Mark Steyn : Dependence Day (the British are losing their civilizational will to live)

The New Criterion ^ | 01/19/2011 | Mark Steyn

[carton253]

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[dforest]

Frightening warning from Mark Steyn.

Reality bites.

[GOPJ]

Why is Haiti Haiti and Barbados Barbados?

With those few words, multiculturalism is defeated...

[dforest]

An irony is that too many of those teen hands could not read or comprehend this piece.

I guess that makes Steyn’s point in a way.

[GOPJ]

It’s not likely to go that way next time round. And “next time round” is already under way. We are coming to the end of a two-century Anglosphere dominance, and of a world whose order and prosperity many people think of as part of a broad, general trend but which, in fact, derive from a very particular cultural inheritance and may well not survive it.

I wish this could be required reading for High School students - they'll be the ones dealing with the consequences of our fall...

[jimt]

Great post !

[GOPJ]

The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority.

I think you missed on Steyn's points...

[standing man]

Bravo Mark
In most of those I speak to I see the attitude That nothing will change because we live in the U.S.A.
Where the schools fail it is IMPERATIVE that we teach our children the history of this country and the principles of its founding.

stand tall

[Earthdweller]

It would be really easy to get despondent after reading this.

The collective has given up on life but we don't have to go down with them. What good would it do?

Have your moment of realization and then let's continue to right this ship.

[PogySailor]

bttt

[Think free or die]

"It would be really easy to get despondent after reading this. The collective has given up on life but we don't have to go down with them. What good would it do? Have your moment of realization and then let's continue to right this ship. "

Exactly so. Furthermore, America is not Britain, nor are we burdened with the devastation that Britain faced after two world wars in close succession.

[andy58-in-nh]

Mark Steyn has an uncanny ability to stun his readers with his ability to explain existential truths and to describe profound historical changes; he often does so by subtlety mocking popular narratives that only simulate analysis and the shallow truisms that too often pass today for wisdom.

By viewing the world at such length, he effectively substitutes true sobriety for the affected seriousness of modern political discourse. He explains rather than observes, and does so without resort to "on-one-hand-but-then-on-the-other" false equivalences, and also without a hint of the Progressive fallacy, by which our modern society is held to have "evolved" and thus be more presumptively worthy of praise, and less of judgment.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Exactly so. Furthermore, America is not Britain, nor are we burdened with the devastation that Britain faced after two world wars in close succession.

Which makes America's decline all the more pathetic. At least Britain had the excuse of having fought two devastating and crippling wars for its own decline. What has America done to warrant the course it is going down?