R INSIDE Volume 63 I 4 No longer alone Mark Steyn offers little hope for the future of Western Civilisation, says Alan Moran.

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ALAN MORAN falling 50 per cent since 1950. Thirty Director of the Deregulation Unit per cent of the employed work for at the Institute of Public Affairs the government and at least 29 per cent are unemployed. The city’s education system has been dumbed s a modern day Cassandra, down so much that it has a school in After America, Mark Alan Moran reviews: board president who failed English in Steyn sees the Western After America: his degree and only graduated after world as a crumbling Get Ready for Armageddon suing his college, which then dropped Aedifice in which the liberties and by Mark Steyn English proficiency as a requirement. wealth that we have enjoyed face Regnery, 2011, 400 pages The internal erosion of the escalating attacks from both within West’s vitality results from rising and without. are the ‘Queers Against Israeli shares of unproductive government In Steyn’s view, the dominant Apartheid’, who seem oblivious to expenditures (and associated taxes) threat from outside is militant Islam. militant Islam’s contempt towards within the economy, burgeoning Its impact is being internalised by homosexuality, a practice which in regulatory restraints on enterprise new immigration, high fertility Talibanite Afghanistan invited the and the substitution of ‘rights’ that among Islamic immigrants and low death penalty. Israel pursued peace shielded the citizen from government birth rates among non-Muslims by offering extensive concessions excesses to one that means ‘rights in the West. In his previous book, to its neighbours but these have led to stuff, granted by the government, America Alone, Steyn showed how only to a perception of weakness and distributed by the government, demographics are steadily increasing increased demands. Failing to learn rationed by the government but paid the size of the Muslim minority from this, the Obama administration for by you.’ which, far from adopting the values has assiduously courted-some say All countries have their own of the society they have joined, genuflected to-disparate Islamic versions of the theatre of the has been even more militant than interests with no evident gains. absurd, illustrating the extent of their parents in rejecting them. The Under George W Bush’s presidency, this retreat from self reliance and flight from modernity is seen in the 83 per cent of people in Arab careful spending of public monies. home grown terrorists in the United countries held negative perceptions In the UK a disabled man was Kingdom and the United States. of America, but far from dissipating granted taxpayers money to fly Militant Islam despises after Obama’s election, it has actually to Amsterdam to have sex with a homosexuality, is hostile to women increased to 85 per cent since he prostitute, which according to his not fully ‘covered’ and is generally became president. social worker is a human right. In intolerant to ‘unbelievers’, especially But it is the fragility of the West America, prior to becoming first Jews. As such, because of its itself that comprises the real danger. lady, Michelle Obama was given a enhanced influence in the West, Steyn This stems less from establishing the $317,000 a year non-job to manage sees militant Islam as undermining conditions under which its enemies can the University of Chicago’s ‘business the mutual accommodations that flourish than in creating a cancer which diversity program’. comprise the modern Western is eating into its future capabilities. Steyn argues that bureaucracy is state. To illustrate the fundamental Europe is where the rot has set strangling innovation and argues that antagonism to democracy and liberty, in strongest. And as a bon vivant the advances over the past 60 years he cites opinion polls showing that and cultural connoisseur, Steyn are far less momentous than those ten of the twelve people most admired clearly enjoys Europe’s legacy of in the previous 60 years which saw people in Arab states were thugs or past greatness in the opera houses, cars, planes, television, computers, dictators (the other two, Mitterrand ‘fabulous restaurants, stylish women’ major drug breakthroughs and space and Sarkozy, he dismisses as a pair of but the technological capability travel. Calcification of innovation French roués). that created these is ebbing away. is exemplified by Eli Lilly which Steyn lampoons attempts at The economic sclerosis he observes marketed insulin in 1923 after outreach to militant Islam, which in Europe is also to be seen in the just two years of development. range from the bizarre to the blindly US. Detroit is the perverse poster Regulatory processes for new drugs optimistic. Among the former child of decline with the population would now require a further five

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years and involve considerable additional expense. The upshot is stalled new drug developments. Among other areas subject to creeping bureaucracy is job credentialism. In the 1950s only five per cent of the workforce needed to have their job qualifications approved by the government, but now covers one third of the workforce and even extends down to yoga teachers. We have also seen government shifting to prevent wealth creation rather than as in the past seeking to promote it (though sometimes misguidedly). State schemes like the Hoover Dam are inconceivable today. The regulatory morass would prevent them even if the will of government were there to build them-and as Steyn points out, Obama’s appointee university until 30 and eligible for The great hedonism of the West in the Interior Department proudly retirement 55, most have chosen has been possible only because of US assured an audience that ‘You will environmentalism over production. military power. Europe (and for that never see another federal dam’. Carbon emission restraints are the matter Australia and other affluent Restraints that prevent anything being acme of this but environmentalism nations) has relied on the US to done are epitomised by the Twin takes many ironic twists and brings maintain open sea lanes and defend Towers area, which ten years after 9/11 unforeseen consequences. Steyn them against aggression. remains unfinished. relates a case of a cougar killing a Now America too is hurtling Steyn sees such developments local dog in Nova Scotia and an towards European impotence, having as not only adding to the cost of activist prevailing over her fellow adopted European welfare policies innovation but also as crushing the citizens not to hunt the animal, which and debt accumulation. The Royal human spirit. Indeed, expanding on eventually kills and eats her. Man’s Navy, (following the example of Victor Davis Hanson’s rediscovery of respect for animals, he points out, is the American Marines in Tripoli) the 1895 HG Wells novel, The Time leading carnivores to no longer fear readily undertook pirate policing Machine, he discusses the decline us and to learn that we constitute easy in the Nineteenth Century but no of an America spearheaded by a pickings in the stalking game and a longer dares make arrests having sybaritic ruling class, called the Eloi in better source of fat and proteins than been advised that pirates taken into Wells’s future, enjoying leisured lives. that hard to catch deer. custody could claim refugee status The modern Eloi like nice cars Post-2008 these stealthily and an entitlement to UK welfare. and fine housing and good food enervating trends have intensified in The US military would be susceptible but despise oil, gas, nuclear power, the US, and are further aggravated by to similar restraints. Not so the farmland, electricity lines, and governments now seeking to cover Russians: Somali pirates who seized timber. They benefit from freedom their costs through borrowings. a Russian tanker were captured and but have lost the will and ability to And the main lenders in town are released some way from any port defend it. Symbolic of this is a quote the Chinese, having emerged from and, said the Russian spokesman, from a Dutch, gay humanist (‘pretty being economically comatose over ‘apparently have all died’. much the trifecta of Eurocool’) who the space of only two decades, the oil Chinese control over US debt says, ‘I never learned to fight for my rich Islamic states and the Russians. leaves the nation especially vulnerable freedom. I was only good at enjoying it’. None of these have any respect for militarily. In 1956, Eisenhower forced The Eloi are recognisable in the the liberties that have defined the the UK to cease its Suez adventure wealthy class’ children. Attending West and its ways of life. simply by instructing the Treasury

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to start selling its sterling assets. would enjoy a labour productivity at Next, Steyn sees the direct If such a decisive intervention is least a hundred times greater. government-originated Islamic easily achieved by a lender who is Secondly, Steyn is right to point threat largely coming from Iran. fundamentally in accord with the out that US debt stands at almost $15 That country’s imminent acquisition borrower, how much more vulnerable trillion, or 97 per cent of GDP. Though, of nuclear weaponry is certainly is the US to Chinese pressure? as he points out, this is less relative to menacing, but Iran remains a military But can things really be that bad? GDP than in 1945, the 1945 debt saved pygmy. The nightmare is like that At a time when every news day brings the world from tyranny and ushered of the Visigoths, a tribe of less than fresh dangers, nobody should be an era of US dominance; by contrast, 100,000 people. The Visogoths in 476 complacent about the parlous situation debt in 2011 has left a legacy with no sacked Rome, an empire that had of the Western system. Even so, some benefit. Many economists consider 450,000 soldiers under arms. Rome’s of the concerns that Steyn assembles that the debt is not a major issue and, overreach-bread and circuses, may prove misplaced or exaggerated. indeed, no state has government debt military expenditures, lavish living Firstly, Steyn laments the decline as large as Great Britain’s in 1815 when standards for the rulers and crippling of manufacturing in the US and some estimates indicate that over 300 costs of tax collection-resonate in elsewhere in the West. And the current per cent of GDP was owed. today’s America. But Iran could never account deficits together with the pile- up of debt does reflect an inability to undertake adequate savings. This ONCE A CYCLE OF DEPENDENCY AND FREE has caused an excessive migration of HAND OUTS IS CREATED IT IS DIFFICULT TO production to overseas locations but REVERSE GEAR. Steyn is surely wrong in considering that the jobs lost to China and The US budget deficit is a pull off the Visigoths’ trick. India are gone forever, the corollary horrendous 40 per cent, but when Moreover, Iran is actually one of which would seem to support expressed as a share of GDP (10 per nation where the Islamic hold is protectionism. cent) it is less formidable. That said, precarious. Though a theocracy Moreover, a relative decline while cutting back consumption by presided over by a leader of doubtful of manufacturing is a natural 10 per cent in the world’s richest sanity, it has a mooted mosque consequence of higher income levels. nation is hardly calamitous, it is no attendance of only two per cent As Steyn points out, at the time of the mean operational feat in the age and a youth whose main religious US Declaration of Independence 90 of inflexible economies. Changing following is pop music. Above all, per cent of Americans were farmers. things is hard to do. Once a cycle of Iran is a rare example of a third Today American agriculture employs dependency and free hand outs is world nation with a first world less than three per cent of workers created it is difficult to reverse gear. birthrate. Islam in Iran is undergoing who operate so productively that they Greece is finding this now with civil the same population death spiral allow considerable net exports. And servants rioting to preserve their of 1.3-1.5 births per head that is this is in spite of the crushing weight massive benefits. threatening depopulation in Greece, of regulations on water use, land use In the US, even in 2004 a fifth of Italy and elsewhere in Europe. itself and the diversion of cropland to households were getting 75 per cent Indonesia is a further sign of hope ethanol production. of their income from government that Islam might make the transition Manufacturing automation does and another fifth were getting 40 from the Fourteenth Century. This, mean progressively fewer direct per cent. It is not easy to envisage the most populous Muslim state, has employees. Adam Smith marvelled them voting to have this reduced. an economy that is growing fast with at the division of labour that allowed Added to this constituency is a vastly neither the benefit of petrodollars nor pins to be made in a product line over-remunerated public sector. the Sino-Indian commercial overclass with eighteen different workstations. Steyn points out that at the start guiding Malaysia’s successes. While a single pinmaker in the of the downturn the Department The ‘Audacity of Hope’ is what Eighteenth Century might make less of Transportation had just one Steyn titles his final chapter. But, than 20 pins per day, the process employee earning over $170,000 per having identified real problems, he allowed 4,800 pins per day per year. One and a half years later the offers little in the way of hope that employee. A modern pin factory number was 1,690. they will be resolved. R

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