Mark Steyn

Mr. Steyn has a clever writing style, which is needed to be able to read about such a somber subject. There is a Hilaire Belloc poem titled the Pacifist, which Mark Steyn references, and contains a line something like:

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill who killed him thought it right.

That will pretty much give you an idea of where this book will take you. Mr. Steyn points out that there's an angry and militant population out there, and the West isn't doing much to address it. The book is meant to be a wake-up call regarding the current war on terrorism, and who's winning. The author notes that Islam is on the rise, with high birth rates and zeal for its cause(s), while the West is declining with its low birth rates, and large social welfare dependency. Even if support for militant Islam is very low among Muslims, and assuming that the majority of Muslims neither support or condone the actions of the militants, the author notes that they're but a silent majority. As the author states, even if the number of militants is very small, like one-hundredth of one percent, in a population of one million, that still amounts to 100 potential terrorist supporters. And there are hundreds of population centers of over a million, not just in the Middle East and Muslim majority countries. Given that it only took 19 individuals to carry out 9/11, those numbers stack up against the west unless peaceful solutions are found.


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