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The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?
Tony Blankley
Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005
This book is important because it illustrates so well a genre that is almost certain to become common, and perhaps increasingly popular, as the West becomes ever more terriryingly beseiged within a world of anger and resentment. We can expect many strident "calls to action" by individuals of magisterial personality to whom a "power ahead to victory" strategy seems intuitively right for its directness, but who see only part of the challenges facing the West and whose acceptance of the conventional wisdom on many things imposes conceptual limitations. We might well call this the "testosterone genre."
It is natural enough when a mortal threat is perceived to flay away at it, and to suppose that if the flaying is done with enough will and strength the threat will crumble before it. This will work against some threats, and will always appeal to the "man of action," which is why books predicated on this psychology will be instinctively attractive to many. The problem, however, is that flaying away is no solution if one is tramping around in a colony of fire ants or sinking in quicksand. Something more thoughtful is needed.
Tony Blankley is the editorial page editor for The Washington Times, was a speech writer and senior policy analyst for President Ronald Reagan, and was for seven years press secretary to U. S. congressman Newt Gingrich while the latter was Speaker of the House. His book is of the "action" genre. Its merit is that it sees well-and will help to raise consciousness about-the demographic threat to Europe arising from Islamic immigration and increasing radicalism, and more broadly the conundrum posed by the interface between a West that has lost energy and confidence and an Islam in turmoil that is overflowing with fervor, resentment, pride and energy. These are important strengths. The book's weakness is in its intellectual limitations, which lead to an arguably disastrous strategy.
Blankley points to the fact that a Europe that has long been experiencing a below-replacement birthrate has allowed an on-going Muslim immigration that has by now brought the Islamic population in Europe to over twenty million. Many of the newcomers, he observes,...