[A. Pole]

What happened in the 1990s was what Yamada Masahiro of Tokyo’s Gakugei University calls the first ‘low birth-rate recession’. It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s the stupidity, economists — the stupidity of thinking you can buck demography.

Japan might go through a long period of relative slowdown. But it will survive as an intact nations. So Japanese will do fine and much better that Lebanon or EUrabia.

[Snake65]

American firearms owners have a popular slogan: ‘If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.’ Likewise, if you marginalise religion, only the marginalised will have religion. That’s why France’s impoverished Muslim ghettos display more cultural confidence than the wealthiest enclaves of the capital.

I can think of no higher compiment to pay to a political writer than "this reminds me of Steyn." But the above is Steyn out-Steyning Steyn, if you follow my meaning.

[marktwain]

As others have stated: An especially brilliant Steyn essay.

[chatham]

Great Post Thanks.

Steyn is the Greatest and right on target.

[Psalm 73]

I look on religion like gun ownership.
That’s to say, New Hampshire has a high rate of firearms possession, which is why it has a low crime rate.
You don’t have to own a gun and there are sissy Dartmouth College arms-are-for-hugging types who don’t.
But they benefit from the fact that their crazy stump-toothed knuckle-dragging neighbours do.
If you want to burgle a home in the Granite State, you’d have to be awfully certain it was the one-in-a-hundred we-are-the-world pantywaist’s pad and not some plaid-clad gun nut who’ll blow your head off before you lay a hand on his $70 TV.
That’s the way it is with religion.

Oh, man Steyne kills me - could you imagine him on the same stage as Ann Coulter - together they would be "wet-my-pants" hillarious.

[Bob from De]

Now go back to that bland statistic you hear a lot these days: ‘about 10 per cent of France’s population is Muslim’. Give or take a million here, a million there, that’s broadly correct, as far as it goes. But the population spread isn’t even. And when it comes to those living in France aged 20 and under, about 30 per cent are said to be Muslim and in the major urban centres about 45 per cent. If it came down to street-by-street fighting, as Michel Gurfinkiel, the editor of Valeurs Actuelles, points out, ‘the combatant ratio in any ethnic war may thus be one to one’ — already, right now, in 2005.

Like the Fram oil filter guy says:

You can pay me now or pay me later!

[dead]

Always insightful bump.

[July 4th]

Likewise, if you marginalise religion, only the marginalised will have religion.

Awesome line.

[NeoCaveman]

A decade ago, for example, I tended to accept the experts’ line that Japan’s rising sun had gone into eclipse because its economy was riddled with protectionism, cronyism and inefficient special-interest groups. But so what? You could have said the same 30 years ago, when the joint was booming. The only real difference is that Japan’s population was a lot younger back then.

I didn't know Steyn did economic analysis, but he nails that too.

[Sloth]

Steyn is the greatest non-fiction writer alive today.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

A hyper-rationalist might dismiss the whole God thing as a lot of apple sauce, but his hyper-rationalism is a lot more vulnerable in a society without a strong Judaeo-Christian culture...if you marginalise religion, only the marginalised will have religion. That’s why France’s impoverished Muslim ghettos display more cultural confidence than the wealthiest enclaves of the capital.

Brilliant, and true. 

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

M. de Villepin put it very well: ‘What does it matter where this path leads, nowhere or elsewhere?’

LOL

[Lurker]

Unless you act, you’re going to lose your world.

Mr. Steyn does indeed 'get it.'

L

[Steel Wolf]

It is not necessary, incidentally, for Islam to become a statistical majority in order to function as one.

Ask the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq about the numbers game. They spent decades being dominated by 25% of the country's population. I have no doubt that if the North Africans get motivated and organized, they'll be able to push the French majority around with surprising ease.

[NCSteve]

American firearms owners have a popular slogan: ‘If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.’ Likewise, if you marginalise religion, only the marginalised will have religion. That’s why France’s impoverished Muslim ghettos display more cultural confidence than the wealthiest enclaves of the capital.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Why is this so hard for the elites to understand?

[Rosemont]

Thanks for the post.

[Scourge of God]

The thesis of this whole problem: modern liberal values lead to disintegration and the collapse of civilization.

The solution to this problem: Christian values build civilizations and vibrant, energetic, and prosperous cultures.

[Uncle Miltie]

Mark Steyn can write what I think and feel better than anyone.

Another fricking MS home run. Wow.

[writmeister]

One day they’ll even be on the beach at St Trop, and if you and your infidel whore happen to be lying there wearing nothing but two coats of Ambre Solaire when they show up, you better hope that the BBC and CNN are right about there being no religio-ethno-cultural component to their ‘grievances’.

Another Steyn classic!!

[zeugma]

Finished laughing yet? OK, on we go.

Excellent Steyn article. I'd thought of the demographic issues over there, but I'd not really looked closely at effective street power.

Thanks Pokey78!