If you're familiar with the work of Mark Steyn, there's probably no need to read this review. You either love him or you hate him - no one is ambivalent about his provocative, thought-provoking, and bitingly funny newspaper and magazine columns.
If you aren't familiar with his work, his book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is pretty much the same as his essays, only more so. (Much of his work can be read at his website.) My description of his work as "provocative, thought-provocative, and bitingly funny" should tip you off to how I feel about Steyn, and needless to say, I devoured America Alone in near-record time.
Steyn's thesis, a recurring feature in his post-9/11 columns (many of which have been incorporated into the text of America Alone), is that cultural trends - particularly, heavy immigration from predominantly Muslim countries - are changing Europe almost beyond recognition:
...much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands - probably - just as in Istanbul there's still a building known as Hagia Sophia, or St. Sophia's Cathedral. But it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate.To put it succinctly, the birth rate among European Muslims is much higher than that of the dominant culture, so a major population shift seems almost inevitable. This would not be a problem, except that Europe's young Muslims ("youths" as they are inevitably described in news stories about rioting in the French suburbs) are more alienated and radicalized than their parents and even their youthful co-religionists in predominantly Muslim countries.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!
2 - RJ Elliott
"Interesting analogy, but is Steyn really suggesting that there shouldn't be "100 percent gun control" on commercial flights?"
Yes. Pilots should have guns. And then there are the Air Marshalls...
3 - C Sarnowski
I got here more or less by accident: but I'll throw in 2 cents.
"flight control" (at least in the US) means people shouldn't be able to fly a plane where they want, when they want, with no training and no notification to FAA of where they are and when.
"car control": not a phrase in use, but not a difficult concept, right? e.g. driver's license, car registration.
Why is "gun control" so often conflated with "no guns, ever, under any circumstances?" I'm sure one can dig up supporters for this extreme position, but most gun control supporters are nowhere near that. As opposed to what I take as typical NRA line: everyone armed, no records, no limits, concealed or not. Anything less is "100% gun control."