Arguments Summed Up: After America

Title & Author: After America: Get Ready for Armageddon by Mark Steyn

Genre: Nonfiction--Current Events & Politics

My Rating: 9.0

Summed Up: Mark Steyn’s outlook in regard to the future of Western Civilization has not improved. Having previously written a book foretelling the end of most Western societies by willful suicide (America Alone), Steyn is now adding the United States herself to the ever growing list of doomed states. While the crushing national of debt of America will hasten the societal collapse that will lead to increased crime, poverty, unemployment, and desperation among the citizens, that is not the biggest problem. As Steyn says, “A society can cope with corroded infrastructure and a devalued currency more easily than with corroded liberty and a devalued citizen.” Indeed, the most serious problem with big government is that it creates small citizens.

Throughout the book Steyn frequently returns to H.G. Wells’ fanciful The Time Machine. If a man from that period, 1895, were to travel to 1950, he would be overwhelmed by the technological advancements. Now imagine if that same man were to travel ahead another sixty or so years to our day, what would he see? While he may see some minor improvements in some technologies, overall, the world would look basically the same. Steyn argues that increasing government intervention into the private lives, ideas, and business of the citizenry has stifled innovation. Just think of the horrendous process that new medications must go through before finally being declared “safe” by the all-knowing government. The human spirit is being overwhelmed by bureaucracy. We are no longer a society that accomplishes much of anything because of government coddling and smothering.

The government has a vested interest in keeping its citizenry repressed. Its power rests on the people needing them for the basics in life: food, employment, health care. If people can do things on their own then they no longer need the government and the power the political class clings to is lost. Thus, big government, in collusion with a leftist judiciary and leftist labor groups work to keep the people subdued.

There may be hope, however. As Steyn says, “America was the only nation in the developed world where millions of people took to the streets to tell the state: I can do just fine if you control-freak statists would…just stay the hell out of my life and my pocket.” Rather than relying on the state to do things for us, making our citizenship atrophy like an unused muscle, we must rely on ourselves. Or, in other words: “Screw the state. Let’s do it ourselves.”

You can read my review of After America here.