Sunday, October 12, 2008

America aloner   [Mark Steyn]

A reader thinks my column this week "creates problems" for my thesis in America Alone:

If Obama is elected, then he will be America's Trudeau. A transformational president as you put it. America will turn out not Alone but just Belated (or perhaps Retarded is more apt). Just at the time when Europe seems to be questioning its Leftism, America will embrace it. I guess everyone needs a go at messianic politics. What irony should Harper win a majority in Canada just as Obama takes the helm to the South! I dare say, Canadian identity will simply implode at the contrast.

Actually, that last point reminds me that, with a little light rewrite, the second edition of America Alone will hold up pretty well. If Obama is elected in November, at G7 meetings, for the first time since they began, America will have a more left-wing leader than any other member of the group - Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and Britain (and that's before Gordon Brown loses to David Cameron). Right-of-center government throughout the western world - except Washington.

And, if you say, "Hang on, isn't it the G8? What about Russia?", I'm not sure whether Putin and his stooge still regard themselves as socialists, but, if so, for good or ill, it's certainly of a more muscular variety than Obama's.

Strange times.

10/12 05:58 PMShare