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After America: the book of 2011 ( Mark Steyn )
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk ^ | September 17th, 2011 | Daniel Hannan

Posted on 09/17/2011 7:42:10 AM PDT by Para-Ord.45

Even when Mark Steyn is utterly wrong, he's a delight to read. In 2002, for example, he convinced himself that Osama bin Laden had been turned to talcum powder by an American missile. For years, it was one of his favourite motifs ('he's bin Laden to rest and is pushing up the daisies' etc). So, when the old monster was actually dropped in May, I went immediately to the Steyn website to see what he'd make of it. Sure enough, he was ready with a well-crafted gag: 'I jumped the gun, much like Osama's missus in Abbottabad'.

No one else could have you snorting with laughter as you read through such misery. Steyn has a gift for turning complex ideas into amusing one-liners. This blog has struggled for years to explain that politicians who cant about fairness don't mean equal treatment or justice or, indeed, any practical outcome whatever. What they really mean is that they're nice people, and they're prepared to prove how nice they are with your money. 'Fairness', in political dialogue, signifies a form of narcissism. Steyn brilliantly condenses this notion into eleven words: 'Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?' So, is he right? Are we doomed?

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: afteramerica; marksteyn

1 posted on 09/17/2011 7:42:16 AM PDT by Para-Ord.45
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To: Para-Ord.45

I’m #1 on the library reserve list now. Should have it by Wednesday.


2 posted on 09/17/2011 7:44:24 AM PDT by Tax-chick (I welcome our new reptilian overlords. They are so quiet!)
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To: Para-Ord.45

“Doomed”? I don’t think so. Many would like us to believe that but I don’t and never will. Listen to the following and decide whether you have a choice or not. http://www.greatdanepro.com/Pray%20For%20America/index.htm


3 posted on 09/17/2011 7:46:01 AM PDT by RC2
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To: Para-Ord.45

I’m still not totally convinced that we really got bin Laden in Pakistan.

As is typical of the Obama mis-administration, the best evidence was spirited away, then dumped at sea before the American public could see it. Then, they refused to release the photos of his body.

I smelled a rat then, and I’ve seen nothing since, to remove that stench.


4 posted on 09/17/2011 7:51:14 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Para-Ord.45
In every decade, there have been best-sellers prophesying overpopulation, demographic collapse, vaccine-resistant bugs, asteroid strikes, ice ages, global overheating, famine, pestilence and war. They've all been wrong.

And in every decade (though not in the author's personal experience, obviously) some of these things have happened. "Overpopulation" is shorthand for poverty and hunger, and one can always find that somewhere. We've had demographic collapse, often in conjunction with incurable disease, pestilence, war, and catastophic governmental psychosis.

Remember the bubonic plague? 1/3 of the population of Cambodia eliminated by the Khmer Rouge? The *falling* populations of Russia and the -stans and -jans? What used to be the Roman Empire?

In summary, often the bad stuff happens, and sometimes it happens to those who are sure it will never happen to them.

5 posted on 09/17/2011 7:52:21 AM PDT by Tax-chick (I welcome our new reptilian overlords. They are so quiet!)
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To: Para-Ord.45

I like Hannan, but I think he missed one vital point of the book...

Europe has enjoyed “genteel decline”, but only because the USA was there to take over as a benign and friendly superpower. The US has no such hope of genteel decline, because whoever takes over (i.e. China) is not going to be friendly.

The decline here will be fast and miserable if we don’t stop it very soon.


6 posted on 09/17/2011 7:53:22 AM PDT by NRPM (We have to come to terms with the fact that governments have made promises they will not keep.)
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To: Windflier

Sometimes I wonder if my judgment is clouded by my total disdain for mr obama. But I want a body, I want proof. He has lied and misled us so often, why should I believe this? And if it were any other president who tried this crap, the media would be yelling it daily from the housetop.


7 posted on 09/17/2011 8:05:55 AM PDT by myrabach
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To: Windflier

I totally agree. This is the slimiest administration in the history of our nation and the getting of bin Laden was a tad too convenient. No evidence except for the no-doubt honorable Seals, evidence dumped at sea to comport with some phony ginned-up Muslim tradition, making it happen immediately, etc. Rat, indeed.


8 posted on 09/17/2011 8:13:15 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Windflier

Just so. What proof do we have that Obama was killed in Pakistan? Where’s the body? Why did they dispose of it?

I think it’s likely enough, but I hate that kind of liberal self-confidence. They are entirely certain that Bush lied, but that Al Gore and Barack Hussein Obama always tell the truth.

Yeah, sure.

And Steyn was right about one thing. If Obama wasn’t dead, he was out of the picture, and others were running the show.


9 posted on 09/17/2011 8:16:19 AM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius.)
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To: myrabach

Agreed. I honestly believe that a deal was struck with AQ. No evidence of OBL’s death, but the witnesses are all dead, there’s no proper investigation into their deaths, BHO is “the president that got Bin Laden” and now the US is in negotiations with the Taliban? Please. If it looks like a duck...


10 posted on 09/17/2011 8:18:32 AM PDT by Semper Vigilantis (Osama Bin Laden is alive and well in a Federal Witness Protection Program)
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To: myrabach
I want a body, I want proof. He has lied and misled us so often, why should I believe this?

I think extreme skepticism and doubt is reasonable, under the circumstances. The evidence that was given to the public wouldn't hold up in a court of law, and neither should it convince Americans of Obama's claim.

Everything with this administration is smoke and mirrors. Don't buy their spin? You're a racist. Don't accept Zero's bc as the genuine article? You're a kook. Rightfully point out that Bozo and his minions have knocked the wheels off the US economy? You're a Bush apologist.

Fortunately, the majority of Americans aren't buying what Barry's selling anymore, and are set to hand him a landslide defeat next year.

11 posted on 09/17/2011 8:18:45 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Windflier

I agree


12 posted on 09/17/2011 8:20:42 AM PDT by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
No evidence except for the no-doubt honorable Seals

Who very conveniently, can't talk about it.

13 posted on 09/17/2011 8:21:04 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

And now those Seals are dead.


14 posted on 09/17/2011 8:22:20 AM PDT by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: yldstrk
And now those Seals are dead.

Dare we say, conveniently? < /tin foil>

15 posted on 09/17/2011 8:32:34 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Para-Ord.45
The more I think about this, the more I find that I belief the author understands wrongly. For example:

People generally don't go through the arduous process of moving country in order to recreate the conditions they have just fled.

Has he been in a Moslem-controlled area of London or any other major European city? The conditions more and more replicate the slums of Islamabad, Cairo, or Algiers. The physical infrastructure may not have fallen to Third World levels, yet, but that is coming as the culturally-exclusive resident rebel against Western modernity.

Something similar can happen with other groups of immigrants. People may come to the US from Mexico or Central America without intending to recreate the poverty, inefficiency, corruption, and violence from which they fled, but if they do not also leave behind the cultural practices and habits of thinking and behavior that have made Mexico and Central America what they are, they will in many ways find themselves back where they started.

16 posted on 09/17/2011 8:34:21 AM PDT by Tax-chick (I welcome our new reptilian overlords. They are so quiet!)
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To: Para-Ord.45

I’m reading it now, on Kindle. It’s hard to put down.
I’t five dollars cheaper than the blond’s book and fascinating reading. Interesting factoid: both Beck and Steyn are high school graduates.


17 posted on 09/17/2011 9:07:55 AM PDT by tumblindice
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