Mark Steyn is a gifted writer who since 9/11 has been putting his talent to use in the fight against jihadism. Before 9/11 he was a theater critic for the Wall Street Journal and wrote a book about Broadway in which he says:
Is Broadway musical theater in terminal decline, fed intravenously from London, in headlong retreat to operetta certainties, emotional platitudes and vapidly luxuriant tunes?There are those pessimistic types for whom terminal decline is galvanizing. I'm not saying Steyn is one of them and it's probably unfair to speculate, but perhaps he moved on to "greener" pastures, finding Broadway's decline less interesting than Western civilization's? For many writers, it's passion that moves the pen and if the pen ain't moving then they must go in search of passion. Of course when everything is in decline, including Broadway, it's hard to discern motivation.
Robert Kaplan, another author I respect, wrote The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War, which seems a shattering enough title. One would think his just-before-9/11 timing was good in the sense that people were in an apocalyptic mood. Certainly here was a prophet. But I searched the book in order to see if he meant Islamic fundamentalism, and near as I can tell he did not. The most frequent words used in the book are "Kissinger", "war", "democracy" and "Africa". Very few mentions of Islam, no mentions of Al Qaeda or bin Laden, only four mentions of terrorism, very few of 'terrorist' and nothing about Europe's declining demographic.
For some reason I have yet to read the highly regarded Samuel Huntington & his Clash of Civilizations.
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