After America

by Mark Steyn

  7 Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives, “Benefits push Bell ex-manager’s compensation to more than $1.5 million,” Los Angeles Times, August 8, 2010; available online at http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/08/local/la-me-bell-benefits-20100808.

  8 Christopher Palmeri, “California Official’s $800,000 Salary in City of 38,000 Triggers Protests,” Bloomberg, July 20, 2010; available online at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-20/california-official-s-800-000-salary-in-cityof-38-000-triggers-protests.html.

  9 Nicole Gelinas, “Bell’s Debt Tolls,” City Journal, August 6, 2010; available online at http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0806ng.html.

  10 Peter S. Green and Martin Z. Braun, “NYC Snow ‘Overwhelmed’ Emergency System, Mayor Says,” Bloomberg, December 31, 2010; available online at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-29/new-york-city-s-emergency-responseoverwhelmed-by-blizzard-mayor-says.html.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Sally Goldenberg, Larry Celona and Josh Margolin, “Sanitation Department’s slow snow cleanup was a budget protest,” New York Post, December 30, 2010; available online at http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/sanit_filthy_snow_slow_mo_qH57MZwC53QKOJlekSSDJK.

  13 Edgar Sandoval and Larry McShane, “Sanitation boss John Doherty’s street plowed clean, but nearby streets remain winter blunderland,” New York Daily News, December 29, 2010; available online at http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-12-29/local/27085710_1_clean-street-winter-blunderland-east-side.

  14 Ray Long and Michelle Manchir, “Thousands rally at Illinois Capitol—for a tax increase,” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 2010; available online at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-04-21/news/ct-met-state-capitol-rally-taxincrease-020100421_1_sales-tax-tax-increase-income-tax.

  15 Landon Thomas Jr., “Patchwork Pension Plan Adds to Greek Debt Woes,” New York Times, Mary 11, 2010; available online at http://www.nytimes. com/2010/03/12/business/global/12pension.html.

  16 Ibid.

  17 BBC, “Greek Officials Strike Over Cuts,” February 4, 2010; available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8497912.stm.

  18 CNN, “Greek PM slams European Union amid crisis,” February 14, 2010; available online at http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-14/world/greece.eu.crisis_1_european-union-van-rompuy-greece?_s=PM:WORLD.

  19 Ian Traynor and Katie Allen, “Austerity Europe: Who Faces the Cuts,” The Guardian , June 11, 2010; available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/11/europe-deficit-crisis-austerity-budgets.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Robert Samuelson, “The Welfare State’s Death Spiral,” syndicated column, May 10, 2010; available online at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/10/the_welfare_states_death_spiral_105503.html.

  22 Remarks to the New York Times, Berlin, Germany, March 29, 2009; available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/world/europe/30merkel.html?hp.

  23 Luke Harding, “Germany agonises over 30% childless women,” The Guardian, January 27, 2006; available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/27/germany.lukeharding.

  24 Tristana Moore, “Baby Gap: Germany’s Birth Rate Hits Historic Low,” Time, May 23, 2010; available online at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1991216,00.html.

  25 Sacha Molitorisz, “Mama Mia: Won’t You Leave Home, Big Baby?” The Age, January 23, 2010; available online at http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/societyand-culture/mama-mia-wont-you-leave-home-big-baby-20100122-mqqa.html.

  26 Ibid.

  27 Statistics Canada, “2006 Census,” September 12, 2007; links to purchase report available online at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/070912/dq070912a-eng.htm.

  28 Rachel Donadio, “Europe’s Young Grow Agitated Over Future Prospects,” New York Times, January 1, 2011; available online at http://www.nytimes. com/2011/01/02/world/europe/02youth.html.

  29 Carl Mortished, “What do cars and cows have in common? No, not horns,” The Times, March 10, 2009; available online at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5877416.ece.

  30 Ibid.

  31 Theodore Dalrymple, “Know Thyself,” City Journal, May 7, 2010; available online at http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0507td.html.

  32 “G20 summit: Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel demand tough market regulations,” The Telegraph, May 17, 2011; available online at http://www.telegraph. co.uk/finance/g20-summit/5090442/G20-summit-Nicolas-Sarkozy-and-Angela-Merkel-demand-tough-market-regulations.html.

  33 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, “OECD Family database,” 2010; available online at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/50/61/42294015.xls.

  34 Ibid.

  35 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, “OECD Family database,” 2010; facts available line at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/26/41920005.pdf.

  36 Russell Shorto, “No Babies?” New York Times, June 29, 2008; available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?pagewanted=all.

  37 Douglas A. McIntyre, “Memo To Congress: ‘Buy Land, They Ain’t Making Any More Of It,’” Time, January 28, 2009; available online at http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1874407,00.html.

  38 International Monetary Fund, “World Economic Outlook,” (Chapter IV: Unemployment and Labor Market Institutions: Why Reforms Pay Off) April 2003; available online at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2003/01/pdf/chapter4.pdf.

  39 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, “OECD Economic Outlook No. 88 Annex Tables,” 2011; available online at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/51/2483816.xls.

  40 Abul Taher, “‘Soviet’ Britain Swells Amid the Recession,” Sunday Times, January 25, 2009; available online at http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5581225.ece.

  41 “Islam and Phobias,” The Economist, January 10, 2008; available online at http://www.economist.com/node/10499144?story_id=10499144.

  42 Steven Erlanger, “Europeans Fear Crisis Threatens Liberal Benefits,” New York Times, May 22, 2010; available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/world/europe/23europe.html.

  43 Dan Bilefsky and Landon Thomas Jr., “The Bitter Pills in the Plan to Rescue Greece,” New York Times, April 30, 2010; available online at http://www.nytimes. com/2010/05/01/business/global/01euro.html.

  44 Paul Krugman, “The Comeback Continent,” New York Times, January 11, 2008; available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/opinion/11krugman.html.

  45 Post-election panel at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, November 3, 2008; available online at http://strictlyright.com/2010/11/video-post-electionpanel-with-mark-steyn-howard-dean-fred-thompson/.

  46 Remarks during a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, November 21, 2009; available online at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100017487/herman-van-rompuy-today-the-eu-tomorrow-the-world/.

  47 Vicki Needham, “Obama adviser Volcker says record deficits could lead to new VAT tax,” The Hill, April 7, 2010; available online at http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/90991-volcker-suggests-raising-taxes-possiblyadding-a-value-added-tax.

  48 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, University of Michigan, 2001.

  49 Remarks during the 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture at the annual AEI Annual Dinner in Washington, D.C., March 11, 2009; available online at http://www.aei.org/speech/100023.

  50 Tom Wolfe, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” New York Magazine , August 23, 1976; available online at http://nymag.com/news/features/45938/.

  51 Remarks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, February 7, 2009; available online at http://www.securityconference.de/index.php?id=242&zic=1117_1.

  52 Andreas Tzortzis, “One Wall Down, Thousands to Paint,” New York Times, March 2, 2008; available online at http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/travel/02headsup.html.

  Chapter Four

  1 Richard Wolffe, Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House (New York: Crown, 2010); facts available on
line at http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_the_nanny_president_sees_himself_Rz5QE1GoCFaiwCJvR9mrdP.

  2 Dan Jones, “A WEIRD View of Human Nature Skews Psychologists’ Studies,” Science, June 24, 2010; available online at http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/WEIRD%20in%20Science.pdf.

  3 Andrew Malcolm, “Michelle Obama serves food to D.C. poor and homeless, but...” Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2009; available online at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/03/michelle-obama.html.

  4 Nicholas Timmins, “No worker in one-sixth of UK households,” Financial Times, August 26, 2009; available online at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0e1abd04-9221-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1MqD08fIT.

  5 Victor Davis Hanson, “Dronism,” PajamasMedia.com, March 3, 2010; available online at http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/dronism/.

  6 Remarks made on Al-Rahma TV, June 6, 2010; available online at http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/2503.htm.

  7 Associated Press, “Israel pounds Luxembourg in World Cup qualifier,” September 9, 2009; facts available online at http://www.usatoday.com/sports/soccer/2009-09-09-1359674765_x.htm.

  8 Charles Murray, In Our Hands (AEI Press, 2006).

  9 New Threats to Freedom, ed. Adam Bellow (Templeton Press, 2010).

  10 John F. Burns, “Bill Millin, Scottish D-Day Piper, Dies at 88,” New York Times, August 19, 2010; available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/world/europe/20millin.html.

  11 Bruce Bawer, “A Plague of Poets,” The Hudson Review, Winter 2004; available online at http://www.hudsonreview.com/BawerWi04.html.

  12 Remarks made on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, July 27, 2004; available online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5537671/42928946.

  13 Remarks made during a Q&A at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado, May 23, 2010; available online at http://lukeford.net/blog/?page_id=24561.

  14 Bill Minutaglio, “School For Homosexuals An Ongoing Controversy,” The Dallas Morning News, October 22, 1985; available online at http://articles.sunsentinel.com/1985-10-22/features/8502160307_1_harvey-milk-schoolschool-system-school-officials/3.

  15 Rick Salutin, “Here’s the Real Obama Question,” The Globe and Mail, January 16, 2009; available online at http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?current_row=89&tf=tgam/columnists/FullColumn.html&cf=tgam/columnists/FullColumn.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam/config&date=&dateOffset=&hub=rickSalutin&title=Rick_Salutin&cache_key=rickSalutin&start_row=89&num_rows=1.

  16 John Wildermuth, “Many Obama supporters also backed Prop. 8,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 6, 2008; available online at http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-11-06/news/17128024_1_uncounted-field-poll-same-sex-marriage.

  17 Iain Murray, “Boris Hacking Again,” National Review Online, January 20, 2009; available online http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/176006/boris-hackingagain/iain-murray.

  18 Remarks made during a speech in Berlin, Germany, July 24, 2008; available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/politics/24text-obama.html.

  19 Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2007).

  20 John Robson, “Media insult us with leadership coverage overkill,” The Ottawa Citizen, October 6, 2006; available online at http://www.thejohnrobson.com/2006/10/06/media-insult-us-with-leadership-coverage-overkill/.

  21 Remarks to National Review Online, September 23, 2009; available online at http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/187591/bolton-post-american-speechour-first-post-american-president/robert-costa.

  22 Dinesh D’Souza, The Roots of Obama’s Rage (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2010).

  23 James Gordon Meek, “America is strong enough to withstand another 9/11, President Obama tells author Bob Woodward,” New York Daily News, September 22, 2010; available online at http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-09-22/news/27076084_1_president-obama-terror-threat-terrorist-attack.

  24 “Northern Ireland: Acceptable Violence?” Time, December 27, 1971; available online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,905596-2,00.html.

  25 Board of Election Commissioners for the City of Chicago, “Election Results, November 2004 General”; facts available online at http://www.chicagoelections.com/.

  26 Remarks during a Liberal Party fundraiser in Toronto, Ontario, May 17, 2010; facts available online at http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/05/18/matt-gurney-untitled-ignatieff.aspx.

  27 Remarks made on FOX News’ The O’Reilly Factor, September 22, 2010; available online at http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/23/stewart-saddened-byobama/.

  28 Glenn Reynolds, “Jon Stewart on Obama,” Instapundit.com, September 23, 2010; available online at http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/106718/.

  29 National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Adult Literacy; available online at http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#enrollment.

  30 National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics 2009,” page 269, April 2010; available online at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010013.pdf.

  31 National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics 2009,” Table 64, April 2010; http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010013.pdf.

  32 National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics 2009,” Tables 33, 34 and 80, April 2010; facts available online at http://www.cato-atliberty.org/grigori-rasputin-bailout/.

  33 Howard Blume, “Annual test scores rise in L.A. Unified schools,” Los Angeles Times, August 17, 2010; available online at http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/17/local/la-me-0817-star-tests-20100817.

  34 National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Adult Literacy”; available online at http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#illiteracy.

  35 Jim Hoft, “Photo of the Day: Commie Students Protest Campus Budget Cuts,” GatewayPundit.com, March 4, 2010; available online at http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/03/photo-of-the-day-commie-students-protestcampus-budget-cuts/.

  36 Keith O’Brien, “The Test Has Been Cancelled,” The Boston Globe, October 3, 2010; facts available online http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2010/10/only-23-of-.html.

  37 Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay, eds., The Fat Studies Reader (NYU Press, November 2009); available online at http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=4528.

  38 National Science Foundation, “First-Time, Full-Time Graduate Student Enrollment in Science and Engineering Increases in 2006, Especially Among Foreign Students,” December, 2007; available online at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08302/.

  39 Remarks at a campaign stop in Madison, Wisconsin, February 17, 2008; facts available online at http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/764fosie.asp and http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4f9af_obama_news.

  40 Remarks made on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, November 12, 2007; available online at http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2007/11/12/michelle-obamainferiority-complex-blocks-blacks-backing-barack.

  41 Michelle LaVaugh Robinson, “Princeton-Educated Blacks and The Community: A Thesis,” Princeton University, Department of Sociology, 1985; available online at http://www.politico.com/pdf/080222_MOPrincetonThesis_1-251.pdf.

  42 Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life (Princeton University Press, 2009).

  43 Kate McMillan, “What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?” SmallDeadAnimals.com, June 23, 2009; available online at http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/011678.html.

  44 Angelo M. Codevilla, “America’s Ruling Class—And the Perils of Revolution,” The American Spectator, July-August, 2010; available online at http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print#.

  45 Remarks at a campaign stop in Powder Springs, Georgia, July 8, 2008; available online at http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/bellantoni/2008/Jul/08/que-obama-says-nations-ki
ds-should-be-bilingual/.

  46 National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics 2009,” Table 29, page 59, April 2010; available online at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010013.pdf.

  47 David Wright, “Los Angeles Public School Named After Robert Kennedy Costs $578 Million,” ABCNews.com, August 23, 2010; available online at http://abcnews.go.com/WN/public-school-los-angeles-named-robert-kennedy-expensive/story?id=11462095.

  48 Remarks at a campaign stop in Zanesville, Ohio, February 28, 2008; facts available online at http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/159678/michelle-obama-dontgo-corporate-america/byron-york.

  49 The University of Chicago Medical Center, “Press Release: Michelle Obama appointed vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals,” May 9, 2005; available online at http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2005/20050509-obama.html.

  50 Remarks made to The New Yorker, March 10, 2008; available online at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/10/080310fa_fact_collins?currentPage=all.

  51 Byron York, “Michelle’s Struggle,” National Review Online, February 29, 2008; available online at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/223808/michellesstruggle/byron-york.

  52 Peter Baker and David M. Herszenhorn, “Obama Signs Overhaul of Student Loan Program,” New York Times, March 30, 2010; available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/us/politics/31obama.html.

  53 U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of Government Employment.

  54 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Education at a Glance 2009: OECD Indicators,” (Indicator B1 How much is spent per student?), 2009; available online at http://www.oecd.org/document/24/0,3343,en_2649_39263238_43586328_1_1_1_37455,00.html.

  55 National Governor’s Association, “Return on Investment: Strategies for Improving Remedial Education,” 2011; available online at http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/C2CBriefingPaperRemedialEd.pdf.