Saturday, October 14, 2006
America Alone
Mark Steyn's latest been has been out a few weeks now. I had delayed ordering and reading it because I read all Mark Steyn's stuff - I know how this ends. But I cracked when a friend got an autographed copy - had to have my own. (To Keith ...from the Canadian Warmonger...)
I expected to be depressed. Not by the book. By the reality. The book explains the reality. That's the short synopsis - Get Real. It's a great book. Not a wholly new thesis if you've read earlier Mark Steyn pieces like It's the Demography Stupid. But how can one have a new thesis? He's laid out, with humor, historical context and present tense examples - how sadly and blindly we have abandoned - by choice: 1) any pride in the civilized world, and 2) babies. Once you're onto that - its hard to jump to more consequential matters.
I leave the book with no change in opinion or outlook for the next 30 years, but - surprisingly - some optimism further down the road, where my sons will be living out the mature stages of their lives. Mark has added prescriptives to his entertaining descriptives. With some determiniation - the American century could well become the American semi-millenium, and the human race would be better for it.
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