Friday, March 02, 2007
"…The End Of The World As We Know It"
I've only begun listening to the books on CD version of Mark Steyn's, "American Alone; The End Of The World As We Know It." (I can't stand walking without a "book in my hand" so the CD version is rather convenient).
The book's been out a while now but this is my first encounter with it. I've only begun "reading" it but must say, thus far, it's one of the best books I've come by in a long time. Absolutely excellent!
I've always enjoyed Steyn's very smart and witty appraisals one comes across on web site links but this is a real treat. Even though he hasn't been infected by the party line of academia, I'd dare say he comes across as downright scholarly – he definitely "knows stuff." His sarcasm and wit is profoundly insightful and he can point out the obvious in a way that will make a leftist Islamo-fascist sympathizer quite enraged (but unable to respond beyond the usual name calling).
This is not a "review." As stated, I've only begun the book (CD's) but I can't recommend it enough based on what I've encountered thus far. It's incredibly rich in its analysis of history, geography, politics, religion, pop culture, media, and human folly and games on planet Earth.
I truly believe that If everyone read this book there would be no "War on Terror" (with Islamo-fascism) or even a "war" in Iraq -- the Islamists would have already been defeated!
Unfortunately -- as Steyn makes quite clear – things could (and, perhaps are likely to) go the other way and civilization "as we know it" will be over in a matter of decades. That certainly sounds melodramatic, but no more so than Al Gore's less likely scenarios of a world engulfed in water and monster storms. One doesn't need a "computer model" to know what the Islamists want and are fervently hoping to gain. Add in the demographics that Steyn brings to our attention and we know we have a real problem on our hands. With the exception of a few admirable allies, America is indeed "alone" already, with many in the U.S. itself clueless as to exactly what could transpire in mere decades. If America is one day out of active engagement in these issue, who's gonna "make the world safe for democracy" – France, the international court at the Hague? Nothing against the French – or like-minded nations – but many of their citizens are still too busy whining about the horrors of "cowboy capitalism" to take a real threat seriously (it's happened before).
Our view of history tends to be colored by the plots of movies and novels where the good side always prevails. We even thought the good side was the norm while two generations wasted away in the Soviet gulag state. There have been plenty of Spartas, National Socialist police states, and Communist prison nations to speculate as to just how much goodness is blessed by inevitability. There is no law that says that the men and women in the white hats always win. We are even more at risk now since there are so many of us in open societies who openly root for the demons among us.
The lefties hate hearing such "philistine" comments but, pluralistic, representative, open, and free society is superior – and it's the only place I want to live. If you think a world engulfed by theocratic Sharia law might be okay, well…I'd prefer to keep out of your personal nightmares.
With the amount of energy being daily devoted to bashing Bush or wishing that the Vice President was killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan (the recent event brought out the worst of the leftist swines' worldview), people could actually address the true enemy at hand but, after decades of public education and media dreams of utopian socialism, most of the world is throwing in the towel.
Definitely get Mark Steyn's book. It will be the end of the way you see things, as you "know" them.
