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cult extras? Sooner or later you guys have to crawl out from under the social engineering and rediscover the contrarian spirit for which youth was once known. If you’re a First Grader reading this by flashlight under the pillow, don’t wait till Middle School to start pushing back on this junk. This will be the great battle of the next generation—to reclaim your birthright from those who spent it. If you don’t, the entire global order will teeter and fall. But, if you do, you will have won a great victory. Every time a politician proposes new spending, tell him he’s already spent your money, get his hand out of your pocket. Every time a politician says you can stay a child until your twenty-seventh birthday, tell him, “No, you’re the big baby, not me—you’ve spent irresponsibly, and me and my pals are the ones who are gonna have to be the adults and clean up your mess. Don’t treat me like a kid when your immaturity got us into this hole.” This is a battle for the American idea, and it’s an epic one, but—to reprise the lamest of lame-o lines—you can do anything you want to do. So do it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Marji Ross, Harry Crocker, Kathleen Sweetapple, and their colleagues at Regnery for their encouragement and advice. As always, I’m indebted to readers in America, Britain, Canada, Australia, Europe, Asia, and beyond for filling my in-box with sharp insights and pertinent anecdotes every morning. And I would be entirely adrift were it not for my trusty sidekicks Tiffany Cole, Chantal Benoît, and Katherine Ernst and their dogged research and expertly compressed statistical summaries. They could be taking it easy in a cushy government union job, so I’m grateful to them for laboring down the Steyn salt mines instead.

NOTES

Prologue

1 Town hall meeting in Greeley, Colorado, August 21, 2010; available online at http://www.greeleygazette.com/press/?p=5029.

2 Terrence P. Jeffrey, “111th Congress Added More Debt Than First 100 Congresses Combined: $10,429 Per Person in U.S.,” CNSNews.com, December 27, 2010; available online at http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/111th-congressadded-more-debt-first-100.

3 Herbert Stein, “Herb Stein’s Unfamiliar Quotations,” Slate.com, May 16, 1997; available online at http://www.slate.com/id/2561/.

4 Herbert Stein, “Herb Stein’s Unfamiliar Quotations,” Slate.com, May 16, 1997; available online at http://www.slate.com/id/2561/.

5 Remarks to reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, April 8, 2010; available online at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35546.html.

6 Brian Riedl, “President Obama Set to Exceed President Bush’s Deficits,” The Heritage Foundation, February 11, 2009; available online at http://blog.heritage.org/2009/02/11/president-obama-set-to-exceed-president-bush%E2%80%99s-deficits/.

7 Remarks at Thompson Creek Manufacturing in Landover, Maryland, January 7, 2011; available online at http://m.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/07/remarks-president-december-jobs-report-and-economic-personnelannounceme .

8 White House, “Table 15.3—Total Government Expenditures as Percentages of GDP: 1948-2010”; available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals.

9 CBO report, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2011 to 2021,” January 2011; available online at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/120xx/doc12039/01-26_FY2011Outlook.pdf.

10 CBO report, “The Long-Term Budget Outlook: Federal Debt Held by the Public Under Two Budget Scenarios,” June 2010; available online at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11579/06-30-LTBO.pdf.

11 Niall Ferguson, “Sun could set suddenly on superpower as debt bites,” The Australian, July 29, 2010; available online at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/sun-could-set-suddenly-on-superpower-as-debt-bites/storye6frg6zo-1225898187243.

12 CBO report, “The Long-Term Budget Outlook: Federal Debt Held by the Public Under Two Budget Scenarios,” June 2010; available online at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11579/06-30-LTBO.pdf.

13 The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,