Book Review: After America--Get Ready for Armageddon

Reading Mark Steyn is the "...spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down..."  And the medicine--reigning in America's debt crisis--is a dose of bad medicine indeed. 

I've enjoyed Mark's columns for several years now.  In fact, he's the only columnist I read on my days off.  At least he makes me laugh when commenting on today's grim news.  I also admire the way he manages to tie seemingly unrelated facts together and present the reader with a tapestry of western decline and rising Islamic militancy.

The only potential blemish his latest book After America--Get Ready for Armageddon , is that if you've read Mark's columns regularly, then you'll be re-reading them here.  But then again, some things bear repeating, especially since we're still on-course with a, "damn the deficit and full-speed ahead" attitude, in following Western Europe "over the falls."

 I give this book, the "sequel" to America Alone, a 5-star rating.  Published in August of last year, apparently on the day the S&P downgraded America's Triple-A credit rating, 107 reviewers agree with my assessment.  Another 19 reviewers give this book a 4-star rating.  While 7 x 3-star raters thought they've "read this all before."

However, not everyone is happy with Mark's latest work.  He's earned the ire of 9 x 2-star and 17 x 1-star raters.  Reading some of their comments, it appears to me that most of these folks are not familiar with Mark's style and After America is the first thing they've read. 

What's Mark's vision of Armageddon?

He doesn't get into specific causes, but describes infrastructure and societal decay with vivid comparisons to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine.  Some critics contend that western civilization can continue the current spending spree and use the European Union (EU) bailout of Greece as an example of how to prevent countries from defaulting.

The problem is:  If America files for bankruptcy, who will bail us out?

China?

Now such an outcome, in and of itself, shouldn't plunge the world into a post-apacolyptic bloodbath.  However, it would put America in a compromising position and would put us on the receiving end of our own Suez-like Crisis.

That is, we'll be confronted with a situation--and get told to back down.  From this point on, its anyone's guess what the world will be like after America relinquishes it's dominant role.  When this occurs, us like-minded folks agree, the resulting "new world (dis)order" won't be a peaceful one.