credit: illinoisreview.typepad.com
If you are not reading Mark Steyn on a regular basis, you’re missing some of the most insightful and well-written commentary available anywhere. One of the insights I’ve most appreciated since I read Steyn’s book America Alone some years ago is that we in the west are destroying ourselves through demography. Barbaric cultures are simply outbreeding us. Consider this from one of his recent articles:
Ten years ago this month – January 2006 – The Wall Street Journal and The New Criterion published my first draft of what would become the thesis of my bestselling book, America Alone. The Journal headline sums it up: ‘It’s the Demography, Stupid.’ Opening paragraph:
Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands–probably–just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.
The argument was straightforward. The western world is going out of business because it’s given up having babies. The 20th century welfare state, with its hitherto unknown concepts such as spending a third of your adult lifetime in “retirement”, is premised on the basis that there will be enough new citizens to support the old. But there won’t be. Lazy critics of my thesis thought that I was making a ‘prediction’, and that my predictions were no more reliable than Al Gore’s or Michael Mann’s on the looming eco-apocalypse. I tried to explain that it’s not really a prediction at all:
When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it’s hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they’re running out a lot faster than the oil is. ‘Replacement’ fertility rate–i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller–is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?
Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you’ll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada’s fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That’s to say, Spain’s population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy’s population will have fallen by 22%.
This, gentle readers, is where it gets scary. Drop to 1.1 or so, and a nation’s population drops by half every generation as those remaining continue to age. Think of contemporary Germany. Fewer and fewer young people, a rapidly aging population, and the Germans are willingly importing millions of agitated Muslims that have no intention of becoming Germans. They intend to conquer Germany and the rest of the west by any means possible, and smothering us with little jihadists, perhaps the result of the rape of German women, will work just as well as killing us all. It’ll just take awhile longer.
Enter Islam, which sportingly volunteered to be the children we couldn’t be bothered having ourselves, and which kind offer was somewhat carelessly taken up by the post-Christian west. As I wrote a decade ago:
The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion.
In essence, Steyn is pointing out the reality that progressives tend to have far fewer children than conservatives. By the very nature of their beliefs and lifestyles, societies dominated by Progressive/socialists have not only created the conditions of their demise, but the inevitable and bloody death of all the lifestyles and narratives they hold dear. Such people also tend to lack the will and martial spirit necessary to fight for their survival.
Danish nightclubs demand guests have to speak Danish, English or German to be allowed in after ‘foreign men in groups’ attack female revelers
But don’t worry, it won’t be a problem for long: On the German and Swedish ‘migrant’ numbers, there won’t be a lot of ‘female revelry’ in Europe’s future. The formerly firebreathing feminists at The Guardian and the BBC are already falling as mute as battered wives – saying nothing, looking away, making excuses, clutching at rationalizations… Ten years ago, I wrote:
The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths–or, at any rate, virtues–and that’s why they’re proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.
‘Multiculturalism’ was less an immigration policy than an advertisement of our moral virtue. So the really bad thing about New Year’s Eve is not that Continental women got groped and raped by coarse backward ‘migrants’, but that all these gropes and rapes might provoke the even more coarse and backward natives.
We now have more than eleven million illegal immigrants in America, somewhere, everywhere, and Mr. Obama is desperate to import millions more, even after various of his lackeys have admitted that a great many of those may very well be Islamic terrorists. This is why Mr. Obama, during his final year in office, is pushing the idea, as he said at his final State of the Union Address, that it should be easier to vote, not harder. Bring them all to the polls! Non-citizens, felons, the dead, vote early, vote often, as often as you please! For the moment, we are still replacing ourselves at a roughly 1:1 ratio.
To conquer America, our enemies don’t have to kill us, they just have to outvote us. Progressives always figure the barbarian hordes won’t kill them–professional courtesy, you know.
Stately McDaniel Manor 
In the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, established, maturing societies have reached a point at which population decline may actually be the natural state of things. Human populations cannot continue to grow forever, even on this huge planet. After all, technology will supplant human workers in many jobs, and the zenith of a society may be one of long-lived people in smaller numbers, supported not by a Ponzi scheme of big-government hand-outs, but by the equilibrium of a prosperous economy run by fewer hands than in previous generations. What’s not to love? Even the Greenies should like the idea.
However, backwards societies such as those which still follow the barbarous notions of conversion by conquest (and I’d like someone to name a major Muslim nation whose indigenous population was originally converted in any way other than by warfare) are nowhere near the point of this state of population equilibrium, let alone the social and technological innovations which foster it. Until and unless the threat of displacement in one’s own country by people from outside who hold radically different values is recognized, we will be overcome, through our own systems and laws. Those mechanisms will be turned against us by those who, acting out of “compassion,” only see those who feel thereby imperiled as “selfish,” while basking in their own, misguided sense of nobility. The fact that they will earn no love from those they seek to “help” will be cold comfort.
I have known and worked beside some individually lovely Muslim people; however, an honest examination of their faith, including its historical impacts, makes it clear that Islam is not so much a religion, as an engine of socio-political transformation, whose primary tools are deceit and violence. Backwards and odious credos comprise its laws and strictures: The genuine objectification of women as property; prescriptions for torture, mutilation, and death for “crimes” not even recognized as such by civilized folk; genocide as a solution to any who dare reject Islam (particularly Jews); the casual acceptance of slavery as an institution blessed by Allah, as a reward for conquest (and practically all institutionalized slavery in the modern world is practiced as part of Islamic culture); among others.
“Moderate” Muslims are either pretending that those aspects of Islam simply don’t exist, or ignore them for the sake of not rocking the boat in other societies in which they may find themselves. There is no “New Testament” in Islam, no “reformed branch;” The Prophet’s laws haven’t changed in a millennium and a half, and aren’t meant to.
It may seem counter to American values to contest against the members of an entire faith: I had to wrestle with this for quite some time, before reaching the conclusion that, If Islam was merely a religion, compatible with civilized society, that would be one thing; however, at this point, it is Islam against the rest of the civilized world, with no less goal than the conquest and total domination of the world, and all mankind. How can it be any other way? It is written in the Qu’ran, and Muslims MUST obey the word of Allah, as put down by his Prophet.
War has already been declared. We must recognize that it is us or them. Look to the regions controlled by ISIS for the future world in which we have lost that fight. They have the will to win, while we fail even to recognize the threat. ='[.]’=
If I didn’t know any better, this sounded more like an ethnicity issue then a socio-religous one. People need to understand, there will be no pure bred people, so I will agree with you if that’s what you meant. This read to me like an ethnic majority / minority argument disguised as a socio-religous religious one. This is not a religious issue at all. European societies have been there for thousands of years and won’t be going anywhere soon. However the so called ethnic majority will be. If you scroll back to Charlie Hebdo shootings, You should research at the adjustments the French government imposed against muslims, which included bombing Syria. France is also one of those ‘Progressive’ countries, so I have to disagree with your/his ‘Progressive’ argument that more left leaning folks arent having kids.
.. 2 hat I think will happen is Europeans will have kids with middle easterners and more of the radicalism will become more moderate. The society would take disappear however. This just sounded like some StormFront-ers in Texas complaining that whites aren’t the majority anymore…. So the sky must be falling
I Confused the last Paris terror attack and Charlie Hebdo (Which was also a terror attack) shootings. But IMHO people will date inter racially / politically / religiously etc and people’s views will blur. The radicalism will slowly die. The reasons for political division. Will die down because the self identification factor will disappear. Having said this people will more closely identify with thier ethic heritage then any political designatio or religious denomination. All the above will blur and I do believe the radicals / wing nuts will be drowned put. The reasons for jihad will diminish because person A will now be fighting his cousin….
In the case of the US, a distinction can be made between non-Muslim immigrants, particularly those from Central and South America, and Islamic “refugees.”
Non-Muslims aren’t operating from an inherently antagonistic cultural view; your average illegal alien doesn’t see himself at war with the US and its culture; rather, he seeks to grab a piece of the pie as it exists, for good or for ill. He may well admire aspects of our culture and society, but simply not trouble himself to put in the effort to come here in accordance with our laws.
Muslim immigrants, particularly “refugees” from middle-eastern hot spots, come with no intention of fitting in. While an immigrant, legal or otherwise, from, say, Guatemala, might have no interest in direct assimilation, when he can simply join a growing US population of Spanish-speaking people who share at least some aspects of culture in common, Muslims, in particular young males, come with a load of anger and shame at having had to flee their homeland, and to take refuge in the universally reviled US. The notion that they’ll become “domesticated” by intermarrying is ridiculous; even relatively “tame” enclaves of Muslims in the US are hard knots of cultural orthodoxy, and would much prefer to rule themselves by Sharia law than submit themselves to assimilation.
I don’t really care what color an American is, so long as he is an American, and not a foreign colonizer, here to exploit our generosity, while all the while hating us for it. That hypothetical Guatemalan I mentioned will probably work hard (though for less money than a citizen), and his kids will probably grow up to be more like the rest of us (what to do with the children of illegals is a discussion for another time). The children of Somali or Syrian or whatever Muslim “refugees” will have been taught from an early age to be very much like their parents, and, like them, will desire to change America (or whatever country in which they have come to light) into part of a global Caliphate, as the Prophet commanded.
It is those who wish to change what we are, to impose their beliefs and values on us, who present the existential threat. Our resistance to them has nothing to do with the color of their skin. It has much more to do with the fact that they hate us, and wish so fervently to destroy us and all we have created that they will willingly sacrifice their own lives to do so. To invite ever more of them inside our borders is nothing short of suicidal. ='[.]’=
The actor, John Rys-Davies said something similar a few years ago, saying Great Britian and France would be Muslim in something like 20 years. He was excoriated in England (his home, I believe).
I don’t think so. I think thats islamophobia and fear mongering talking more so then moderate Europeans / middle easterners. What people need to realize is religion can be partially practiced….You cant partially practice your ethnicity. You are what you are. You can change social or religious beliefs at random. As more people see that radical political or religious beliefs can be destructive, I think people will stray away from that. I also don’t believe this notion that Europe will be racially segregated 100%. Races will mix. Ideologies will water down. Religion will be less practiced fundamentally etc
Islam has proven rather resilient to “watering down.” See Edward Feser’s blog discussing how liberalism is blind to the innate cultural difference between Christianity and Islam on that issue: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/01/liberalism-and-islam.html
Dear JD:
Quite so. While some Muslims really do not intend to take the path of Jihad, nor will they be easily induced to do so, there are millions, even tens of millions that will. They will not be watered down, assimilated, nor cajoled into behaving like civilized beings. One of American’s greatest failings is thinking that the peoples of other nations are just like Americans, that they share our hopes, aspirations and cultural assumptions merely because they were blue jeans and athletic shoes, watch some American TV shows and movies and perhaps have McDonald’s in their homelands.
The West began disintegrating with the advent of leftist ideologies in the 20th Century (Communism and Fascism) and continues on a downward trend….materialism is still the dominant philosophy……. the only difference is that hedonism has taken the place of the collective statism of the communists and Nazis. The loss of respect for innocent human life continues throughout the Western countries, which cannot really be characterized as “Christian” any longer, at least in my opinion.
A society without some sort of moral foundation is a society that will no longer fight for itself…..hence we see politicians and intellectuals who seem unable to provide a justification for their continued existence…..they are so immersed in relativism that they cannot even bring themselves to admit that their enemy is radical Islam.
The only good news is that with the exception of subsahara Africa, birth rates in most of the muslim world are also plummeting. The most profound example is Iran where birth rates have fallen below replacement level. The trend is documented in Peter Goldman’s book “How Civilizations Die.”. The decline is so profound that I joked that someone must be waging biological warfare to avenge the 9-11 attacks and that they are employing an STD that is transmitted via sheep. More recent research reveals that Iran’s plummeting birth rate is primarilynthe rsult of an STD pandemic that has rendered most couples sterile. The STD in question can be transmitted from infected sheepnto humans so easily that pregnant women are advised to not assist in birthing. The fact that the two salient exceptions to the declining birth rates trend are Iraq and Afghanistan where American troops were stationed only enhances the credibility of my hypothesis.
We are now having a new epidemic that causes hypocephalia that has become so profound that women in affected countries are heeding advice to avoid pregnancy.
If it’s xenophobic to be wary of out of control immigration from conflicting cultures to the West….count me in as “xenophobic”.
When one looks at the state of the world with the poverty, misery and savagery wherever you look..one would be crazy not to be “xenophobic”.
I don’t want my community turned into a third world lawless crapholes. Excuse me.
Japan has it right. Their lack of “diversity” and “multicultarism” has served them very well. Crime is non-existant, and the last thing they have to worry about is a terrorist attack. Only 1200 Muslims in the country will do that for you.
The first thing conservatives and moderates need to do is to not cower away from the left’s shaming. The blue collar democrats that live in mixed communities are not the ones shaming. It’s always the rich liberals that wouldn’t send their kid in a multicultural schools if their life depended on it are the loudest ones. White guilt. Ignore it, and fight back.