Commentator Mark Steyn admits he left his native Canada in a fit of bitterness. His warnings that the West threatens to be swamped by Islamic cultures’ growing fertility rates put him squarely in the sights of Canadian Muslims and this country’s quasi-judicial human rights commissions. Even though his side won, and the case against his “alarmist” diatribes ultimately contributed to the repeal of the Section 13 hate speech law this year, Mr. Steyn was “drained” by the ordeal. He’s since focused on his current home, with the best-selling books America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, and After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. “When I finally get the hideousness of Canada’s so-called human rights commission out of my system, I’ll probably come back and start writing for the Post and the Canada press again,” he said ahead of a speech at Calgary’s Petroleum Club this week. America is the ‘‘brokiest brokey broke nation in the history of the world,’’ and it’s left to him to ring the clarion call for a return to small government and self-reliance, he told the National Post’s Jen Gerson:
Q: Let’s have that discussion about how terrible things are about to get: Brokiest broke of all the brokiest countries in the world.
A: On its present trajectory, America is looking at $20-trillion debt by the time this president leaves office, just the federal debt. That will mean the 44th president has run up more debt than the previous 43 presidents combined. It was $10-trillion when he took office. No one has ever spent that much in the history of the planet. And he has nothing to show for it. And the question then becomes, is serious political course correction possible in the United States? And I think the answer to that is very difficult. The question then is whether the rest of the developed world sits back and watches America drag everybody else over the cliff, or whether they start making plans, as Australia and certain other countries are doing, for the post-American world? The post-Second World War American order is over. We didn’t ask for it. The Americans did this to us; we didn’t do it to them. But, you know, it’s a new world out there and we have to look for other partners.
Q: How much do you credit that incredible debt to overspending versus a massive decline in revenues as a result of the economic slowdown?
A: The decline in revenue, due to anemic economic growth, is related to the growth of uncertainty. If, for example, you want to hire somebody and pay them, let’s call it $40,000 a year. What is the cost to you of putting $40,000 in Mrs. Smith’s pocket when you hire her to do a job in your business? Nobody knows the answer to that in the United States because the tax rates are uncertain, the provisions of the health care law are destabilizing so that companies are — if you come up to the 50-employee mark then you’re suddenly responsible for health care. There’s no certainty in America. I mean everyone always thinks when things are outsourced or when jobs go overseas people think oh, they’re sending it to Chad or wonder where everything is cheap. They’re not, they’re sending it to stable developed nations like Ireland where you have a reasonable sense of what the tax rates are gonna be, what the corporate tax rates are gonna be, what the cost of hiring people is.
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