Wednesday 9 July 2008

 

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Liz Anderson

Liz suggests


America Alone

Not what Europe wants to hear

Mark Steyn
Regnery Publishing, 256pp, £15.99,
Michael Gove
Wednesday, 10th January 2007

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Between the revolution and the firing squad, a Russian aristocrat once observed, there is always time for a bottle of champagne. Between the demographic disaster and the collapse of Western civilisation, Mark Steyn appears to believe, there’s always time for a rip-roaring op-ed and a series of blistering jokes.

No writer I can think of manages to combine utter bleakness about mankind’s prospects with a genius for one-liners like Steyn. More gloomily pessimistic about our civilisation’s future than Peter Hitchens at a fetish night in Heaven, and yet consistently funnier than any mere humorist or jobbing stand-up, Steyn is a master of gallows humour. And in this book we Europeans are the condemned men.

I know that for many of my fellow panty-waisted, cheese-eating, surrender monkeys being harangued about our propensity for cultural suicide by cheerleaders for Bush can grate a little. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the author of America Alone as simply a jester at the court of King George W.

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Kevin White

January 28th, 2008 7:05pm

I think that Mark Steyn's book was brilliant. But I do not accept his point that demography is everything. A war is won with blood and treasure - men and money. So a homogenous country could go into demographic decline and still, if rich, defend its borders: the money - buying better weapons - compensating for the lack of men. Having said that, he is right that demography is everything in a civil war. Combatants in a civil war can steal the weapons. So, I say the West will live on in countries that do not have a large Muslim population that will outbreed them. One thing I would like to know is where he sourced the point that England's nineteenth century population surge was down to it conquering infant mortality. I thought it was more about people being richer, and marrying younger, and thus being more fertile. Buy the book. It's great. Because Steyn writes with clarity, brevity, and style. He's a very funny guy. Kevin

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