America Alone - 4

At the end of the second part in Steyn's book, he lays out to the reader "The Four Horsemen of the Eupocalypse;" in other words, what are the four main factors that will cause the European Union to crash and burn within the next couple decades (as Steyn cynically predicts).  According to the biblical story, the four horsemen are Death, Famine, War, and Conquest.  Death is fairly self-explanatory.  As aforementioned in previous posts, Steyn believes that not enough Europeans are procreating to replace those who have died.  "One would assume a demographic disaster is the sort of thing that sneaks up on you because you're having a grand old time: you stayed in university till you were thirty-eight, you took early retirement at forty-five, you had two months a year on the Côte d'Azur, you drank wine, you ate foie gras and truffles, you marched in the street for a twenty-eight-hour work week...It was all such great fun there was no time to have children.  You thought the couple in the next street would, or the next town, or in all those bucolic villages you pass through on the way to your weekend home" (109).  The demographic problem is not well-known in general, so I would agree that it has snuck up on Europeans, and even on us to an extent.  In the United States, the number of children per parent is 2.11, and it's most likely in decline.  Our so-called strength in numbers is becoming slowly but surely weaker.  In terms of famine, Steyn mentions the overall deterioration of European economy and society.  "Think of the European Union as that flat in Marseilles, and the Eutopian political consensus as the stiff, and lavish government largesse as that French guy's dead mom's benefits [from welfare],"  Steyn says.  "Take the one-time economic powerhouse of the Continent - Germany - and pick any of the usual indicators of a healthy advanced industrial democracy: Unemployment?  The highest since the 1930s.  House prices?  Down.  New car registration?  Nearly 15 percent lower in 2005 than in 1999.  General nuttiness?  A third of Germans under thirty think the United States government was responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11" (113).  People see Europe as a success story today, but peel back the shiny peel and you've got a rotting continent.

In terms of war, Steyn believes that the "Islamification" of Europe is happening quickly and causing tensions.  He claims that Europe is not multicultural but rather bicultural: "You have hitherto homogeneous Scandinavian societies whose cities have become 40 percent Muslim in the space of a generation.  Imagine colonial New England when it was still the Mayflower crowd and one day they woke up and noticed that all the Aldens and Standishes, Cookes and Winslows were in their fifties and sixties and all the young guys were called Ahmed and Mohammed" (118).  Personally, I don't quite believe that all European nations are bicultural, and definitely not America.  I'm not sure how it is in Europe, but there is still plenty of tensions and racism between whites and blacks in America; it's not just Muslim-Americans versus Americans.  Steyn is definitely not one of those advocates for diversity.  He thinks that multiculturalism "...gives us the worst of all worlds: the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women - combined with the worst attributes of Western culture - license and self-gratification" (120).  His viewpoint here is incredibly cynical, and I'm not quite sure if I agree with him here or not.  There are downfalls to diversity, but there are also plenty of benefits, such as people being immersed into different backgrounds of the world.  I'm a bit like Steyn though in the sense that I don't really advocate for "diversity" or "coexistence."  Finally, in terms of conquest, Steyn is generally referring to the conquest of Islam over Europe and the conquest of Europeans over themselves.  Steyn is foreseeing a new Dark Ages.  He asserts that Europe is imploding itself: "The trouble with the social-democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything" (126).  I could not agree more on that one.  When government gets more into people's personal lives almost like they're our parents, they're acquiring more political power.  As proven time and time again, political power is addictive, and eventually, the government (or specific individuals in the government) will want more and more.