After America: Get Ready for Armageddon

In this sequel to the excellent [[ASIN:B00B5593QQ America Alone]], Steyn changes focus to the seemingly inevitable collapse of our own great country. Whereas before he casted America as the last beacon of freedom and prosperity in the world, here he turns his sharp and witty criticism back home. In the same sarcastic and hilarious style that he so clearly laid out the coming downfall of Europe in AMERICA ALONE, he brutally exposes the weakness of America's position in history and our likely future. While AMERICA ALONE is one of my favorite books of all time, this one was much less enjoyable to read. Probably as well written and insightful, it was just much more enjoyable to read about the mistakes and problems of Europe than to read these harsh negatives about my own country. Also, where AMERICA ALONE highlighted the costs associated with the Islamification of Europe, AFTER AMERICA has a more familiar and less original focus.

Here Steyn discusses the same criticisms that have been on our radars for a long time now. Over-expansion of government (size and interference), massive ballooning of government debt, and the cultural shift away from individualism and self-reliance. There are many similar books that cover these same topics, but few written with a voice like Steyn's. His style and wit make reading these criticisms bearable. The entertainment value here is immense, and even as he condemns your country, you'll find yourself laughing at the brilliant and biting sarcasm of Steyn.

Steyn develops an emotionally powerful comparison between our current cultural trends and the Eloi from H.G. Wells' [[ASIN:1453767525 The Time Machine]]. The sissifying of American men is cast as both a cause and an effect of the nation's decline. Constant unfavorable comparisons to our current state of dependency and lack of personal initiative are made with stories of men from the grand old past, where "real men" apparently still existed. Some of these parts come off as Steyn's nostalgia for an unrecoverable past, and he clearly cherry-picks examples to highlight the most extreme cases of his argument, ignoring the fact that there are still plenty of us that could hardly be considered Eloi-ized. Still, it is hard to refute that a portion of a nation's decline is psychological in nature, and clearly the trend is away from self reliance towards a more dependent mentality.

Many of the predictions for America's future are based on historical examples of other great nations that have followed similar paths. Primarily, the greater and greater role of government in everyday life is a strong predictor of decline. Britain is his favored whipping boy here, where he convincingly links Britain's social decline with its increase in government spending and dependency. In parts of Britain where government spending can represent in excess of 75% of the economy, you also have the highest rates of drug use, STDs, single moms, and abortions in all of Europe. When the average Brit is videotaped 300 times per day, it is hard to refute Steyn's argument that government has become too prominent in that once-free country. His correlations between government dependency and depravity are very convincing.

While this book will leave a sour taste in your mouth, being almost completely negative and presenting no likely path for avoiding disaster, at least Steyn gives it to you straight and in an entertaining manner. As we can tell from recent votes and general polling, many Americans are indifferent or unaware of our coming decline, and that is the real reason politicians are able to continue down this current road. They will not relinquish power until they must, and the people must wake up for that to happen. With government control in every aspect of our lives and with increasing dependency on government to solve all problems, it is hard to see a way out of this mess. Massive government squelches liberty, and government dependency leads to depravity and helplessness. Is it too late for America? I hope not, but this book only lessens that hope.

4 years on, steyn ' s doomsday scenario hasn't quite played out. But the decay he describes is apparent in every aspect of your life in america circa 2014. Every person concerned about our present trajectory should read this book along with america alone

Mark Steyn has a lot of interesting opinions of how America will look in the future. I enjoyed.

Gary Hanna

This book is a kind of sequel to "America Alone," where Steyn charted the demise of Europe and its imminent transformation into Eurabia. Here however Steyn concedes that America is following Europe into destruction. The main problem, as he sees it, is the inexorable growth of statism or socialism; a phenomenon which is invariably fatal to any nation's wellbeing.
It is hard to argue with Steyn here: socialism is indeed a toxic growth which will inevitably subvert any society. Just look at the state of the European Union. But there is a problem with Steyn'a analysis, and it is one which surely cannot have been missed by a man of his intellect: The roots of American socialism lie in American democracy. Indeed, it is true to say that any democracy, especially a representational democracy which employs large numbers of career politicians, must eventually evolve into some form of socialism. The mechanism for this has been well understood since at least the time of Plato. It is this: In a democracy there arises a class of career politicians (whom Plato appropriately named "rhetoricists") who will vie with each other for the public's favor. In order to win the greatest number of votes some of these rhetoricists will promise poorer members of society economic aid supplied by the state. Thus will be born some form of welfarism. At the beginning, this welfare state will be limited in its scope. However, the main political parties (almost invariably there are two of them), will soon find themselves involved in a welfare "arms race" (or should I say alms race), each promising more and more state goodies to the "needy" in exchange for votes. Thus the welfare state expands inexorably.
It was precisely by this mechanism that Mr Obama won two terms in office, and, as Steyn himself has admitted, even the more "conservative" of the two political parties cannot withdraw state benefits once they have been accorded, for these are now seen as "rights," and any proposal to remove or cut them seen as barbarous - and a sure way to lose an election.
The above process has seen the transformation of formerly conservative political parties in Europe (such as the British Tories) into socialist parties almost as left-wing as the avowed socialists themselves.
What then is the solution? Steyn could offer none, nor it seems can any one. A socialist society is by definition corrupt to its core, its main guiding principle being just the opposite of President Kennedy's famous line: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask rather what you can do for your country." It seems that a socialist society's fate is economic meltdown followed by political destruction and the rise of tyranny.

Mark Steyn is brilliant. He has a marvelous turn of phrase and is eminently readable. His prognostications are likely. This was written in 2012 and I can see in 2017 how accurate he is.

SUPERB!

I always enjoy reading anything by Mark Steyn. His insights are way above what some of our politicians can come up with. If you enjoy getting hold of a book that's hard to put down, this, or anything he writes, will fill the bill.

Steyn is dead on target. Unfortunately not enough Americans are reading it!

Describes the severity of our financial and cultural problems as the United States nears its end. Essentially, the point is that Americans are dependents of government, the government is run by pseudo-intellectual twits, and there is no possible way our economy can survive the debt crisis. However, I must dock one star because the author keeps suggesting that some of this might be avoidable. That is hopelessly optimistic. 2012 was the last chance, and America blew it. The Obama administration is now talking about minting trillion dollar coins. Republican "spending cuts" are not only rejected by the Democrats, but are so pathetically miniscule that they wouldn't do diddly-squat even if implemented. The question now is what to do with your savings...gold? land? ammo? Twinkies? Maybe we'll get lucky and the joke will be on the Chinese. We'll find out soon.

With the birth rate per family dropping below 2 in many countries while in the islam countries it is above 8 it is easy to understand how they can emigrate, out vote and take over a country.