Mark Steyn is my favorite contemporary writer about politics and society—and that's saying something since I read just about every book by just about every conservative writer and have done so for the last 30 years.
What makes Mark unique? Two things: learning and wit. In fact, he reminds me of my all-time favorite author, G.K. Chesterton. Both find humor in the midst of the most serious situations and illuminate the darkest recesses of our predicaments with light from history and literature...and faith.
Earlier this year, Mark published an essay that caused as much comment as any in the last decade. “It's the Demography, Stupid” warned of the West's coming collapse with these memorable opening sentences: “Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.”
And that's the theme of his new book, America Alone, which has the stunning subtitle: The End of the World As We Know It. Mark believes that birth rates in Europe are such that in a very, very short time the Continent's Muslim immigrants will outnumber the indigenous populations of Spanish, French, Dutch and so on—and that this is not a good thing. What really matters though is why this is happening.
Steyn believes that this demographic decline (in which nominally Christian Europeans have negative birth rates and Muslim immigrants have positive ones) is joined with economic stagnation due to welfare-state policies and spiritual malaise due to rampant secularism to produce nothing short of doom for much of the Old World. As he writes: “By 2050, 60 percent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles.”
God willing, this won't happen in America. But one thing is for sure: we will stand alone. And we'd better do so proudly and bravely.—Brad Miner