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480 of 555 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THIS BOOK SHOULD BE GIVEN TO EVERY MEMBER OF OUR GOVERNMENT., August 8, 2011
This review is from: After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (Hardcover)
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.
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244 of 281 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Steyn Downgrades America to "Pining for the Fjords", August 8, 2011
This review is from: After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (Hardcover)
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.
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179 of 209 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Running out of tomorrow, August 8, 2011
This review is from: After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (Hardcover)
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!
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