It is only January, I have only read the prologue and glanced through the rest, but I know this is going to be the book of the year 2007: Mark Steyn`s “America Alone”, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2006.
Excerpt:
“Our enemies are small worms,” Adolf Hitler told his generals in August 1939. “I saw them at Munich.” In Europe today, as in the thirties, the political class prostrates itself before an insatiable force that barely acknowledges the latest surrender before moving on to the next invented grievance. Indeed, a formal enemy is all but superfluous to requirements. Bomb us, and we agonize over the “root causes”. Decapitate us, and our politicians rush to the nearest mosque to declare that “Islam is a religion of peace.” Issue blood-curdling calls at Friday prayers to kill Jews and infidels, and we fret that it may cause a backlash against Muslims. Behead sodomites and mutilate female genitalia, and gay groups and feminist groups can`t wait to march alongside you denouncing Bush and Blair. Murder a schoolful of children, and our scholars explain that to the “vast majority” of Muslims “jihad” is a harmless concept meaning “healthy-lifestyle lo-fat granola bar”. Thus the lopsided valse macabre of our times: the more the Islamists step on our toes, the more we waltz them gaily round the room.
As French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel wrote, “Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
(page 200)
He also comments on the “You are Germany!” campaign:
The Germans are so slumped in despond that in 2005 the government began running a Teutonic feel-good marketing campaign in which old people are posed against pastoral vistas, fetching gays mooch around the Holocaust memorial, Katarina Witt stands in front of some photogenic moppets, etc., and then they all point their fingers at the camera and shout “Du bist Deutschland!” – “You are Germany!” – which is meant somehow to pep up glum Hun couch potatoes. Can`t see it working myself. The European Union got rid off all the supposed obstacles to happiness – war, politics, the burden of work, insufficient leisure time, tiresome dependents – and yet their people are strikingly gloomy.
(page 109)