "When government spends on the scale Washington's got used to, that's not a spending crisis, it's a moral one." "Globaloney." "Mad Max on the New Jersey Turnpike?" "From federally regulated bake sales to Armageddon--in nothing flat." and, my favorite, "We've spent too much of tomorrow today--to the point where we've run out of tomorrow."

Critics will certainly balk at the author's unabashed biases (he constantly jabs at Obama's "Audacity of Hope," for instance, "The Stupidity of Broke."). But he can't be convicted--he chastises both major parties because neither has shown restraint on spending. A more powerful critique would point out that Steyn makes no real effort to analyze the reasons for government intervention, which, though their consequences are clearly paralyzing, began with valid concerns. For a fuller examination of the evolution of Western political economy, I would recommend Juggernaut: Why the System Crushes the Only People Who Can Save It.

Meanwhile, this book provides exactly what we need in a time when we need it most--a kick in the head. And there's no writer in the world that provides a wittier, punchier kick than this. Your call America!

In November of 2010, bestselling author and radio personality Mark Steyn gave a speech in London, Ontario, Canada entitled "Head for the Hills: Why everything in your world is doomed." While comical, Steyn put forth a very negative outlook for the West that addressed a lot of the major demographic challenges facing Western nations.

Steyn, is his new book After America: Get ready for Armageddon (Regnery Publishing) the much anticipated sequel to America Alone: The End of the world as we know it, focuses almost exclusively on the United States. The country that once shone as the beacon of wealth and freedom to the world lost its way, and Steyn doesn't pretend that patriotism and belief in American exceptionalism alone can fix the problems plaguing the nation.

At one point in After America Steyn recounts a speech from Dennis Prager in which Prager dispelled myths that America's biggest threat was Barack Obama. Prager said that if Obama were to drop dead, nothing would change. Rather, the threat was that "we have not passed on what it means to be American to this generation."

That's what Steyn sets out to change in his newest book.

Mark Steyn brings to light the fact that the 111th Congress (2009-2010) spent more than Congresses 1-100 (1789-2009)...combined, that in just a few years, the U.S. will be spending more money on debt service than on its military, and the money spent on interest payments will be enough to fund the entire Chinese military, and many other shocking facts, accompanied by an in depth analysis of why people need to care.

Drawing from some of the greatest thinkers of the past and present in his book, Steyn brings home lessons that people should have learned through history, particularly the recent history of Europe's economic and cultural crash, as well as many anecdotes and chapters in ancient history. Most shocking was Steyn's use of classic novels to illustrate his points. The shock comes not from an author using fiction to make his case for the decline of America, but that what's happening in the present day is so unprecedented, plot lines previously thought of as bizarre fantasy have become reality.

Make no mistake: in the author's eyes, the United States is not facing a decline -- the decline is already happening, and has been since mid century. What's next for America is a fall, a plummet, and the result is not pretty.

In addressing how the U.S. got to this point, Steyn seems to suggest that over-education (the word "education" requires a very loose interpretation when discussing North American universities) and ever-increasing focus on feelings over pragmatism is one of the primary catalysts for the disaster that lies ahead. The average American is twice as old when they finish school as they were in 1940, and that was the generation that won a war and created more innovation for the United States than any generation prior.

Steyn's After America is more than a summary of current events; it's a textbook for common sense that every patriot needs.

If you like superb writing, and care about your future, treat yourself to Mark Steyn's latest masterpiece, After America. In it he explains how the world's mightiest national organism, weakened by a heavy parasite load, could quickly succumb to self-inflicted injuries and infection. These governmental and societal maladies include a suffocating regulatory environment, wasteful spending, unsustainable entitlements, and the seeming inability to make significant course changes in the face of impending disaster. The US has long been a powerful force for good in the world. However, if we don't change our ways soon there will be an "aftermath," and it will have a far darker character.
Starting to feel a little uneasy? Well, take solace in knowing that Mr. Steyn is on our side. He happens to like his Western cultural heritage and would like to keep it. And unlike the passive masses inclined to avoid unpleasantness and ignore danger, he's a fighter who goes directly at the enemy. With his incisive, straightforward style, he smacks us "up side the head" with our own vulnerability. With his wry observations of our increasingly invasive government and nonsensical political class, he mixes in jabs of humor. The combined stimuli will force you to pull your head out of the sand. Your improved pose, and his informative prose, will make you better able to fight for the sweet but precarious life you presently enjoy.

Regency Publishing makes a pretty penny putting out books written by conservatives which are, judging from the paucity of substantive negative reviews, read almost entirely by the choir. Although the appetite for books of this type appears to be significant, their corresponding value tends to be slight; one's progressive uncle is not going to see the light by reading After America. There's enough Obama bashing that an inattentive reader will be able to conclude that this is simply more political pap, meant to fire up the base for another meaningless election.

This is too bad, because Steyn's book is actually much more than that. Sure, it contains an obligatory plan to roll back Big Government, filled with the sorts of empty promises Republicans have reneged on for nearly a century. But Steyn's heart isn't in it: he tells us that this will prove "difficult", which is a little like explaining that Sisyphus has some hours of work to do.

After America does highlight the recklessness of the present administration, but it does so by noting that "Barack Obama is a symptom rather than the problem." If the president does not value life, liberty and limited government, this is equally true of the citizenry that elected him. A government that steals from generations unborn to finance its profligacy and views entrepreneurs as annoying hindrances to the business of government is problematic. Yet it is only a manifestation of a much larger flaw: its citizens no longer value those things which--Steyn argues--have made America so great.

The book is less a defense of things American than it is a critique of the soft socialism typified by Great Britain and Greece. Since FDR at least, the US has sought to shed its Jeffersonian trappings for a Big Government patterned on those of Europe. This trend has only accelerated as of late, not simply under Obama, but also under Bush, the "compassionate conservative" who gave the American people Medicare Part D and the TSA, which now gropes granny lest it be found guilty of profiling.

Greece and Great Britain are both doomed, and for essentially the same reasons. Government debt is overwhelming demographic reality. The people have lost the will to thanklessly perpetuate civilization. Both have middling productive sectors, upon which a large parasitic class feeds. And what feasts! In Greece, public sector employees retire at fifty-eight, whereupon they receive fourteen monthly pay checks until death. That was the plan, anyway. With the Greek birthrate at 1.3 children per couple, the math doesn't work. One can only run a Ponzi scheme if there are ever more suckers from whom to appropriate funds--as the soon to default Greeks are about to realize.

Great Britain may actually be in worse straits: "The United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers, the highest abortion rate; marriage is all but defunct, except for toffs, upscale gays and Muslims." And this was before the London riots. Technically this makes Steyn something of a prophet, as does his insistence that America will soon see its credit rating downgraded. The remarkable thing is not that Steyn can point out the obvious consequences of liberalism, but that so many remain oblivious even while its fruits are rotting before our eyes.

The paradox of progressivism is that the creation of a social safety net has rendered man ever more fearful of risk. Instead of starting a business or raising a family, corpulent westerners curl into the fetal position in the gentle hands of government. This is not the way of civilization: it is the path to barbarism, shortly coming to the post-American world near you.

A good case can be made that Mark Steyn and Ann Coulter are among our finest political pundits writing today. They certainly would be the wittiest. And perhaps most quotable. Indeed, they join the ranks of such notable quote-mines as Chesterton, Churchill and Orwell.

Both Coulter and Steyn have brand new books out this year. Mark Steyn's thesis, as in so much of his writing, is fairly straightforward: the West in general, and America in particular, are in steep decline, and unless something drastic occurs real soon to reverse this trend, we are all going to end up in the doghouse.

With heaps of documentation along the way, he shows what a precarious position America now finds itself in: "The existential questions for America loom not decades hence, but right now. It is not that we are on a luge ride to oblivion but that the prevailing political realities of the United States do not allow for any meaningful course correction. And, without meaningful course correction, America is doomed."

The indications are all there. He begins by looking at the teetering American economy and its crippling burden of debt, and how our reckless spending patterns are a recipe for national suicide. Says Steyn, "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."

The consequences of this economic meltdown will be severe not just for America but for the entire world: "Faced with the choice between unsustainable entitlements and maintaining armed forces of global reach, the United States, as Europe did, will abandon military capability and toss the savings into the great sucking maw of social spending."

The real problem is, America has followed Europe into the Big Government Syndrome. But 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.

America has been following one stupid idea after another from overseas. Take government health care for example, which as Steyn rightly notes, is not really about health care - it's about government. You see, the "governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-centre political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make small government all but impossible ever again."

Or take the modern obsession of the Democrats with diversity and rights. By the latter they do not mean negative rights which the US Constitution speaks of: "the right to be left alone by the government in respect of your speech, your guns, etc - but `rights' to stuff, granted by the government, distributed by the government, licensed by the government, rationed by the government, but paid for by you."

As to diversity, they mean "state ideology of stultifying homogeneity". Steyn offers plenty of examples of this as well. 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. A tenth of a trillion! Ha! Rounding error. Look for it in the line-items under `Miscellaneous'."

For 350 pages Steyn details the slow but steady descent of America and the West into oblivion. He is not the first to have done so, and will not be the last. But the clock is ticking, and the question remains, will we heed the warnings before it is too late?

He even paints a picture of what the world will look like after America. I must say, it doesn't look too good. If he is even half right in his forecasts, life will not really be worth living in a post-American world.

Of course at the end of the day all this decline and decay is not just about economics or politics. Steyn realises that the root problem here is a decline in faith and a decay of values. "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."

Until America and the West regain their Judeo-Christian foundations, the rush to destruction seems all but certain. So what is to be done in the meantime? Steyn only addresses this question toward the end of his volume. The way we get out of our spiritual and moral hole may be too difficult for most commentators to offer much specific help.

But Steyn does offer some general clues: "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."

Statism must be addressed: "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." But he is a bit optimistic, simply because of how the Bog Government types always go too far:

"Statists overreach. They did on `climate change' scaremongering, 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."

Hopefully Americans will start saying enough is enough, and the move to whittle down Big Brother can begin in earnest. But our elites, bureaucrats and planners will resist this every step of the way. Which explains why Steyn has already had to defend himself against trumped up hate crimes charges in Canada.

They will shut down the sentinels one way or another. But before this book - and others like it - is banned, I suggest you get it now and read it, and then read it again. Let it soak in like good medicine. Then decide which way you want the West to proceed.

Followers of my Old Jarhead Blog know I read a lot of books, and because I choose carefully, I recommend about 65% of them to my readers. No book I've read or recommended is as important to read as "After America." In May, through Amazon I published a book on the same topic, "The Coming Collapse of the American Republic" (in which I recommend Steyn's "America Alone"), so I was eager to read this. Steyn does not disappoint. I do not view "Collapse" as a competitor to "After America," more of a short companion piece. (Since all royalties from my book go to a charity to help wounded veterans, I have no financial loss in recommending Steyn's book.)

Steyn is perhaps the only major writer who understands that we are in a life and death struggle we are likely to lose. He sees the same major challenges to America I laid out in "Collapse": 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 to free institutions and civilization itself. "After America" is 350 pages to the 80 in Collapse, so he is able to go into a great deal of depth I didn't have space for, particularly the causes of our degeneration. He pulls zero punches.

If I have a niggling criticism, it is that Steyn's coruscating writing can be distracting, rather like a judge reading your death sentence and making you chuckle at his wit. I found myself enjoying his barbs and brilliant use of language so much, it at time pulled my focus from the enormity of the content.

There are many wonderful bits in "After America" that alone are worth the price of the book. There should, for example, be a lifetime Darwin Achievement Award for the Canadian woman who lobbied not to hunt down a cougar that killed a dog, only to be stalked and killed by the cougar herself, a bit of schadenfreude that will send a frisson up the leg of anyone scunnered by the mush-headed thinking of the environazis.

I will be buying copies of "After America" for friends and relatives, though with little hope that those who need it will read it. If you care about our country, you will read and circulate "After America."

In a recent collection of essays, Thomas Sowell spoke of a "perfect storm" of numerous and gargantuan threats facing the United States--internal and external ones. Dr. Sowell was not optimistic about the outcome.

Now appears Mark Steyn in *After America* to carefully analyze those threats in detail. These samples should be familiar:

1. nation-crushing debt;
2. monstrously ever-expanding government;

These two items have as their fruits the extinguishing of liberty, the virtual enslavement of the citizenry, and the utter waste of human resources.

3. the disaster which is the American educational system--at all levels;

4. demographic upheaval: the falling birthrate of native Americans (for the ideologically obtuse, I am not referring to American Indians), and the flood of illegal aliens who are hostile or indifferent to their U.S. host.

The above items have serious implications relating to U.S. power overseas, and national security, generally. They will also become even more acute.

The logic of Steyn's arguments seems unassailable. His sources are history and current reality. The outcome will be ugly indeed: the dissolution of the United States.

We are not there yet, of course, and in his final chapter, Steyn offers up a prescription of things to do, if we are to avoid catastrophe. All perfectly reasonable, but how to effect them? It appears to this reader, that short of a civil cataclysm, the existing toxic structures and policies will remain in place--to our detriment.

Honestly, this is a depressing book written with a lot of wit. It is sort of like having a good comedian as your doctor while he tells you about your terminal cancer. "Well, look at the bright side, if your 401K is down 20% because of the stock market this year it does not matter because of the cancer."

Mark does a great job writing this book. The constant theme of this book is a take off of H.G. Well's "The Time Machine". If you took a person from 1950 and put them into 2011 they would be shocked over what our civilization has become. Basically, modern people are Eloi, passive beings, and the Molocks are everybody else who snack off the hapless Eloi.

PC is the chains that keep the Eloi silent. Government hand outs are what keep the Eloi bound. It works amazingly well. Mark's goes on to show how absolutely dreadful the Federal and State governments of the USA has become. Examples are given of TSA employees abusing their power. Nothing is done to the employees because the public is fearful of retribution. Government employees unionize and protest at the government. So, the government raises taxes on real taxpayers in order to give lavish benefits to government employees.

When the S&P; downgraded the USA in early August 2011 it was almost because they read this book.

Some of the stories in this book are like bad comedy. The USA is condemned by foreign nations on its lax immigration policy when the condemning nation has a policy that would be extremely strict by any standard. But if this is pointed out by anybody you're condemned by the media. Some of this reaches absurd levels such as when Mexican nationals are busted for crimes in the USA but the government of Mexico then denounces the USA for enforcing criminal laws on Mexican nationals. It reads like a perverse version of Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Personally I don't think the USA will just up and go away like old Rome. Instead it will eventually fade into an overworked, overtaxed, and over governed society with indifferent citizens. The person who has correctly predicted the future of the USA was Robert Bork in his book Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline.

Still I give this book 4 star. I took off one star because there is a lot of material from the previous books about Europe. Yes, these stories illustrate Mark's concern over the death of the west. However, when there are Islamic women dressed up in full body burkas at Western Michigan University and being watched by Muslim religious police on campus then the ills of Europe hardly much worse than Americas. Who would have believed that in the space of 40 years that American women would have gone from burning bras and decrying a patriarchal society to having religious police govern them in their dress at a public American university campus?

The future is here and the Governmental and Religious Morlocks will govern the American Citizen Eloi in every step of their regulated and watched lives.