Mark Steyn: Twilight of the West

National Review Online ^ | June 2, 2012 | Mark Steyn

[neverdem]

The Eurovision Song Contest doesn’t get a lot of attention in the United States, but on the Continent it’s long been seen as the perfect Euro-metaphor. Years before the euro came along, it was the prototype pan-European institution, and predicated on the same assumptions. Eurovision took the national cultures that produced Mozart, Vivaldi, and Debussy, and in return gave us “Boom-Bang-a-Bang” (winner, 1969), “Ding-Ding-a-Dong” (winner, 1975), and “Diggi-Loo-Diggi-Ley” (winner, 1984). The euro took the mark, the lira, and the franc, and merged them to create the “Boom-Bang-a-Bang” of currencies.

How will it all end? One recalls the 1990 Eurovision finals in Zagreb: “Yugoslavia is very much like an orchestra,” cooed the hostess, Helga Vlahović. “The string section and the wood section all sit together.” Shortly thereafter, the wood section began ethnically cleansing the dressing rooms, while the string section rampaged through the brass section pillaging their instruments and severing their genitals. Indeed, the charming Miss Vlahović herself was forced into a sudden career shift and spent the next few years as Croatian TV’s head of “war information” programming...

--snip--

I was sad to learn that Helga Vlahović died a few weeks ago, but her central metaphor all those years ago wasn’t wrong. Any functioning society is like an orchestra. When the parts don’t fit together, it’s always the other fellow who’s out of tune. So the Greeks will blame the Germans, and vice versa. But the developed world is all playing the same recessional. In the world after Western prosperity, we will work till we’re older and we will start younger — and we will despise those who thought they could defy not just the rules of economic gravity but the basic human life cycle.

[Mike Darancette]

We need another killer app.

[GOPJ]

In the world after Western prosperity, we will work till we’re older and we will start younger — and we will despise those who thought they could defy not just the rules of economic gravity but the basic human life cycle.

ping

[wjcsux]

The masses tend to gravitate to the bizarre for cheap thrills. Panem et circenses. And so it shall continue, in perpetuity. Amen.
I read something about most of Rome being in the Coliseum being entertained when the Barbarians invaded the city.

[Moltke]

I said hobby horse because Steyn certainly writes a lot on this topic.

But I agree - demographics are math/numbers. But what they’re not, is long term linear extrapolation. At least that is the opinion I’m trying to bring across. I beleive that at some point the current trend of Western birth decline will change again.

How will the current trend be turned around? - In the old fashioned way! ;-)

[Flashman_at_the_charge]

Coming soon to a country near you.