The End of the World as We Know It
Welcome to the “post-American era.”
By Mark Steyn
According to an Earth Day survey, one third of schoolchildren between the ages of six and eleven think the earth will have been destroyed by the time they grow up. That’s great news, isn’t it? Not for the earth, I mean, but for “environmental awareness.” Congratulations to Al Gore, the Sierra Club, and the eco-propagandists of the public-education system in doing such a terrific job of traumatizing America’s moppets. Traditionally, most of the folks you see wandering the streets proclaiming the end of the world is nigh tend to be getting up there in years. It’s quite something to have persuaded millions of first-graders that their best days are behind them.
Call me crazy, but I’ll bet that in 15-20 years the planet will still be here along with most of the “environment” — your flora and fauna, your polar bears and three-toed tree sloths and whatnot. But geopolitically we’re in for a hell of a ride, and the world we end up with is unlikely to be as congenial as most Americans have gotten used to.
For example, Hillary Clinton said the other day that Pakistan posed a “mortal threat” to . . . Afghanistan? India? No, to the entire world! To listen to her, you’d think Pakistan was as scary as l’il Jimmy in the second grade’s mom’s SUV. She has a point: Asif Ali Zardari, the guy who’s nominally running the country, isn’t running anything. He’s ceding more and more turf to the local branch office of the Taliban. When the topic turns up in the news, we usually get vague references to the pro-Osama crowd controlling much of the “northwest,” which makes it sound as if these guys are the wilds of rural Idaho to Zardari’s Beltway. In fact, they’re now within some 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad — or, in American terms, a couple of I-95 exits north of Baltimore: In other words, they’re within striking distance of the administrative center of a nation of over 165 million people — and its nuclear weapons. That’s the “mortal threat.”
What’s going to stop them? Well, not Zardari. Nor his “summit” in Washington with President Obama and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. The creation of Pakistan was the worst mistake of post-war British imperial policy, and all that’s happened in the six decades since is that its pathologies have burst free of its borders and gone regional, global, and soon perhaps nuclear. Does the Obama administration have even a limited contingency plan for the nukes if — when — the Pakistani state collapses?
It would be reassuring to think so. But I wonder.
What’s the greater likelihood? That, in ten years’ time, things in Pakistan will be better? Or much worse? That nuclearization by basket-case dictatorships from Pyongyang to Tehran will have advanced, or been contained? That the bleak demographic arithmetic at the heart of Europe and Japan’s economic woes will have accelerated, or been reversed? That a resurgent Islam’s assaults on free speech and other rights (symbolized by the recent U.N. support for a global Islamic blasphemy law) will have taken hold in the western world, or been forced to retreat?
A betting man would check the “worse” box. Because resisting the present careless drift would require global leadership. And 100 days into a new presidency, Barack Obama is giving strong signals to the world that we have entered what Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post calls “the post-American era.” At the time of Gordon Brown’s visit to Washington, London took umbrage at an Obama official’s off-the-record sneer to a Fleet Street reporter that “there’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.” Andy McCarthy of National Review made the sharp observation that, never mind the British, this was how the administration felt about their own country, too: America is just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. In Europe, the president was asked if he believed in “American exceptionalism,” and replied: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
Gee, thanks. A simple “no” would have sufficed. The president of the United States is telling us that American exceptionalism is no more than national chauvinism, a bit of flag-waving, of no more import than the Slovenes supporting the Slovene soccer team and the Papuans the Papuan soccer team. This means something. The world has had two millennia to learn to live without “Greek exceptionalism.” It’s having to get used to post-exceptional America rather more hurriedly.
It makes sense from Obama’s point of view: On the domestic scene, he’s determined on a transformational presidency, one that will remake the American people’s relationship to their national government (“federal” doesn’t seem the quite the word anymore) in terms of health care, education, eco-totalitarianism, state control of the economy, and much else. With a domestic agenda as bulked up as that, the rest of the world just gets in the way.
You’ll recall that, in a gimmick entirely emblematic of post-exceptional America, Hillary Clinton gave the Russians a (mistranslated) “Reset” button. The button has certainly been “reset” — to September 10th, to a legalistic rearview mirror approach to the “War on Terror,” in which investigating Bush officials will consume far more time and effort than de-nuking Iran. The secretary of Homeland Security’s ludicrous re-classification of terrorism as “man-caused disaster,” and her boneheaded statement that the September 11th bombers had entered America from Canada (which would presumably make 9/11 a “Canadian man-caused disaster”) exemplifies the administration’s cheery indifference to all that Bush-era downer stuff.
But it’s not September 10th. In Pakistan, a great jewel is within the barbarians’ reach, the first of many. At the U.N., the Islamic bloc’s proscriptions on free speech will make it harder even to talk about these issues. In much of the West, demographic decay means the good times are never coming back: Recession is permanent.
Hey, what’s the big deal? Britain and France have been on the geopolitical downward slope for most of the last century and life still seems pretty agreeable. Well, yes. But that’s in part because, when a fading Britannia handed the baton to the new U.S. superpower, it was one of the least disruptive transfers of global dominance in human history. In the “post-American era,” to whom does the baton get passed now? (Z: As Obama neglects to figure out where Gitmo detainees might go after announcing to the world he's shutting down Gitmo, there seems to be a lack of "thinking about consequences" in this administration, I believe the Left has also been unable to extrapolate that when America's no longer the world power, who WILL it be? It won't be the UN, no matter HOW much they dream for that..China? Russia?)
Since January, President Obama and his team have schmoozed, ineffectively, American enemies over allies in almost every corner of the globe. If you’re, say, India, following Obama’s apology tour even as you watch the Taliban advancing on those Pakistani nukes, would you want to bet the future on American resolve? In Delhi, in Tokyo, in Prague, in Tel Aviv, in Bogota, they’ve looked at these first 100 days and drawn their own conclusions.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn
Call me crazy, but I’ll bet that in 15-20 years the planet will still be here along with most of the “environment” — your flora and fauna, your polar bears and three-toed tree sloths and whatnot. But geopolitically we’re in for a hell of a ride, and the world we end up with is unlikely to be as congenial as most Americans have gotten used to.
For example, Hillary Clinton said the other day that Pakistan posed a “mortal threat” to . . . Afghanistan? India? No, to the entire world! To listen to her, you’d think Pakistan was as scary as l’il Jimmy in the second grade’s mom’s SUV. She has a point: Asif Ali Zardari, the guy who’s nominally running the country, isn’t running anything. He’s ceding more and more turf to the local branch office of the Taliban. When the topic turns up in the news, we usually get vague references to the pro-Osama crowd controlling much of the “northwest,” which makes it sound as if these guys are the wilds of rural Idaho to Zardari’s Beltway. In fact, they’re now within some 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad — or, in American terms, a couple of I-95 exits north of Baltimore: In other words, they’re within striking distance of the administrative center of a nation of over 165 million people — and its nuclear weapons. That’s the “mortal threat.”
What’s going to stop them? Well, not Zardari. Nor his “summit” in Washington with President Obama and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. The creation of Pakistan was the worst mistake of post-war British imperial policy, and all that’s happened in the six decades since is that its pathologies have burst free of its borders and gone regional, global, and soon perhaps nuclear. Does the Obama administration have even a limited contingency plan for the nukes if — when — the Pakistani state collapses?
It would be reassuring to think so. But I wonder.
What’s the greater likelihood? That, in ten years’ time, things in Pakistan will be better? Or much worse? That nuclearization by basket-case dictatorships from Pyongyang to Tehran will have advanced, or been contained? That the bleak demographic arithmetic at the heart of Europe and Japan’s economic woes will have accelerated, or been reversed? That a resurgent Islam’s assaults on free speech and other rights (symbolized by the recent U.N. support for a global Islamic blasphemy law) will have taken hold in the western world, or been forced to retreat?
A betting man would check the “worse” box. Because resisting the present careless drift would require global leadership. And 100 days into a new presidency, Barack Obama is giving strong signals to the world that we have entered what Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post calls “the post-American era.” At the time of Gordon Brown’s visit to Washington, London took umbrage at an Obama official’s off-the-record sneer to a Fleet Street reporter that “there’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.” Andy McCarthy of National Review made the sharp observation that, never mind the British, this was how the administration felt about their own country, too: America is just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. In Europe, the president was asked if he believed in “American exceptionalism,” and replied: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
Gee, thanks. A simple “no” would have sufficed. The president of the United States is telling us that American exceptionalism is no more than national chauvinism, a bit of flag-waving, of no more import than the Slovenes supporting the Slovene soccer team and the Papuans the Papuan soccer team. This means something. The world has had two millennia to learn to live without “Greek exceptionalism.” It’s having to get used to post-exceptional America rather more hurriedly.
It makes sense from Obama’s point of view: On the domestic scene, he’s determined on a transformational presidency, one that will remake the American people’s relationship to their national government (“federal” doesn’t seem the quite the word anymore) in terms of health care, education, eco-totalitarianism, state control of the economy, and much else. With a domestic agenda as bulked up as that, the rest of the world just gets in the way.
You’ll recall that, in a gimmick entirely emblematic of post-exceptional America, Hillary Clinton gave the Russians a (mistranslated) “Reset” button. The button has certainly been “reset” — to September 10th, to a legalistic rearview mirror approach to the “War on Terror,” in which investigating Bush officials will consume far more time and effort than de-nuking Iran. The secretary of Homeland Security’s ludicrous re-classification of terrorism as “man-caused disaster,” and her boneheaded statement that the September 11th bombers had entered America from Canada (which would presumably make 9/11 a “Canadian man-caused disaster”) exemplifies the administration’s cheery indifference to all that Bush-era downer stuff.
But it’s not September 10th. In Pakistan, a great jewel is within the barbarians’ reach, the first of many. At the U.N., the Islamic bloc’s proscriptions on free speech will make it harder even to talk about these issues. In much of the West, demographic decay means the good times are never coming back: Recession is permanent.
Hey, what’s the big deal? Britain and France have been on the geopolitical downward slope for most of the last century and life still seems pretty agreeable. Well, yes. But that’s in part because, when a fading Britannia handed the baton to the new U.S. superpower, it was one of the least disruptive transfers of global dominance in human history. In the “post-American era,” to whom does the baton get passed now? (Z: As Obama neglects to figure out where Gitmo detainees might go after announcing to the world he's shutting down Gitmo, there seems to be a lack of "thinking about consequences" in this administration, I believe the Left has also been unable to extrapolate that when America's no longer the world power, who WILL it be? It won't be the UN, no matter HOW much they dream for that..China? Russia?)
Since January, President Obama and his team have schmoozed, ineffectively, American enemies over allies in almost every corner of the globe. If you’re, say, India, following Obama’s apology tour even as you watch the Taliban advancing on those Pakistani nukes, would you want to bet the future on American resolve? In Delhi, in Tokyo, in Prague, in Tel Aviv, in Bogota, they’ve looked at these first 100 days and drawn their own conclusions.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn
11 comments:
Z, great post.
Well, this is the second time we've been given a decade to exist. The last time was in the early nineties when Al Gore announced if we didn't take action, the world would come to an end in ten years. Oops, whew, we dodged that bullet!
Those eleven year olds have seven years left, they must be getting worried huh?
Of course as Mr. Steyn points out, the cure for this doomsday, will surely destroy the world as we know it. Oh, we'll still be here, the sun will shine, the rain will fall, and the snow will as well.
But the human hubris at work today, it seems, is determined in a sort of self fulfilling prophecy.
To make the human condition in the West less bearable, less prosperous, and generally forced to live under conditions more comparable with the third world.
Combine that with a forseeable future with rogue countries who live to worship death, arm themselves with nuclear weapons and have decided that we should die before they do.
Now, as our current President has made us less safe, and seen to it we will be less prosperous, and less well prepared to defend ourselves, we see what misguided hatefilled men can accomplish when they set their minds to it.
However, nothing is as inevitable as it seems. Those six to eleven year olds, once they're over the shock of still being here and that the earth is still viable, will have a lot on their plate.
Because I believe in the American will to prevail, they will get to work and build rather than tear down.
They will not be satisfied with the status quo, and definitely will no longer believe in Gore's Fairy Tales.
It's up to us to give them that chance. It's up to us to fight every inch of the way, to resist such ignorance and self-flagellation.
And those children have to see us doing it. They have to be disabused of the stupidity of a doomday cult, which is what these people are. Power hungry pied pipers leading fools over a cliff.
If it weren't so serious, it would be laughable.
Pris
Pris, they'd have to not only be disabused but they'd have to be homeschooled in order not to be indoctrinated into little sheep who are glad to go down the path THE ONE is leading them down....
Our kids don't KNOW their history, they don't know the constitution, they appreciate very little...a lot of them don't even understand that they're luckier than any kid their age in the world just because they live here.
This has to be changed and I'm not sure hardship coming from obama's actions in the future will help...I'm not sure our kids have what it takes to overcome hardship.
I adore Mark Steyn..great piece Z!!
Z, they don't really have to be homeschooled, the influence at home just has to be stronger than the influence at school.
And, don't be shocked, but, parents can use ridicule too! Yes, one of Alinsky's rules. I didn't know about that at the time I picked my grandson up at school. I was waiting on the sidewalk and heard from the auditorium
microphone, "DON'T FLUSH IT DOWN", etc. the screamer was telling the kids not to flush, wait until the day is done. Stuff like that.
I made a joke out of it. When we were home, and he flushed the toilet I said "you flushed? Oh my God what will we do, what will we do" laughing and he was laughing. I asked him "did you learn anything today besides how not to flush toilets"?
When he said yes I said, "Halleluiah, he learned something else, praise be"!
He never took that lesson seriously, because it became a big joke. Ridicule can work both ways.
Some might say, it's not good to teach them not to take teachers seriously, but I say, they should stick to teaching academics, and not political agendas.
Besides my grandson was respectful, he just listened to us about these things more than to his teachers. A strong family influence will win every time. That's why they want these kids from preschool age.
The things we want them to learn we can teach them at home, even if they go to public school. It's up to us to teach them history. I bought books and had books that I saw to it he read. We just have to be committed that's all.
Pris
Great post Z.
The issue with the kids being indoctrinated is sick. Why would they tell kids this. If it were true you wouldn't tell your own child, you would let them live their lives in peace. The only real conclusion is that it is indoctrination and they want to get them when they are young.
... ah yes, Pakistani nukes. They tested their first during the administration of the fool St. Ronnie Raygun, didn't they? Does seem this is a bipartisan problem.
Not that the world has much of an answer to the proliferation but it is interesting that former crappy movie critic turned pundit, Steyn wants to make this a completely Obama issue.
The failure to look at the totality of the problem is a good point to start in your search to understand why conservatives are laughed at today.
Just as an aside. The countries critical to our progress of defusing militancy in the Muslim world are Turkey and Indonesia.
Hard liners have gained power there even though they are a distinct minority. Obama's decision to ratchet DOWN the idiotic rhetoric is exactly the correct decision.
Be happy the adults are back.
Ducky, you're so wrong o this. Turkey is going more and more hard line muslim and you know it...why obfuscate?
It's amazing, but the government has gone far toward theocracy again, after some years of promising secularism.
"adults" know geopolitics and never appease and NEVER apologize, not when their country's been a star in this universe. NEVER.
I hate to admit it, but I believe he is right on the money. The best evidence I can point to is what happened Nov.4.
The desperately sad thing about the conflict in Pakistan is that so few in the western world even know how close they are to a nightmare scenario. Even worse if that scenario were ever to eventuate, no one but America has the power to actually do anything about it, in the western world.
But hey, we have free healthcare you know. Will the western world fall, i'll tell you this much, it seems that it wants to.
MK, if the Taliban and other radicals overcome Pakistan, that's that...pakistan's got nukes but we can't do a thing about it because the left would think we're butting in where we're not welcome.
I guess losing Cleveland isn't worth doing all we can do. Rather lost a few million Americans than tick the leftist world off. Righteousness need not apply. :-(
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