America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006)

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is a 2006 non-fiction book by the Canadian newspaper columnist and writer Mark Steyn. It forecasts the downfall of Western civilization due to internal weaknesses and Muslim population growth in Western countries and the world generally. Based on his own observations, Steyn says that the fall of the Western world is caused by three factors: demographic decline, unsustainability of the advanced Western social democratic state, and exhaustion of civilization. By 2007, Steyn's America Alone had already convinced many American conservatives that there was an imminent and inevitable Muslim invasion. The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) filed Human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine—in which they accused the magazine of Islamophobia—with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Ontario Human Rights Commission, based partly on Maclean's publication of a chapter from Steyn's book, "The Future Belongs to Islam".

Overview

In America Alone, which is set in the context of the global war on terror, Steyn argues that "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." According to a July 1, 2007 The New Republic article, Steyn says that white people "are too self-absorbed to breed", while the Muslim population is increasing rapidly—the 20 million European Muslims in 2006, will have increased to over 150 million by 2015. As a result, there will be a "large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015". Europe will cede to Al Qaeda and "Greater France" will "remorselessly evolve into Greater Bosnia."

Steyn attributes the forecast fall of the Western world to three factors, demographic decline, unsustainability of the advanced Western social-democratic state, and exhaustion of civilization. Steyn based his argument of population decline on his own observation that European nations have low birth rates while Muslim nations have higher birth rates. Steyn wrote that in the 2000s, the population of the developed world declined from about 30% of world population to around 20%, while the population of Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%.

He argued that the advanced Western social-democratic state was unsustainable, based on his observation that the responsibilities of normal adults—such as care of the elderly, childcare, health care and insurance, have been slowly taken over by the state. Steyn argues that these programs erode humanity's basic sense of self-reliance to a point at which a more resilient group of people – Muslims in his view – will take control. He said that civilization is exhausted because Western nations are so focused on moral and cultural relativism—with "diversity" and "racism" as their new favorite words—that they are unable to see that their existence is threatened. Specifically, he argues that European nations have given up defending themselves and rely on the United States for their defense. He views anti-Americanism as a symptom of civilizational exhaustion, whether manifested by Muslims (to whom the United States symbolizes gay porn, children born out of wedlock, immodest women, and immorality) or by Europeans (to whom the United States symbolises a crude and radical Christianity, fat rednecks and uncontrolled firearms). However, in his view America is the most benign hegemonic power the world has ever seen. According to Steyn, America will be the last and only country—as all others will be taken over by Muslims—that will retain its sense of self-preservation, but this is not a given, as US enemies know that it ran from Vietnam and they hope that the United States will continue to flee when faced with a challenge.

Steyn's final argument is that the Muslim world will not need to carry out an outright attack. Instead, Europe will collapse from "wimpiness" or "multicultural 'sensitivity,'" leading to betrayal of the state's core values. Thus, during the Danish 'cartoon jihad' of 2006, Jack Straw, then British foreign secretary, hailed the 'sensitivity' of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending representations of the [so-called] Prophet."

In a 2016 post on his personal blog, "Ten Years, and Slightly Less Alone", Steyn wrote that his book America Alone was still the "biggest story of our time". He said that, "the west's leaders still can't talk about it, not to their own peoples, not honestly....I'm glad I brought up the subject. And it's well past time for others to speak out".

Steyn cites Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Coming Anarchy, who has referred to countries and regions where "scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet" as "Indian territory." Steyn also refers to Thomas P. M. Barnett's 2006 book, Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating, in which he examines potential relations between the United States and Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East, China and North Korea, Latin America and Africa in the post-9/11 world. Steyn says that the "difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: no one had to worry about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue. Today, with a few hundred bucks on his ATM card, the fellow from the badlands can be in the heart of the metropolis within hours. Here’s another difference: in the old days, the white man settled the Indian territory. Now the followers of the badland’s radical imams settle the metropolis. And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Injuns had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today’s Indian territory, countries that can’t feed their own people have nuclear weapons."

Steyn dismisses the danger of climate change, The Population Bomb, The Limits to Growth, and nuclear winter.