After America was a tough book to write. I meant it as a warning, not as a blueprint. But so far it seems to be proceeding a little ahead of schedule:
With much faster growth rates between 2011 and 2014, China is now being forecast to eclipse the United States as the world's largest economy sometime this year. The U.S. has been the world's largest economy since the 1870s when it overtook Great Britain.
That's from the Heritage Foundation. If that comes as news to you, let me put in a plug for After America, personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available from the SteynOnline bookstore and which go to fund my legal pushback for free speech, a campaign which will help determine whether we get to address honestly the real problems confronting us or fritter away what's left of the western world on phony, bullying distractions like climate alarmism. Ed Driscoll notes what I wrote three years ago:
If the IMF is correct (a big if), China will be the planet's No.1 economy by 2016. That means whoever's elected in November next year will be the last president of the United States to preside over the world's dominant economic power. As I point out in my rollicking new book, which will be hitting what's left of the post-Borders bookstore business any day now, this will mark the end of two centuries of Anglophone dominance — first by London, then its greatest if prodigal son. The world's economic superpower will not only be a Communist dictatorship with a largely peasant population and legal, political, and cultural traditions as alien to its predecessors as possible, but, even more civilizationally startling, it will be, unlike the U.S., Britain, and the Dutch and Italians before them, a country that doesn't even use the Roman alphabet.
Goldman Sachs predicted China would be Number One by 2027; the IMF by 2016. The Heritage Foundation says it's happening now. And so President Obama will end his term in a position no US leader has been in since Chester Arthur: the global also-ran.
~The western world is rich and complacent. It's gotten used to extending adolescence till well into adulthood and spending the last two or three decades in "retirement", a 20th century concept. The wealthiest societies in history, from Norway to New Zealand, are incapable of defending their borders, while assuming that the teeming impoverished populations of Third World basket-cases will be content to stay where they are. Another thought from After America:
How long do you think that arrangement will last?
In Spain's North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla a barbed-wire fence separates the Third World from the European Union. From the Associated Press:
Around 700 African migrants charged Spain's barbed-wire border fences Thursday in the country's North African enclave of Melilla, clashing with Spanish and Moroccan border police.
Spain said 140 of the migrants managed to enter Spanish territory despite the efforts of the border police.
It was the latest surge in the tide of African immigrants trying to cross into Europe. Spain's two North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta are particularly vulnerable and have had repeated attacks by hundreds of immigrants this spring.
The migrants on Thursday rushed the fences in two waves, with 500 arriving in the early hours and a further 200 four hours later.
By afternoon, more than 150 people remained perched on an outside border fence, fending off police by setting fire to clothing and throwing it at them, Spanish officials said. Some even swung batons wrenched away from officers...
The new arrivals to Spain made their way, some hobbling, to the region's temporary immigrant center, which now contains more than 1,900 immigrants, the statement said, adding this meant the facility was above its capacity.
Oh, dear. Obviously Spain should build a bigger facility immediately.
Bob Belvedere wonders if this is a Camp of the Saints moment, and quotes Jean Raspail from the introduction to the 1985 edition of his novel:
When one knows what constitutes a generation in our old European lands – a rump-generation in the image of a rump-family and a rump-nation – the heart constricts in anticipation, and is overwhelmed by discouragement... They face a vanguard of four hundred million North Africans and Muslims, fifty percent of them less than twenty years old, those on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean arriving ahead of the rest of the world! Can one imagine for a second, in the name of whatever ostrich-like blindness, that such a disequilibrium can endure?
They won't need to nuke Europe. They can just walk in and take it.
~Fortunately for us, John Kerry is the Churchill de nos jours. Brent Budowsky writes in The Hill:
Looking across the landscape of world affairs, from sectarian carnage to Middle East instability, from climate change that threatens the earth to a Russian dictator who threatens security in Europe, from the bellicosity of China to nuclear issues with North Korea and Iran, if there is a Winston Churchill of modern times who issues warnings and offers solutions, it is Secretary of State John Kerry.
Ha-ha. Hilarious! But wait, this Budowsky guy, a former aide to Lloyd Bentsen, means it:
While commentators grow impatient with Kerry's Churchillian warnings about the consequences of failure in the Middle East peace process, the world might sadly witness how right Kerry is.
As Vladimir Putin escalates his war against Ukraine, employs lies as an instrument of invasion and subversion, and wages war against the sanctity of sovereignty and borders that has kept the peace in Europe since Hitler fell and the Berlin Wall tumbled, Kerry calls on a timid Europe to demonstrate resolve with the moral force with which Churchill addressed Neville Chamberlain.
This is not a brilliant parody. This is the way the smart guys think.
When John Kerry studies reports from scientists that say the Earth is gravely endangered by climate change caused by polluters who pour money into corrupting our politics while they pour toxins that poison the planet, he warns about these dangers, as Churchill warned about dangers in his day, and does what he can to stop it.
If John Kerry is Winston Churchill, the sooner the Hampshire Constabulary toss him in jail, the safer we'll be.
