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If you are hungry for good news, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon probably shouldn't be next on your reading list. But if you are prepared to hear the truth about America's decline, Mark Steyn delivers it with uncommon style and wit. He even elicits a few chuckles at the many absurdities contributing to our downward spiral. Of course there is nothing funny about our nation's unsustainable spending and borrowing habits. Steyn notes that the interest The core of our problem is the "remorseless governmentalization of American life." Updating a quote from Calvin Coolidge, Steyn quips that the business of America is no longer business it's regulation. The level of control by government bureaucrats over the most minute matters is astounding. For example, California bureaucrats have prioritized spending their dwindling state funds on a serious public health issue complimentary coffee. They informed hardware store owner Randy Collins that putting out coffee and doughnuts for his morning customers is illegal because he doesn't have a prep kitchen with stainless steel sinks. And of course even then he'd need the permission of the county in the form of a permit. Our increasingly spendthrift nanny state also wastes something even more valuable than money. It wastes human lives by "increasing dependency, disincentivizing self-reliance, [and] absolving the citizenry from responsibility for their actions." The U.S. spending crisis is driven by a moral crisis, where a record one in six Americans is dependent on fellow citizens to cover living expenses. Steyn lays much of the blame for our national decline on our educational system, which he calls "the biggest single structural defect in the United States." He notes that the generation whose median education totaled only 8.3 years gave us great inventions such as the automobile, telephone, washer and dryer. The best many 22-year-old college graduates can offer today after all their years of schooling is "celebrate diversity" while they struggle to pay off their student loans. In the final analysis, Steyn does see a sliver of hope. Only America, he notes, has citizens who have taken to the streets to demand that government do less. (Regnery Publishing, 2011, 424 pp., $30) |
payments alone on our national debt will soon exceed what we spend for national defense, and that those payments will, by the way, entirely fund China's military. When "the Commies take Taiwan," he writes, "suburban families in Albuquerque and small businesses in Pocatello will have paid for it."
