Chapter Ten "The Falling Camel" Last Legs.... Steyn writes as a sub title "Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude (1870)
In Chapter Ten "America Alone" Mark Steyn writes... "After the Madrid bombing, the Spectator, the oldest continuously published magazine in the English language, ran an editorial headlined "We Are Not at War." They wished to assure Britons that the jihad would not be taking possession of Buckingham Palace: "Osama bin Laden is no more likely to march triumphantly down the Mall than is a little green man from Mars. Al Qaeda has means but no end."
Well, no, Osama won't be going down the Mall and through the Palace gates, unless it's surviving granules of DNA on a gun carriage. But it doesn't have to be that dramatic: the al Qaeda air force won't be having dogfights with the RAF over the White Cliffs of Dover before the Queen signs the instrument of abdication in the presence of the Acting First Ayatollah of the Islamic Republic of Britain. Yet you can reach the same point of surrender very gradually, almost imperceptibly. in that respect, the editors of the Spectator have it exactly backward: al Qaeda haven't the means, but their end---the Islamification of the West----is shared by millions of law-abiding Muslims. Recall on of the most famous images of terror, from Joseph Conrad's great novel The Secret Agent (1907) and it signature scene of the lone terrorist padding the streets of London with a bomb strapped to his chest:
The power of the image lies in the bomber's isolation from the tide of Londoners all around him, all blissfully unaware. But as became clear very quickly after the 2005 England Tube bombings, that's not quite the world we live in. It's not black (the bomber) and white (the rest of us): there's a lot of murky shades of gray in between: the terrorist bent on devastation and destruction prowls the street, while around him are a significant number of people urging him on,
and around them a larger group of cock-sure young male co-religionists gleefully celebrating mass murder,
and around a much larger group of "moderates" who stand silent at the acts committed in their name,
and around them a mesh of religious and community leaders who serve as apologists for the inciters,
and around them a network of professional identity-group grievance-mongers adamant that they're the real victims,
and around them a vast mass of elite opinion in the media and elsewhere too squeamish about ethno-cultural matters to confront reality,
and around them a political establishment desperate to pretend this is just managerial problem that can be finessed away with a few new laws and a bit of community outreach.
It's these insulating circles of gray---the imams, lobby groups, media, bishops, politicians--that bulk up the loser death-cult and make it a potent force. And way out at the end of this chain of shades of gray is the general population. And sometimes enough of them bleed into the gray blur of passivity and defeatism, as in Spain. Sometimes they don't, yet, as in America. And sometimes, as in the United Kingdom, they talk about defiance and the old Blitz spirit, but they make a thousand trivial concessions day by day. That's how great nations die---not by war or conquest, but bit by bit, until on day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal over the last ten years."
Mark Steyn "America Alone"
This book is very well written, to help understand just what is happening in this world today and who wants to control it. It is not what and who you might think. My suggestion "Hold on to your WILL" and read this book.
