From the Back Cover
Mark Steyn's matchless combination of outrageous wit and an unerring ability to get to the heart of the matter makes him one of the most compelling commentators in the English-speaking world. Devoted readers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia depend on Steyn's unique international perspective to understand the snowballing crisis of the western world. The Undocumented Mark Steyn gathers some of his best writing from the last two decades in a timeless and indispensable guide to the end of the world as we know it. Here you'll find the familiar Steyn themes: the fiscal horror that looms for the Brokest Nation in History, the existential threat of Islamic extremism, the metastasizing tyranny of political correctness, and the west's demographic suicide - "all the fun stuff," delivered in his signature laugh-a-minute apocalyptic doom-mongering style.
This essential guide to all things Steyn also includes pieces on music, film, and show business as well as classic bits from live appearances and his guest-hosting gig as "your Undocumented Anchorman" on The Rush Limbaugh Show. Like his political writing, Steyn's immensely entertaining book and film reviews, musical essays, and biographical sketches illuminate larger truths.
With inimitable flair and remorseless logic, Steyn
- Explains why it matters which culture dominates your country
- Exposes "the near suicidal stupidity of America's immigration regime"
- Shows why you can't have a conservative government in a liberal culture
- Laments the "nationalization of the family," "the defining fact about the decline of the west"
From his remote perch in northern New Hampshire, Steyn would rather write about his favorite songs, but in a world where the Taliban bans music, he reminds us that "even the smallest pleasures have to be earned, and defended... so you need to pitch in on this clash of civilizations thing." And defend he does. His courage in beating back the enemies of free speech in his native Canada and elsewhere has earned him numerous awards and a loyal following around the world.
When Armageddon breaks out, you can't say you weren't warned.
About the Author
The list of Regnery authors reads like a "who's who" of conservative thought, action, and history.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Signs of the Times
Whenever I write about the corrosive effect of Big Government upon the citizenry in Britain, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere, and note that this republic is fairly well advanced upon the same grim trajectory, I get a fair few letters on the lines of: You still don’t get it, Steyn. Americans aren’t Euro-pansies. Or Canadians. We’re not gonna take it.”
I would like to believe it. It’s certainly the case that Americans have more attitude than anybody elseor, at any rate, attitudinal slogans. I saw a fellow in a Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt the other day. He was at LaGuardia, and he was being trod all over, by the obergropinfu¨hrers of the TSA, who had decided to subject him to one of their enhanced pat-downs. There are few sights more dismal than that of a law-abiding citizen having his genitalia pawed by state commissars, but having them pawed while wearing a Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt is certainly one of them.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Don’t Tread on Me.” Also, Don’t Mess with Texas”although the fact that 70 percent of births in Dallas’s largest hospital are Hispanic suggests that someone has messed with Texas in recent years, and fairly comprehensively.
In my own state, the Department of Whatever paid some fancypants advertising agency a couple of million bucks to devise a new tourism slogan. They came up with You’re Going to Love It Here!,” mailed it in, and cashed the check. The state put it up on the big Bienvenue au New Hampshire” sign on I-93 on the Massachusetts border, and ten minutes later outraged Granite Staters were demanding it be removed and replaced with Live Free or Die.” So it was. Americans are still prepared to get in-your-face about their in-your- face slogans.
No other nation has license-plate mottos like Live Free or Die.” No other nation has songs about how I’m proud to be a Canadian” or Australian” or Slovenian”or at least no songs written in the last twenty years in a contemporary pop vernacular. And yet, underneath the attitudinal swagger, Americans areto a degree visiting Continentals often remark uponan extremely compliant people.
For example, if you tootle along sleepy two-lane rural blacktops, the breaks in the solid yellow line are ever farther apart. One can drive for miles and miles without an opportunity to pass. Motoring around Britain and Europe, I quickly appreciate being on a country lane and able to see the country, as opposed to admiring rural America’s unending procession of bend signs, pedestrian- approaching signs, stop signs, stop-sign-ahead signs, stop-sign-ahead-signs-ahead signs, pedestrian-approaching-a-stop-sign signs, designated-scenic-view-ahead signs, parking-restrictions-at-the-designated-scenic-view signs, etc. It takes me a little longer to get used to the idea that I’m free to pass other cars pretty much whenever I want to, as opposed to settling in behind Granny for the rest of the day as the unbroken yellow lines stretch lazily down broad, straight, empty rural blacktop, across the horizon and into infinity. Want to pass on a blind bend in beautiful County Down or the Dordogne? Hey, it’s your call. Your decision. Fancy that.
Italian tanks may have five gears for reverse and only one for forward, but in a Fiat the size of your cupholder it’s a different story. The French may plant trees on the Champs-E´lyse´es because the Germans like to march in the shade, but they’ll still pass you at 120 on the Grande Corniche. When you’ve done your last cheese-eating surrender-monkey crack, that cloud in your windshield is a dinged deux chevaux leaving your fully loaded SUV for dust. Continentals would never for a moment tolerate the restrictive driving conditions of the United States, and they don’t understand why Americans do. Mon dieu, is not America the land of the car chase?
Gitcha motor running
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure. . . .
Actually, America is the land of the car-chase movie. Off-screen, it’s a more sedate affair. Gitcha motor running, head out on the highway, shift down to third gear as there’s a stop-sign-ahead sign ahead. At dinner in Paris, I listened to a Frenchman and an Italian while away the entre´e chortling at how docile and deferential Americans are.
Most of all they were amused by the constant refrain from the American right that if the nation doesn’t change course it will end up as mired in statism as Europe. Americans love Big Government as much as Europeans,” one chap told me. The only difference is that Americans refuse to admit it.” He attributed this to our national myth-makingI’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” Yet, on that two-lane blacktop, unlike the despised French surrender monkeys, Americans are not to be trusted to reach their own judgment on when it’s safe to pull out and leave Gran’ma eating dust. Odd.
But these days what can Americans be trusted with? The U.S. has more highway signs than almost any other country: not just mile markers but fifth- of-a-mile markers; not just Stop” signs, but four-way Stop” signs. America also has the worst automobile fatality rate in the developed world, in part because there’s so much fascinating reading material on the shoulder. Our automobile fatality rate is three times that of the Netherlands, about the same as Albania’s, down at sixty-second in the global rankings, just ahead of Tajiki- stan and Papua New Guinea. President Obama warns that unless we invest” more in roads, we risk becoming a nation of potholes”just like Albania. Except that there’ll be federally mandated Pothole Ahead” signs in front of each one.
You may have noticed those new lime green pedestrian signs sprouting across the fruited plain, in many cases where no pedestrian has been glimpsed in years. Some new federal regulation requires them to be posted wherever pedestrians are to be found, or might potentially be found in the years ahead. I just drove through Barre, Vermont, which used to be the granite capital of the state but, as is the way, now offers the usual sad Main Street of vacant storefronts and non-profit community-assistance joints. For some reason, it has faded pedestrian crossings painted across the street every few yards. So, in full compliance with the Bureau of Compliance, those new signs have been stuck in front of each one, warning the motorist of looming pedestrians, spring- ing from curb to pavement like Alpine chamois.
The oncoming army of lurid lime signs uglies up an already decrepit Main Street. They dominate the scene, lining up in one’s windshield with the math- ematical precision of Busby Berkeley’s chorines in Gold Diggers of 1935. And they make America look ridiculous. They are, in fact, double signs: One lime green diamond with the silhouette of a pedestrian, and then below it a lime rectangle with a diagonal arrow, pointing to the ground on which the hypo- thetical pedestrian is likely to be hypothetically perambulating. The lower sign is an exquisitely condescending touch. A nation whose citizenry is as stupid as those markers suggest they are cannot survive. But, if we’re not that stupid, why aren’t we outraged?
What’s the cost of those double signsthree hundred bucks per? That’s the best part of four grand wasted on one little strip of one little street in one small town. It’s not hard to see why we’re the Brokest Nation in History: You can stand at almost any four-way across the land, look in any direction, and see that level of statist waste staring you in the face. Doesn’t that count as being trod on? They’re certainly treading on your kids. In fact, they’ve stomped whatever future they might have had into the asphalt.
A variant of my readers’ traditional protestation runs like this: Americans aren’t Europeans, Steyn. We have the Second Amendment, and they don’t.” Very true. And Vermont has one of the highest rates of firearms ownership in the nation. And Howard Dean has a better record on gun rights than Rudy Giuliani. Or Chris Christie. But one would be reluctant to proffer the Green Mountain State as evidence of any correlation between gun rights and small government. And Continentals don’t see a gun rack in your pickup as much consolation for not being able to pass for the next twenty-eight miles.
If I’ve sounded a wee bit overwrought in recent columns, it’s because America is seizing up before our eyes. And I’m a little bewildered by how many Americans can’t see it. I think about that chap at LaGuardia with Don’t Tread on Me” on his chest, and government bureaucrats in his pants. And I wonder if America’s exceptional attitudinal swagger isn’t providing a discreet cover for the withering of liberty. Sometimes an in-your-face attitude blinds you to what’s going on under your nose.
