large swathes of the map reprimitivized, the shrinking superpower would remain the most inviting target.
Many westerners were familiar with Nietzsche’s accurate foretelling of the twentieth century as an age of “wars such as have never happened on earth.”77 This was a remarkable prediction to make from the Europe of the 1880s, a time of peace and prosperity. But too many forget the context in which the philosopher reached his conclusion—that “God is dead.”
Nietzsche was an atheist but he was not simply proclaiming his own contempt for faith, as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and other bestselling atheists would do in our own century. “God is dead” was not a statement of personal belief, but a news headline—in the author’s words, a “tremendous event.” If, as he saw it, educated people had ceased to believe in the divine, that entailed certain consequences. For God—or at any rate the Judeo- Christian God whose demise he was reporting—had had a civilizing effect during his (evolutionarily speaking) brief reign. Without God, Nietzsche wondered, without “any cardinal distinction between man and animal,” what constraints are there? In the “arena of the future,” the world would be divided into “brotherhoods with the aim of the robbery and exploitation of the non-brothers.” That was the purpose of his obituary announcement: “The story I have to tell,” he wrote in 1882, “is the story of the next two centuries.”
We know he called the twentieth century right. So what did he have to say about the twenty-first? He foresaw a time even worse than the “wars such as have never happened,” wars that were after all still fought according to the remnants, the “mere pittance” of the late God’s moral codes. But after that, what? The next century—our century—would see “the total eclipse of all values.” Man would attempt a “re-evaluation,” as the West surely did through multiculturalism, sexual liberation, eco-fetishization, and various other fancies. But you cannot have an effective moral code, Nietzsche pointed out, without a God who says “Thou shalt not.”
Thou shalt not what? Eat pygmies? Rip out children’s hearts? Wire up your own infant as a bomb? Express mild disapproval of the cultures that engage in such activities? Multiculturalism was the West’s last belief system. Its final set of values accorded all values equal value. Which is to say that it had no values—for, if all values have equal value, what’s the point?
There was still enough of the “mere pittance” of the old values for skanky tweens in hooker chic or burqaed women escorting their daughters to the FGM clinic to cause feminists some momentary disquiet. But they could no longer summon up a moral language to object to it. They valued all values, and so relentlessly all values slipped into eclipse—and then a valueless age dawned.
It’s never a good idea to put reality up for grabs. I remember my last visit to Monte Carlo, to see an old friend who had retired there for tax reasons. Enjoying a cafe au lait under an awning on a pedestrianized street, we watched the world go by and discussed the demographic death spiral that “alarmist” early-century tracts had played up. And, after chewing over the numbers for Italy, Spain, and so on, my friend had said jokingly, “Well, what about Monaco? Could Monte Carlo spearhead the rebirth of Europe?”
Alas, no. Monaco had the lowest birth rate on the planet: seven births per thousand people.78 That was because it was a chichi little enclave of wealthy tax exiles, and who wants snot-nosed kids getting underfoot and spoiling things? The town was impressive—clean, prosperous, civilized, and no children. What could be more amiable?
That’s what more and more of Europe felt like, at least outside the surging Muslim enclaves. Much of the western world had made a bet that it could survive as a giant Monte Carlo—rich, plump, happy, and insulated from all the unpleasantness of life. As I said to my friend that day: What’s holding Monte Carlo in place?
It’s a short sail from impoverished North Africa. What was there to prevent, say, a bunch of Algerians just walking in and taking it?
The first victims of American retreat were the many parts of the world that had benefited from an unusually benign hegemon. But eventually the consequences of retreat came home, too.
How quickly the world turns: Western Europe is semi-Islamic.
A resurgent Russia is also Islamizing fast but under a stern petro-czar confident he can control them. He has reestablished Eastern Europe and Central Asia as the bear’s sphere of influence.
Iran is the dominant power in the Middle East, actively supported by a post-Kemalist Turkey and with the reluctant acquiescence of the Sunni dictatorships. Its missiles can reach western Europe, and its technology is being dispersed to friendly nations and non-state actors alike.
Pakistan has fallen to the local branch of the Taliban, and India is preoccupied by a nuclear stand-off. North Korea is clinging on as a nuclear Wal-Mart for anyone who wants a No Dong missile at unbeatable prices.
China is growing old, and is in a hurry. Resource-short as always, it has bought up much of Africa. The least worst parts of the Dark Continent are a de facto Beijing protectorate, while those territories that are too much trouble for China to annex are exporting their people and their problems north.
Latin America is for sale to whoever’s buying—the Chinese, the Russians, the new Caliphate. Islam has made modest inroads into the continent—not huge but just enough to add a whole new wrinkle to America’s unenforced southern border. A failing superpower doesn’t have the guards to keep track of the line, even if it wanted to. One time there was talk of getting state-of-the-art sensors like the Chinese have, to keep their Uighurs in place. But no one in the crumbling union of however many states remain in Old Glory has the budget any more. The Border Patrol do their best, but it’s getting harder to tell Jose from Mohammed what with the opportunist “reversions” going on among the drug cartels.
Going over the computer footage one morning, the guards see a truck managed to get across during the night. Not a big deal, probably just a couple dozen peasants heading north to join their families.
Funny thing, though. The truck didn’t stop in the Arizona desert and let out its human cargo. The border guys found out a couple days later it had headed north, picked up Interstate 40 eastbound, all the way through New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee until it hit Greensboro and swung north on I-85.
Towards Washington.
They figured it out when they saw it on the news.
In this chapter, Steyn paints a bleak picture of the world “after America”:
Western Europe is semi-Islamic, Russia has the monopoly on energy and security, China is the new economic superpower, Iran is a nuclear power, Latin America is for sale to the highest bidder, Japan’s population is part robotic, and cannibalism is standard practice in Africa.
Could this happen? Is this happening? Or is it just fantastical?
Click here to tweet us (@Regnery, #AfterAmerica)
Click here to post your answer on our Facebook wall (Facebook.com/RegneryBooks.)
EPILOGUE
THE HOPE OF AUDACITY
I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.
In February 2009, a few weeks after his inauguration, President Obama went to Congress to deliver America’s first State of the European Union address. It included the following:
I think about Ty’Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school I visited in Dillon, South Carolina—a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their classroom. She had been told that her school is hopeless, but the other day after class she
