Welcome to Part Six in our new audio adaptation of a favourite book among Steyn readers: America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
Thank you for all your kind comments about my first ever self-narration of this prescient tome. Chris, a New York member of The Mark Steyn Club, writes:
I cannot remember if my copy of America Alone had that fantastic review blurb at the top from the Saudi Ambassador 'The arrogance of Mark Steyn knows no bounds'. Only MS would turn that into a rave review.
It was the cover designer who put that in, Chris - just as a placeholder until the editor sent him some blurb from Mark Levin or Michelle Malkin or whoever he'd managed to extract one from. But they sent the artwork to me for approval and I liked the quote from Prince Turki. So, when the real cover arrived, I said no, no, get rid of that generic autopenned fake-o schmoozeroo, and put the House of Saud guy back.
Whether or not the arrogance of Mark Steyn knows no bounds, I can claim to have said things that, two decades ago, very few bestselling authors were saying, and even fewer members of the respectable political class. Indeed, twenty years on, with western Europe facing an imminent existential crisis, respectable politicians are still unwilling to raise the subject: yes, I'm looking at you, Kemi Badenoch, after your total crapwanker conference speech implicitly comparing yourself to Thatcher and Churchill while declining to talk about anything that matters. So, in this weekend's episode of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, I summarise the situation as I saw it in 2006 - when the Continent's present terrible future could still have been averted:
Europe, like Japan, has catastrophic birth rates and a swollen pampered elderly class determined to live in defiance of economic reality. But the difference is that on the Continent the successor population is already in place and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be.
If America's 'allies' failed to grasp the significance of 9/11, it's because Europe's home-grown terrorism problems had all taken place among notably static populations, such as Ulster and the Basque country. One could make generally safe extrapolations about the likelihood of holding Northern Ireland to what cynical strategists in Her Majesty's Government used to call an 'acceptable level of violence'. But in the same three decades as Ulster's 'Troubles', the hitherto moderate Muslim populations of south Asia were radicalized by a politicized form of Islam; previously formally unIslamic societies such as Nigeria became semi-Islamist; and large Muslim populations settled in parts of Europe that had little or no experience of mass immigration.
You can argue about what these trends mean, but surely not that they mean absolutely nothing, which is what the complaceniks assure us. On the Continent and elsewhere in the west, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. Time for the obligatory 'of courses': Of course, not all Muslims are terrorists - though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support terrorists – though enough of them share their basic objectives (the wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America) to function wittingly or otherwise as the 'good cop' end of an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine. But, at the very minimum, this fast-moving demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to move around in. And in a more profound way it rationalizes what would otherwise be the nuttiness of the terrorists' demands. An IRA man blows up a pub in defiance of democratic reality – because he knows that at the ballot box the Ulster Loyalists win the elections and the Irish Republicans lose. When a European jihadist blows something up, that's not in defiance of democratic reality but merely a portent of democratic reality to come. He's jumping the gun, but in every respect things are moving his way.
So here we are two decades later, and ambitious Taqiyya Muslims such as former Scottish First Minister, the virulently racist Humza Yousaf, are now discarding their useful idiots in western leftist parties to form avowedly Islamic political blocs.
Of course, my sardonic deployment above of the obligatory "of courses" got me reported to Canada's "human rights" commissions and began the ruination of my life. With hindsight, I should have had a fatal heart attack in October 2006 instead of next month. Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Six of America Alone simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
If you prefer more fictional fancies of a weekend, we have thrillers, comedy classics, tales of horror and historical romance and much more, all over at our Tales for Our Time home page. If you've a friend who might be partial to our six-dozen pertinent adventures, we have a special Gift Membership that, aside from audio capers, also includes video poetry, live music and more. And I'll be doing a live-performance Tale for Our Time at sea on the next Mark Steyn Cruise - sailing aboard the Queen Mary 2.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to America Alone but to over seventy audio adventures in Tales for Our Time. Please join me next weekend for Part Seven of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
