Welcome to Part Eight in our new audio adaptation of a favourite book among SteynOnline 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, an upstate New York Steyn Clubber, writes:
You know, its so good to review this stuff again at 20 plus sodding years ago. I admit at the time that the great Gerald Ford quote ('As Gerald Ford likes to say when trying to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have."') just washed over me as craziness, though I wouldn't disagree. Now, 20 years on, we should just retitle Marks book The Journal of the Plague Year(s) or Plague Decades and recognize we didn't have a clue at that time as to what was actually happening, regardless of what good thoughts we had towards Mark and America Alone et al. Robinson Crusoe didn't get off that damned island (more Defoe) until 28 years on, so we are still in the midst of the trials. I appreciate Mark keeps fighting, when he could just sit back and fax to that last photocopier in the woods 'I TOLD YOU SO, I TOLD YOU SO' ad infinitum.
On the other hand, from Ruel, a First Weekend Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club:
I well remember when Mark wrote about that middle stage at which the government wasn't big enough to get you to give any of it back. I remember thinking that wasn't quite right at the time, and is probably less correct a generation on.
It's certainly big enough to take my healthcare away, or shutdown my twitter account, or force me to wear a face diaper everywhere I go. It's big enough to force me to get vaccinated or lose my job. The assumption that they want to steer away from the cliff instead of hitting the accelerator toward it is suspect I think. They are big enough now to do anything they want. Why don't they tackle the deficit, or change retirement age, or provide meaningful healthcare reform? Because they don't want to.
If you hate your society enough to open your borders to whatever wants to wander in, what are your true intentions? Is it likely you want to 'fix' anything for the people who are already there? Or do you want to pretend to fix problems as a way of buying time to reach the end stage?
Perhaps it's more nuanced than that, and I certainly don't understand Euro politics. Perhaps the situation is more 'volatile' there. But if their governments were big enough to purposely destroy their futures, what aren't they big enough for?
That's something we touch upon in this weekend's episode of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. After the massed ranks of the World War Two victory parade, the emerging American superpower absolved its allies of the need to maintain armed forces of a sufficient credibility to defend their own borders. In that sense, the creation of the pseudo-alliance Nato was the single biggest factor in the infantilisation of Western Europe. Here's how I put it in 2006:
Euro-Canadian socialized health care is, in essence, subsidized by American taxpayers: since the end of the Second World War, Washington has assumed the defense costs of its allies, thereby freeing up those countries to spend their tax revenues on lavish social programs. But, if America follows the Hutton plan and 'joins the world', it will reduce its defense expenditures to Euro-Canadian levels.
And then what? The alternative model of nation state - cradle-to-grave welfare, no army but lots of attitudinal posturing - was only possible through American largesse. The photograph of Trump in splendid isolation on one side of the Oval Office desk with eight guys on the other side wedged up like Clown Car Goes to Washington is the post-war western world in a single image. It might have seemed, given the previous three decades, a good idea in 1945, but it has doomed those nations and delivered them into an existential crisis.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Eight 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 cracking capers, 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 Nine of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
