Alexander Chancellor

After America: Get Ready For Armageddon by Mark Steyn

issue 05 November 2011

There are people sent to depress us, and prominent among them is Mark Steyn, whose speciality is apocalyptic predictions. Following his bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, which was about the collapse of all of the Western world with the exception of the United States, he is now predicting the collapse of the US as well, leaving the entire ‘free world’, as it used to be called, at the mercy of those great enemies of freedom, China and Islam. He writes:

There will be no ‘new world order’, only a world without order, in which pipsqueak failed states go nuclear while the planet’s wealthiest nations are unable to defend their borders and are forced to adjust to the post-American era as they can.

In the case of Britain and other European nations, this will mean turning away from the United States and subordinating whatever values they have left to those of Islam; for they will not only be dependent on Muslim countries for their economic survival but also in thrall to an ever larger population of Muslims at home. Meanwhile, in a United States that may disintegrate for lack of any binding purpose,

what’s left of the republic will hunker down and finally understand what it’s like to be Israel … a beleaguered citadel in a world that wants to kill it.

A strident conservative crusader, Steyn blames America’s grim fate on itself, for replacing its faith in individual enterprise and responsibility with a system of popular dependency on a bloated central government. That government has spent so much money on cosseting and regulating the citizenry that the interest it pays to China on its debts is enough to finance China’s entire defence budget and more. According to Steyn:

When money drains, so does power.

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