America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It
Mark Steyn

"Civilizations die from suicide, not murder." This quotation from Arnold J. Toynbee opens up the first chapter in Conservative Mark Steyn's provocative book about the decline of the West. It suggests two things: First, the greatest enemy of the West today is civilization exhaustion, or the lack of will to defend its founding traditions and principles. Second, weakness is, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, "a provocation" to imperial forces. Steyn's story takes place in the midst of a Europe in economic and demographic collapse, contrasted against an American super power slowly coming to an end.

Steyn's main thesis is that Europe has succumbed to suicidal demographic trends, essentially forcing it to invite mass immigration from North Africa and the Middle East to finance its unsustainable Social Democratic welfare State. Combined with native culture denial, an impotent civil society, and the multicultural doctrine of cultural relativism, Europe is, according to Steyn, giving in to the new great enemy of radical Islamism. The follow-up question to this scenario is obvious, and explained by the title: Will America have to stand alone to defend Western values against radical Islamism?

The answer is a sad but truthful "yes." America is a unique player in the West in that it hasn't (yet) adopted the European welfare model, has not yet entered the demographic decline, and has resisted the ideological suicidal virus of cultural masochism. To back his thesis up, Steyn arms himself with demographic figures, analyses of Islamic radicalization pre- and post-9/11, and an impressive historical knowledge of the relationship between the East and the West. His conclusion is startling and is likely to force many anti-Americanists and multicultural dimwits in Europe to alter their views about their own future.

This is a horrifying book to read, because there's actually little hope in the struggle to preserve what's left of Western civilization in light of the enormous challenges we face. But most worrying of all is what Steyn, with sardonic wit and cruel facts, describes as the real enemy we need to battle: the spirit of resignation. "The end of the world as we know it" is the world post-WWII, created for a short period of human history. Despite its negative aspects, it's what keeps our empire going -- but if we don't confront the realities of our time, our moment may not survive our generation.