Posted on 02/16/2006 9:22:33 AM PST by .cnI redruM
The backbencher raises legitimate questions about demographic changes
MY interest in demography dates back to September 11, 2001, when a demographic group I hadn't hitherto given much thought managed to get my attention. I don't mean the, ah, unfortunate business with the planes and buildings and so forth, but the open cheering of the attacks by their co-religionists in Montreal, Yorkshire, Copenhagen and elsewhere. How many people knew there were fast-growing and culturally confident Muslim populations in Scandinavia?
Demography doesn't explain everything but it accounts for a good 90 per cent. The "who" is the best indicator of the what-where-when-and-why. Go on, pick a subject. Will Japan's economy return to the heady days of the 1980s when US businesses cowered in terror? Answer: No. Japan is exactly the same as it was in its heyday except for one fact: it stopped breeding and its population aged. Will China be the hyperpower of the 21st century? Answer: No. Its population will get old before it gets rich.
Check back with me in a century and we'll see who's right on that one. But here's one we know the answer to: Why is this newspaper published in the language of a tiny island on the other side of the earth? Why does Australia have an English Queen, English common law, English institutions? Because England was the first nation to conquer infant mortality.
By 1820 medical progress had so transformed British life that half the population was under the age of 15. Britain had the manpower to take, hold, settle and administer huge chunks of real estate around the planet. Had, say, China or Russia been first to overcome childhood mortality, the modern world would be very different.
What country today has half of its population under the age of 15? Italy has 14 per cent, the UK 18 per cent, Australia 20 per cent - and Saudi Arabia has 39 per cent, Pakistan 40 per cent and Yemen 47 per cent. Little Yemen, like little Britain 200 years ago, will send its surplus youth around the world - one way or another.
So, whether or not her remarks were "outrageous" (the Democrats' Lyn Allison), "insensitive" (the Greens' Rachel Siewert), "offensively discriminatory" (Sydney's Daily Telegraph) and "bigoted" (this newspaper), I salute Danna Vale. You don't have to agree with her argument that Australia's aborting itself out of recognition and that therefore Islam will inherit by default to think it's worth asking a couple of questions:
* Is abortion in society's interest?
* Can a society become more Muslim in its demographic character without also becoming more Muslim in its political and civil character?
The first one's easy: One can understand that 17-year-old Glenys working the late shift at Burger King and knocked up by some bloke who scrammed 10 minutes after conception may believe it's in her interest to exercise "a woman's right to choose", but the state has absolutely no interest in encouraging women in general to exercise that choice.
Quite the opposite: given that today's wee bairns are tomorrow's funders of otherwise unsustainable social programs, all responsible governments should be seriously natalist. The reason Europe, Russia and Japan are doomed boils down to a big lack of babies. Abortion isn't solely responsible for that but it's certainly part of the problem.
In attempting to refute Vale's argument, this newspaper praised the nation's maidenhood for lying back and thinking of Australia and getting the national fertility rate up from 1.73 births per woman in 2001 to 1.77, "well above rates in developed nations such as Italy, Spain, Japan, Germany and South Korea".
Well, pop the champagne corks! That's like saying Mark Latham's political prospects are better than Harold Holt's. The countries cited are going out of business. Seventeen European nations are now at what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility - 1.3 births per woman, the point at which you're so far down the death spiral you can't pull out.
In theory, those countries will find their population halving every 40 years or so. In practice, it will be quicker than that, as the savvier youngsters figure there's no point sticking around a country that's turned into one big undertaker's waiting room: not every pimply burger flipper is going to want to work himself into the ground to pay for new shuffleboard courts at the old folks' home.
In 2005, some 137 million babies were born around the globe. That 137 million is the maximum number of 20-year-olds who'll be around in 2025. There are no more, no other sources; that's it, barring the introduction of mass accelerated cloning (which is by no means an impossibility). Who that 137 million are will determine the character of our world.
The shape's already becoming clear. Take those Danish cartoons. Every internet blogger wants to take a stand on principle alongside plucky little Denmark. But there's only five million of them. Whereas there are 20 million Muslims in Europe - officially. That's the equivalent of the Danes plus the Irish plus the Belgians plus the Estonians.
You do the mathematics. If you want the reality of Europe in a nutshell, walk into a supermarket belonging to the French chain Carrefour. You'll be greeted by a notice in Arabic: "Dear Clients, We express solidarity with the Islamic and Egyptian community. Carrefour doesn't carry Danish products." It's strictly business: they have three Danish customers and a gazillion Muslim ones. Retail sales-wise, they know which way their bread's buttered and it isn't with Lurpak.
That's Vale's second point. If a society chooses to outsource its breeding, who your suppliers are is not unimportant. "I've heard those very silly remarks made about immigrants to this country since I was a child," says Allison.
"If it wasn't the Greeks, it was the Italians or it was the Vietnamese."
Those are races or nationalities. But Islam is a religion, and an explicitly political one - unlike the birthplace of your grandfather it's not something you leave behind in the old country. Indeed, for its adherents in the West, it becomes their principal expression - a Pan-Islamic identity that transcends borders.
Instead of a melting pot, there's conversion: A Scot can marry a Greek or a Botswanan, but when a Scot marries a Yemeni it's because the former has become a Muslim. In defiance of normal immigration patterns, the host country winds up assimilating with Islam: French municipal swimming baths introduce non-mixed bathing sessions; a Canadian Government report recommends the legalisation of polygamy; Seville removes King Ferdinand III as patron of the annual fiesta because he played too, um, prominent a role in taking back Spain from the Moors.
When the fastest-breeding demographic group on the planet is also the one most resistant to the pieties of the social-democratic state that's a profound challenge. Yes, yes, I know Islam is very varied, and Riyadh has a vibrant gay scene, and the Khartoum Feminist Publishing Collective now has so many members they've rented lavish new offices above the clitorectomy clinic. I don't claim to have all the answers, except when I'm being interviewed live on TV. But that's better than claiming, as most of Vale's disparagers do, that there aren't even any questions.
Where she goes wrong is in consigning the Lucky Country to the same trash can of history as Old Europe. For Australia, this is not hail and farewell - or, as the Romans put it, ave atque (Danna) vale. Japan is unicultural: a native population ageing and dying. Europe is bicultural: a fading elderly population yielding to a young surging Islam.
But Australia, like the US, is genuinely multicultural, at least in the sense that its immigration is not from a single overwhelming source. The remorseless transformation of Eutopia into Eurabia is already prompting the Dutch to abandon their country in record numbers, for Canada and New Zealand.
In the years ahead, North America and Australia will have the pick of European talent and a chance to learn the lessons of its self-extinction, as they apply to abortion and much else.
In the '70s and '80, Muslims had children - those self-detonating Islamists in London and Gaza and Bali are a literal baby boom - while westerners took all those silly books about overpopulation seriously. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the world we live in.
Probably one of the most simple and intelligent descriptions of the modern abortion conundrom ever written.
>>>>>A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the world we live in.
Again, he's right on the money. There's a good reason Abraham was told to "Be fruitful and multiply." You need to have someone there to watch your back.
aready posted I think
Whoops! sorry. I did run the search...
bttt
Mark Steyn columns should be treated with an exemption in this case.
bttt
Ping...
Sometime during the 2000 election, I gave up trying to convince uber liberals stop aborting the liberal babies.
Now when a uber liberal starts to push abortion, the gay lifestyle, the drug lifestyle, love the criminals and the poor education that liberal children get in the Blue Cities. I never argue with them. I thank them for my sons, Dil, and Grand Children.
When a uber liberal starts pushing their agenda, my comment/reply runs like this with these self destructing morons, "Please keep on aborting your unborn, make the gay life style the greatest life style ever, do away with any drug laws, keep pouring money into incompetent school districts and continue to love criminals versus good people! You will enable my sons and grandchildren to control your dwindling, powerless, and hopeless numbers."
The liberals, who still have half of a brain, realize what I have told them is their chosen fate for them and any of their children they didn't abort.
Mark makes some excellent points but I dont think its as hopeless as he does. For one thing dramatic demographics shifts occur throughout history without neccissarily bringing down cultures and empire. A demographic trend can reverse itself and quickly. The more the "islamists" encroach against european sensibilities the more inclined Europe is goign to be to reverse their immigration policies.
I personally forsee racially motivated nationlism looming on europes horizon. Good Bad or Indifferent.
I understand Steyn concerns and think they should be treated seriously. But the reason I think they should be treated seriously is not because I think Western Culture iss on the cusp of being doomed. They should be treated seriously because it will lead to a conflagration in Europe that will see a new rise of rascist nationalism. The bottom line is that the Mulsims may number 20 million in Europe but they would still be generally speaking powerless against an organized state determined to get rid of them.
Thank you. However, it should be posted every G*ddamned day.
Empirical evidence says NO!
"SO we should infest people we don't like with greater liberalism? Wouldn't that be immoral?
Actually, I have never infested anyone with liberalism. They are totally infested when I get to know them. I just recognize their "superior intelligence" over conservatives like me, and I don't argue with them. I applaud their agendas as long as they aren't forced on me.
"Sort of like intentionally giving another person AIDS. I like that. Spreading liberal beliefs is as wrong as spreading AIDS. Thanks for the tagline!"
That is a good tagline.
I think that this article (the Australian one) was mentioned on Best of the Web, yesterday. Very interesting
ROTFLMAO!
Steyn ping!
European immigration policies no longer matter one bit. They can cut off immigration from muslim lands tomorrow, it won't matter. It's simple demographic destiny now.
Do the math. Europe will be Muslim in 50 years, or less. We (or our kids) will live to see Notre Dame cathedral turned into a mosque.
But you're only looking at half the equation. Let's say Islamic immigration to Europe stops today. Then Europe is REALLY doomed. The social-welfare societies They've created would collapse of their own weight. I'm still trying to decide if that's a BAD thing...
As Steyn notes
"Seventeen European nations are now at what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility - 1.3 births per woman, the point at which you're so far down the death spiral you can't pull out."
This implies that they are beyond the point of recovery. Merely shutting the door on immigration won't help. Europe needs to actively kick Muslims out...even if they are citizens. And if they do this, social collapse and a weakened military are inevitable.
As I've said elsewhere, Europe should import a few million Mexicans and other Latin Americans. Hard working non-muslims who are young and fertile will solve many of their problems.
Steyn rocks.
That figure, by the way (-1.3 children per) does not necessarily entail "societal" death, which is the point of Steyn's rant. Those numbers can be reversed (certainly not easily), but the basis of that soultion is not the simple breeding of more children. That's only a by-proiduct of what needs to be done first.
The solution must be first founded upon a societal change of sweeping proportions, that is, the wholesale dumping of selfish, self-indulgent philosophies that have become part of the common culture (i.e. feminism, "if-it-feels-good-do-it, and a rash of "advice" from very bad French and German "philosophers"). The trick will be to foster and encourage that kind of sacrifice while still maintaining a democratic frame of mind (i.e. no collective baby farms or making the bearing of children a legal requirement for citizenship, like in Nazi Germany).
Which is what the abortion question really revolves around; it's the eternal battle between the rights and desires of the individual against what is in the best interests of society (i.e. the State).
But that is tan..umm..genital (no pun intended) to what Steyn is talking about. His real beef is with the steady cultural retreat that is taking place within Western society in the name of "tolerance". Not having enough babies to perpetuate and defend the culture (and not just militarily, but through the democratic process and the "unwritten" laws of civil society)is simply one way in which we'll eventually lose it. Making repeated concessions to those who demand respect and consideration for their views, yet who are not willing to do likewise, is another, and much surer, way to perpetuate Europe's demise.
Bump.
Procreate or perish
Any sane society would choose the former...
Precisely
Brilliant. And chillingly right as usual!
"...Europe should import a few million Mexicans and other Latin Americans. Hard working non-muslims who are young and fertile will solve many of their problems..."
Having a choice between having the West become Central America or the Middle East is not much of a choice. Maybe we should consider having our own babies, hmm?
As I have said elsewhere, it is not the racial component, it is the social/political/economic institutions.
If our immigrants are allowed to come in such numbers that they do not assimilate, such concepts as limited representative government, free speech, freedom of religion, private property, etc. will also vanish when we are supplanted by our Third World newcomers.
If we continue on our present course, our civilization will not survive this century.
bttt
Spengler and others warned against that decades ago, but of course that was deemed "racist" by liberal wackjobs who of course will be first inline for the headchopping if and when Islam becomes dominate.
bump
Yours is the only solution to the problem just as long as the European countries simultaneously remove their Arab populations from their soil. Otherwise, you'd have a contest between the Muslims and the Latinos as to who can outpopulate the other there.
Where?
No im aware of that issue...my point is simply that The idea that a historically racist and nationalistic Europe is going to go silently into the night is just not accurate.
And frankly so what if their social system collapses..its going to one day regardless. if one thing history can tell us its that systems of government dont last forever...their collapse certainly sucks for the people at the time granted but the status quo in europe never was going to last.
The question in Steyn's article is the question of whetehr or not Europe will end up Islamic and my opinion is no...
First off I dont buy the 1.3 is irreversible equation...scientists love to throw out alarmist absolutes like that all the time...according to environementalists global warming is irreversable now anywway so who cares about the muslim threat we'll all be dead in twenty years....I of course think that is just as much rubbish...as I stated the long term history suggests far more dramatic downturns in population than what Europe is currently facing and the trend can reverse quickly. If in ten years the trend were to reverse to 3 babies per woman then the population would be back to normal within 2 generations. So the idea that its irreversable is nonsense..people just simply have to start having more babies...whetehr they will or not is a seperate question..I would argue that eventually they will.
As for the muslim question..my whole point is that I suspect that kicking them out is precisely what europe will end up doing..not tommorrow certainly, and probably not until thinsg get much worse....but eventually.
Sorry your wrong there...Steyns argument and yours is dependant upon the notion that europeans wont take corrective action.
Wars change everything. Europe (and the war frankly) is heading for war. ONce the guns start firging it is impossible to predict what the outcome is going to be.
No demographic science can prove otherwise and neither Steyn nor you know what europe will be like in 50 years..its just supposition.
Well, not absolutely. However, for a reversal to occur, there would have to be a significant change in attitude in Europe...and soon. The question becomes will this reversal occur before the Muslims gain a voting majority in each of the individual countries. You see, once Muslims have a majority, then there's no turning back. Then there will be Sharia law with punative taxes on non-Muslims (which is allowed by the Koran).
You cannot redo the demographic trends already locked in. You cannot go back in time and created millions of little European toddlers who were NOT born a few years ago. That is done. Those non-existant European kids cannot grow up to be European adults.
Now, if you are betting that European women will all wake up tomorrow and decide to have 4 or 5 babies each, that I would call wishful thinking. A fantasy.
The other alternative you seem to be suggesting ("Once the guns start firing") is that the Euros are going to slaughter and wipe out the Muslims in Europe, including tens of millions of Muslims born in Europe.
I think if any slaughtering is going to be done ("Once the guns start firing") it will be the Euros on the receiving end. Look at the demos. Geriatric Euros will not be rolling in wheelchairs down to the barricades to engage in streetfighting with millions of Muslims under 30 years old. That's a fact. The demo that counts is today's under 20 demo.
The surviving Euros will be living under Sharia law in 50 years. Notre Dame cathedral will be a mosque.
Demographics is destiny, (unless you are stating that you know a miracle is going to occur to triple European birth rates starting tomorrow).
Today, there are 30 million Muslims in a Europe of 450 million people. That is a steep gradient for them to climb to overwhelm Europe. I think they are still in a postwar mentality. No sooner did they achieve prosperity than the iron curtain fell and they have had their noses to the grindstone working to upgrade those countries. If they were less socialist they would probably feel the pinch less, individually. But also, if they would let up on the imposed austerity measures and let people live and earn more they might have larger famiies.
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