Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Mark Steyn Deserves the Pulitzer

. . . the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, but judging by past winners, that is unlikely to happen. His article in Commentary Magazine, "The Case for Pessimism" should win by itself, as it lays out the grave dangers to the nation due to the "red menace" as Mitch Daniels calls it. (Is it too late to get him to run?) Please read the entire thing if you are at all sympathetic to the goals of the tea party movement, it is intellectual ammunition needed for our cause. To be clear, I am not pessimistic, but still find his analysis to be penetrating. A few quotes.


The global reach that enables America and a handful of other nations to get to a devastated backwater on the other side of the planet and save lives and restore the water supply in a matter of days isn’t a happy accident or a quirk of fate. It is something that derives explicitly from our political system, our economic liberty, our traditions of scientific and cultural innovation, and a general understanding that societies advance when their citizens are able to fulfill their potential in freedom.

The United States is the only country in the world where a mass movement took to the streets in 2009 to say we could do just fine if you, the government, stayed the hell out of our pockets and the hell out of our lives. That fact, that populist refusal to be Europeanized, represents the best hope for this country. Those now-caricatured, much-maligned Tea Partiers moved the meter of public discourse significantly back in the direction of sanity. And that includes Barack Obama.

If we don’t turn this thing around by mid-decade, if we let China become the dominant economic power in a world where the Iranians are nuclearizing and where Russia is making whatever mischief it can, we will see something new in world history. Something terrifying. This will not be like the transition from Britain to America, from a crucible of liberty to its greatest exponent. This will be the greatest step backwards for the civilization that built the modern world and spread its blessings across the map. There will be no new world order. There will be no world order.
Exactly.

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