After America - Mark Steyn [0]
Title Page
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE - THE NEW ROME
CRESCENT MOON
GOTTERDAMMERUNG
THE HOLE IS GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS
CHAPTER TWO - UNDREAMING AMERICA
THE STATIST QUO
TWO SOLITUDES
FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS MONEY
THE BUREAU OF COMPLIANCE
AS UNAMERICAN AS APPLE PIE
BULLS IN A CHINA SHOP
SLOW BOAT TO CHINA
CHAPTER THREE - THE NEW ATHENS
THE GREEK BONE CONNECTED TO THE KRAUT BONE
THE KRAUT BONE CONNECTED TO THE YANK BONE
THE YANK BONE CONNECTED TO . . . ?
CHAPTER FOUR - DECLINE
THE UTOPIA OF MYOPIA
CELEBRATE YOURSELF
THE STUDENT PRINCES
THE FEELIES
WE ARE THE WORLD ...
... WE ARE THE CHILDREN
BOY MEETS GIRL
NO MAN’S LAND
CHAPTER FIVE - THE NEW BRITANNIA
AFTER THE BALL
WORLD WITHOUT WANT
THE LOTTERY OF LIFE
CHAPTER SIX - FALL
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD
SEE THE U.S.A. IN YOUR CHEVROLET
BIG LOVE
DEPENDISTAN
THE KINGDOM OF THE BONOBO
SPLITSVILLE
BORDER COUNTRY
DESTINY’S MANIFEST
SHADOWLANDS
COUGAR TOWN
CHAPTER SEVEN - THE NEW JERUSALEM
THE NEW NORMALIUT
CHAPTER EIGHT - AFTER
IDENTITY AND AUTHENTICITY
FIVE BILLION GUYS NAMED MO
DARKNESS FALLS
AFTER MAN
THE SOMALIFICATION OF THE WORLD
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
NOTES
INDEX
Copyright Page
PROLOGUE
THE STUPIDITY OF BROKE
There is the moral of all human tales;
’Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory—when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last.
—Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818)
The sun’ll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow there’ll be sun
—Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin, Annie (1977)
Previously on Apocalypse Soon ...
It was the worst of times, it was the not quite so worst of times.
The predecessor to this book was called America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, and, given the title, you may be tempted to respond, “C’mon, man. You told us last time it was the end of the world. Well, where the hell is it? I want my money back. Instead, you come breezing in with this season’s Armageddonouttahere routine. It’s like Barbra Streisand farewell tours—there’ll be another along next summer.”
Well, now: America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It was about the impending collapse of all of the western world except America.
The good news is that the end of the rest of the West is still on schedule.
The bad news is that America shows alarming signs of embracing the same fate, and then some.
Nobody writes a doomsday tome because they want it to come true. From an author’s point of view, the apocalypse is not helpful: the bookstores get looted and the collapse of the banking system makes it harder to cash the royalty check. But Cassandra’s warnings were cursed to go unheeded, and so it seems are mine. Last time ’round, I wrote that Europe was facing a largely self-inflicted perfect storm that threatened the very existence of some of the oldest nation-states in the world. My warning proved so influential that America decided to sign up for the same program but supersized. Heigh-ho.
It starts with the money. In “The Run Upon the Bankers” (1720), Jonathan Swift wrote:
A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
’Tis like the writing on the wall.
A lot of writing on the wall these days. Who has the bonds of a “developed world” developed to the point that it’s institutionally conditioned to living beyond its means? Foreigners with money. So who’s available and flush enough? The Chinese Politburo; Saudi sheikhs lubricated with oil but with lavish worldwide ideological proselytizing to fund; Russian “businessmen.”. . . These are not the fellows one might choose to have one’s bonds, never mind one’s soul, but there aren’t a lot of other options.
So it starts with the money—dry stuff about numbers and percentage of GDP. As Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado fumed to a room of voters in 2010, “We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view, we have