The One with America Alone

164. Title & Author: America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It by Mark Steyn (214 pages)

Genre: Nonfiction—Politics & Current Affairs

Completed: 6 November 2010

Summary & Review:

With the threat of Islamist Extremism ever growing, Mark Steyn laments the very plausible fate that America will stand as the last bastion of individual liberty on the planet. He argues that not only are Islamists actively subverting free societies, but the European states are basically committing suicide. One of Steyn’s critical points is the changing demography of the European continent. European countries have shackled themselves to unsustainable welfare states yet have birthrates that are halving their populations every generation. With no posterity to take over the work force and pay for these lavish handouts, Europe is looking to immigrants to fill in the widening gap between earnings and payouts. Unfortunately, those immigrants are often part of a pan-Islamist identity that does not support the ideals free societies are built on.

This book was so clearly a work of the mind of Mark Steyn. He presented serious and sobering realities, but managed to do so with his usual pith and wit. After reading Andrew McCarthy’s The Grand Jihad (#160), the threat of radical Islam was not news to me, but Steyn still offered very salient points and observations. For example, America has often been accused of imperialism by various countries, yet it has failed to actually spread, by force or otherwise, the ideals and concepts that make it “America.” To me, this is a major failure in our country's history. Millions of members of our armed forces have given their lives to liberate various oppressed peoples from Holland to Iraq, yet after their liberation we expected those people to simply fall into the exceptional American system of governance that is an enigma in the history of the world. This, of course, has not happened, thus the major export of America has not been individual and economic freedom, but rap and Hollywood movies. By trying to be to light-handed in foreign affairs, we have allowed other ideologies, such as Saudi Wahhabism, to take root.

I recommend this book.

Rating: 9.0