Over the past few months, I’ve shared some insights from Mark Steyn’s indispensable book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It. Let me wrap up that sharing with some thoughts from his concluding chapter.

Steyn’s main thesis is that the West is losing its culture and is bowing before an ascendant Islam, which will destroy the West if it’s not challenged. At the root of the problem is the new devotion to multiculturalism. While it may sound nice on the surface, one need only peer just beneath that surface to see the rot on which this philosophy is built. Consider this historical example:

In a culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of “suttee”—the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Steyn declares that “non-judgmental multiculturalism is an obvious fraud,” and he is correct. From a Biblical understanding of the world, one must make moral judgments. If we don’t, we will face disaster:

But if you think you genuinely believe that suttee is just an example of the rich, vibrant tapestry of indigenous cultures, you ought to consider what your pleasant suburb would be like if 25, 30, 48 percent of the people around you really believed in it too. Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own: it is, thus, the real suicide bomb.

How does this apply to the Islamic threat? Steyn explains:

After September 11, the first reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, so did the Prince of Wales, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, the prime minister of Canada and many more. And, when the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died away, you couldn’t help feeling that this would strike almost any previous society as, well, bizarre. Pearl Harbor’s been attacked? Quick, order some sushi and get me into a matinee of Madam Butterfly! Seeking to reassure the co-religionists of those who attack you that you do not regard them all as the enemy is a worthy aim but a curious first priority. And, given that more than a few of the imams in those mosque photo-ops turned out to be at best equivocal on the matter of Islamic terrorism and at worst somewhat enthusiastic supporters of it, it involved way too much self-deception on our part.

Although the following comments are not Steyn’s final ones in the book, they serve admirably as final ones for this blog:

At the heart of multiculturalism is a lie: that all cultures are equally “valid.” To accept that proposition means denying reality—the reality of any objective measure of human freedom, societal health, and global population movement. Multiculturalism is not the first ideology founded on the denial of truth. You’ll recall Hermann Goering’s memorable assertion that “two plus two makes five if the Fuhrer wills it.” Likewise, we’re asked to accept that the United States Constitution was modeled on the principles of the Iroquois Confederation—if a generation of multiculti-theorists, the ethnic grievance lobby, and even a ludicrous resolution of the United States Congress so wills it.

Still, it’s harmless, isn’t it? What’s wrong with playing make-believe if it helps us all feel warm and fuzzy about each other?

Well, because it’s never helpful to put reality up for grabs. There may come a day when you need it.

If you haven’t read this book yet, you need to do so.

Over the past few months, I’ve periodically quoted from Mark Steyn’s America Alone because it so cogently expresses what has gone wrong with the Western world’s view of reality. Most of his critique has centered on Europe, which is further down the road toward delusion than America. Of course, he wrote the book before we elected Barack Obama as president; we’ve been trying to catch up to Europe ever since.

Yet there is still, even in the age of Obama, an undercurrent within America that rises up against that delusion—to a large extent, that’s what the 2010 elections were all about. Regardless of the political and cultural developments since he wrote the book, Steyn’s insights and warnings continue to ring true.

For instance, here’s his take on the nature of America’s so-called imperialism:

Most Americans are familiar with their stereotype abroad: the ugly American, loud, brash, ignorant, arrogant. It is, in most respects, the inversion of reality: America may be the most modest and retiring hegemon in history. “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists”? Most of America’s European “allies” checked the Neither of the Above box and most Middle Eastern “allies” checked the Both of the Above box. Belgium isn’t exactly with the terrorists but it isn’t with us in any meaningful sense. Saudi Arabia is with us but also funding the terrorists in every corner of the world. And both countries get away with it.

We may talk big, but we don’t follow through on the tough talk all too often. Another illusion we live under is that most of the world shares our “values,” whatever that means:

“Common values” and “universal values” are not all that common and universal, and the willingness to defend those values is even rarer. They’ve been sustained over the long haul by a very small group of countries. In the years ahead, America has to take the American moment seriously—in part, to ensure that the allies of tomorrow don’t make the mistakes Western Europe did. That means at the very minimum something beyond cheeseburger imperialism. In the end, the world can do without American rap and American cheeseburgers. American ideas on individual liberty, federalism, capitalism, and freedom of speech would be far more helpful.

At the end of his chapter “The Importance of Being Exceptional: Citizens vs. Dependents,” Steyn issues this warning:

If America is to avoid the Continent’s fate, she needs to talk up self-reliance and individual innovation instead of being sheepish (as Democrats often sound) that their Neanderthal citizenry aren’t more enlightened and European. Free citizens have a shot at winning this existential struggle; nanny-state charges don’t.

The current administration has attempted to increase that nanny-state mentality. We need to fight against the culture of dependency if we mean to survive as a free people.

The Arab Spring, so beloved by the media, is closer to the Islamist Ascendancy. Western blindness, as I’ve noted before, keeps us from recognizing the reality. In Egypt, the crowds listen to an imam who calls for the killing of all Jews. The streets erupt with jubilant agreement. Where are the reports of this? What is taking place in the Islamic world is the rise of the jihadists who want to kill us all. If you don’t think that’s the case, you’re not paying attention.

That’s why I’ve written so many posts with quotes from Mark Steyn’s America Alone. He gets it. Steyn comments,

If this were World War One, with their fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there’s an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western Civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.

What’s the nub of the problem?

Meanwhile, we fight the symptoms—the terror plots—but not the cause: the ideology. The self-imposed constraints of this war—legalistic, multilateral, politically correct—are clearer every day. “Know your enemy,” they say. They know us very well. Do we know them at all?

Steyn wrote those words in 2005, back when we had an administration that had a better handle on the problem [although Bush also gave too much credit to Islam as a "religion of peace"]. What do we face today with Barack Obama in the White House?

He may have made the final decision to take out Osama bin Laden, but that was merely one action against an individual responsible for running a terror network. Does he really understand the immensity of this network? Does he understand and not care? Where are his sympathies? Take a poll of the Israeli people, and you have your answer.

Blindness is one thing; empathy for those who seek to commit genocide is something else.

It appears there is a direct line that can be drawn between the enhanced interrogation tactics used on captured terrorists and the trail to Osama bin Laden. Some continue to believe these tactics are too strong, but we should keep at least two things in mind: first, no one dies from waterboarding; second, it was very effective and has helped save lives. Isn’t that much better than the way some countries deal with those who attack them?

What would critics have us do?

Choice #1: Use a coercive technique that could save hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives, yet does no lasting damage to the individual being interrogated.

Choice #2: Refuse to use such techniques and take the chance that those hundreds or thousands of lives will be lost.

I know which one I would choose.

Osama bin Laden led a terrorist organization dedicated to murdering all non-Muslims. On 9/11, he succeeded in killing nearly 3000 in one coordinated attack. He was a monster. Yet what are we seeing now? Demonstrations against America in the Muslim world; a high U.N. official complaining that bin Laden’s rights were violated. This is how topsy-turvy the world has become.

Was anyone exercised during WWII about Hitler’s rights being violated when we invaded Germany?

President Obama, meanwhile, made a triumphant visit to Ground Zero yesterday. I’m more ambivalent about this trip than some critics. Maybe it was okay. But if it was primarily a photo op and a chance to bolster his political fortunes—which is hardly beyond the realm of possibility with this man—it would be the height of opportunism.

Something did occur there that the president didn’t expect. The wife of the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 pleaded with Obama not to allow Attorney General Holder to prosecute individuals who used the enhanced interrogation techniques since they were effective. She asked him to encourage Holder to drop any such planned prosecutions. Obama briefly said he would not speak to Holder about it, and then turned away from her.

What is there to say about gracelessness of that nature?

There are reports surfacing that his role in this endeavor might not have been all that active, that he had to be pushed into giving the go-ahead. I’ll be alert to any developments along that line.

He’s going to have to get back to work pretty soon, though.

That is, if he can take time out from running for reelection.

Chapter six of Mark Steyn’s America Alone, “The Four Horsemen of the Eupocalypse,” has some poignant comments on the state of modern Europe and its reluctance to deal with the radical Islamic threat. Without too much commentary of my own, I just want to share some of his insights with you.

What do you do to make terrorists like you? Germany has one answer:

In 2005, responding to Islamist terrorism in Britain and elsewhere, Germany was reported to be considering the introduction of a Muslim public holiday. As Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of the media group Axel Springer, put it: “A substantial fraction of Germany’s government–and, if polls are to be believed, the German people–believe that creating an official state Muslim holiday will somehow spare us from the wrath of fanatical Islamists.” Great. At least the appeasers of the 1930s did it on their own time.

Meanwhile, over in France:

As the Guardian reported in London in 2005: “French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.”

Ah, those “French youths.” You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the “youths” are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn’t take much time … to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as “French,” and likely never will. … Since the beginning of this century, French Muslims have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They’re losing that battle. Unlike America’s Europhiles, France’s Arab street correctly identified Chirac’s opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.

So does this mean that all Europeans are oblivious to the threat? Not so, says Steyn, but the system works against those who speak out:

The peoples of Europe may not be willing to go as far down the appeasement path as their rulers, but Europe is a top-down construct, so the rulers will get quite a long way down before the masses start to drag them back. One observes, for example, that brave figures who draw attention to these trends—men and women such as Theo van Gogh, Bat Ye’or, and Oriana Fallaci—are either murdered, forced to live under armed guard, driven into exile overseas, or sued under specious hate-crimes laws. Dismissed by the European establishment, they’re banished to the fringe. Ayann Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian, spoke out against the ill-treatment of Muslim women, a subject she knows about firsthand, and found herself under threat of death. Her neighbors, the justice system, and the Dutch government reacted to this by taking her to court, getting her evicted from her home, and announcing plans to revoke her citizenship. Boundlessly tolerant Europe, which finds it so hard to expel openly treasonous jihad-inciting imams, finally found one Muslim it’s willing to kick out.

Steyn closes the chapter with this little anecdote:

After September 11, I wondered rhetorically midway through a column what we in the West are prepared to die for, and got a convoluted e-mail back from a French professor explaining that the fact that Europeans weren’t prepared to die for anything was the best evidence of their superiority: they were building a post-historical utopia—a Europe it would not be necessary to die for.

But sometimes you die anyway.

All of these comments have centered on Europe. Where does America stand today? How close to this European brand of suicide have we come? Why do we continue to refer to Islam as a religion of peace when the evidence shows otherwise?

Perhaps we’ve not yet succumbed entirely to this dangerous brand of political correctness. The administration’s goal of trying terrorists in American civil courts brought such an outcry that Obama and Attorney General Holder had no choice but to backtrack:

There may still be hope for us.

Another installment of Mark Steyn’s America Alone today. Chapter four is entitled “Flying the Coop: Big Mo vs. Big Mac,” in which he says “the biggest globalization success story of recent years is not McDonald’s or Microsoft but Islamism. … It was a strictly local virus, but the bird flew the coop.”

Muslim states now form the largest bloc on the UN Human Rights Council, “which explains why that pitiful joke of a council does nothing for human rights.” Islam, Steyn explains, is a religion that is simultaneously a political project in a way that no other religion is.

Furthermore, this particular religion is historically a somewhat bloodthirsty faith in which whatever’s your bag violence-wise can almost certainly be justified. And, yes, Christianity has had its blood-drenched moments, but the Spanish Inquisition, which remains a byword for theocratic violence, killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in a typical year.

So we have a global terrorist movement insulated within a global political project insulated within a severely self-segregating religion whose adherents are the fastest-growing demographic in the developed world. The jihad thus has a very potent brand inside a highly dispersed and very decentralized network much more efficient than anything the CIA can muster.

Why did the Ft. Hood massacre take place? We are willfully blind. Why do we allow radical imams to create disciples within our prisons? Again, we are willfully blind. Steyn correctly notes that we continue to fumble around with no real strategy for dealing with this violent ideology. “Indeed, for the first few years of the war on ‘terror,’ our leaders declined to acknowledge there was an ideology. And, as the years roll on, groups with terrorist ties are still able to insert their recruiters into America’s military bases, prisons, and pretty much anywhere else they get a yen to go.” Steyn wrote that prior to Ft. Hood, as well as prior to the Obama win in 2008, which has added another layer of willful blindness.

In 2005, an American citizen, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, all of twenty-three years old, was charged with plotting to assassinate President Bush. He was a graduate of the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax, Virginia. What did he learn there?

No room for American history, but that’s not so unusual in Virginia high schools these days. Instead, the school concentrates on Wahhabi history and “Islamic values and the Arabic language and culture,” plus “the superiority of jihad.” By the eleventh grade, students are taught that on the Day of Judgment Muslims will fight and kill the Jews, who will find that the very trees they’re hiding behind will betray them by saying, “Oh, Muslim, oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him.”

A bittersweet postscript to this particular school is that the grounds used to house a Christian school—a school where I once taught briefly. Now it’s in the hands of those who propagate jihad.

Steyn’s final paragraph includes this sobering thought: “Far too many American conservatives still think the dragons are at the far fringes of the map—that in the twenty-first century the United States can be a nineteenth-century republic untroubled by the world’s pathogens because of its sheer distance from them.” In fact, those pathogens are very near, in our midst. When will we realize this?

A couple of developments on the radical Islam front: pressure on one radio host to stop talking about it, which led to a resignation, and congressional hearings on the dangers associated with Muslim extremists that has sparked protests [what else is new?] and death threats [another "what else is new?"].

Former congressman Fred Grandy, who before his congressional career was a fixture on the TV series The Love Boat, resigned from his popular radio talk show in the Washington, DC, area last week. He and his wife had used the show to warn about the radical Islamic threat. The station said his wife couldn’t return to the show due to her outspoken comments. In return, Grandy resigned. Both he and his wife suspect pressure came from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which the government has indicated continues to support terrorist groups.

In Congress, New York Representative Peter King has begun hearings on Islamic radicalism and its threat to the nation. King chairs the Homeland Security Committee, which means an investigation of that type should not be controversial, given that 9/11 [anyone remember that?] was inspired by Islamic radicalism, and every major threat since then—whether the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber—have all been Muslim terrorists. Successful attacks—Ft. Hood and the killing of U.S. soldiers in Germany last week—again were by such extremists.

Yet Rep. King is now receiving death threats and must have added personal security.

And what are Obama and other administration spokesman doing in the meantime? Warning against undue suspicion against Muslims, decrying the investigation, and refusing to call Muslim terrorist acts Muslim terrorist acts. Gives you a lot of confidence in our leadership, doesn’t it?

I plan to deal more with this issue the next two days, as I offer once again some choice analysis from Mark Steyn’s groundbreaking book America Alone. His comments will be worth your time, so stay with me.