Mark Steyn on the Middle East and our "societal suicide"

Shortly after I wrote to explain why there's no way for us Westerners to win a war in which we don't have any skin -- the Muslim civil war now raging in the Middle East -- I stumbled on some thoughts along the same line from Mark Steyn in National Review, almost seven years ago (30/12/08). Following the supposed defeat of the Taliban, Mr. Steyn wrote:

With the Taliban gone and the world's slowest "rush to war" with Iraq just getting underway, I made the mistake of going to Europe to visit the famous banlieues of Paris and other Continental Muslim neighborhoods.... I started to get the queasy feeling the bewildered investigator does when he's standing in the strange indentation at the edge of town and, just as he works out it's a giant left-foot print, he glances up to see Godzilla's right foot totaling his Honda Civic.

I began to see that it's not really about angry young men in caves in the Hindu Kush; it's not even about angry young men in the fast growing Muslim populations of the west -- although that's certainly part of the seven-eighths of the iceberg bobbing just below the surface of 9/11. But the bulk of that iceberg is the profound and perhaps fatal weakness of the civilization that built the modern world. [My emphasis. Walt]

We're witnessing the early stages of what the United Nations Population Division calls a "global upheaval" that's "without parallel in human history". Demographically and psychologically, Europeans have chosen to commit societal suicide, and their principal heir and beneficiary will be Islam. [Again. Walt] ...

Islam is not monolithic.... It's perfectly understandable for Osama bin Laden to play bad cop to the western Muslim lobby groups' good cop, granted that they share the same aim: the wish to annex the crusader lands to the House of Islam.

These comments are part of a chapter called "The Limits" in The [Un]documented Mark Steyn (Regnery 2014), which I recommend highly. But Mr. Steyn is not the first student of history to identify the suicide of the West. That, in fact, is the title of a classic by James Burnham -- full title Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism (John Day Co. 1964). I have it on my "working bookshelf" and urge you to get a copy -- it's still in print, and republished as an e-book -- to see how our "leaders" ignored such warnings and led us into the decline and fall playing out today.

A summary on the Amazon and Encounter Books websites says:
Suicide of the West remains a startling account on the nature of the modern era. It offers a profound, in-depth analysis of what is happening in the world today by putting into focus the intangible, often vague doctrine of American liberalism. It parallels the loosely defined liberal ideology rampant in American government and institutions, with the flow, ebb, growth, climax and the eventual decline and death of both ancient and modern civilizations.

Its author maintains that western suicidal tendencies lie not so much in the lack of resources or military power, but through an erosion of intellectual, moral, and spiritual factors abundant in modern western society and the mainstay of liberal psychology. Devastating in its relentless dissection of the liberal syndrome, this book will lead many liberals to painful self-examination, buttress the thinking conservative’s viewpoint, and incite others, no doubt, to infuriation. None can ignore it.