An excellent example is the planet we call Mars.
They cut down all their trees, their oxygen and water dried up, and their population is no where to be found.
Earth is on a similar mission to destroy itself.
And I'm not being sarcastic nor dramatic.
Posted on 01/01/2006 2:52:39 PM PST by twntaipan
Yes, but it will probably require a war.
The healthiest humans have an active immune system, that won't hesitate to kill rogue cells, while doing a pretty good job of leaving healthy cells alone.
It can err on either side, killing you with an autoimmune disease, or letting you be killed by infection. For this to work, the immune system must have both strong weapons and a well developed sense of what cells are good and what ones are bad. And just because a cell was good yesterday, doesn't give it a free ticket today (yes, John McCain - that means you, and many others.)
Tyranny, fascism, and such are like an overly aggressive immune system, killing off healthy cells. Anarchy is like a too weak immune system, letting sick cells proliferate.
For governments to work best, they must enforce some rules, and weed out the bad guys from the good. The more rabid libertarians who would denounce any government authority to spy on, imprison, and kill people, both its citizens and foreigners, are asking us to descend into anarchy, and be killed by the evil infections abundant in the world.
Our police, intelligence and military need to be strong, and need to be smart - doing their best to apply overwhelming force to the bad guys, while letting the good guys go freely about their business. It won't be perfect, but going to either extreme of tyranny or anarchy is far worse, as human history and current events have shown again and again and again.
Every time we let Political Correctness or Leftist politics impose some constraint on what our armed forces, spies or cops can do, we limit the power and flexibility of our cultural immune system. Occasionally, that's a good idea, if a particular power is more often misused than not. Usually, it's a bad idea.
We must not only tolerate some intolerance; our culture's life depends on it.
Mark Steyn Magnum Opus ping
Families like these are the reasons red states are increasing in political clout, and they are exactly what Steyn suggests as an antidote to secular societal suicide.
The rapid advances in technology, computing and communications continue to wash over human civilization, with increasing speed and force.
I view the rise and dominance of main stream media, not to mention Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union, in the last century to be a result of corporate and big government acquiring the means and control of rapid communication and publication before the ordinary person did. Now as us ordinary citizens are gaining similar powers, the main stream media is losing its position of dominance.
In most of the wars fought by these United States, from the Revolution, to the Civil War, to Vietnam, to the misnamed War on Terror, there was vigorous and wide spread dissent. The dominance of daily newspapers and radio broadcasting during World War II, and its control those mostly supporting the war, is the most outstanding exception.
Fifty years ago, the existence of Islamo-Fascists on the Arabian peninsula was of little concern to the average resident of Manhattan. On 9/11, it was of major concern. With the advent of world wide travel and communication, what was once a localized problem has now become a world wide problem.
As with any change, it comes in phases. Some aspects of the change come sooner, some later. We are now seeing the brunt of the changes that made the world so much smaller, putting Afghanistan next door to Manhattan, putting eleventh century fascists on the same flight as Barbara Olson.
But as modern technology, and democratic reform, infiltrate the eleventh century civilization that work up one day to find itself sitting on a big oil patch, they may loose their rabid potency for terrorist destruction.
Just as it would have been hard to predict the rise of FreeRepublic.com by looking at the dominance of big media (television, newspaper, books and radio) between the 1930's and the 1980's, so it will be difficult to predict what will happen to the Islamic civilization, now that it is being flash merged with our civilization.
They won't. Too many have the fatalistic inshallah view whereby everything just happens because it is God's will. An example of this: I heard an Iranian scientist interviewed who was alarmed about the lax building codes in his country. He was upset over all the people who died in earthquakes because the buildings were not made to modern standards. He said he kept approaching officials, saying that modern, earthquake-resistant buildings could save thousands of lives. The officials didn't comprehend what he was saying. The officials told him that if a lot of people died in an earthquake, then it was God's will and no one can question it or do anything about it.
Now picture that same attitude in an Eurabia that has inherited nuclear reactors. Probably a large part of Europe will go Islamic. It is questionable that this population will be able to support itself in the long run if they cannot maintain modern industry and agriculture. Just using my imagination, and I have no special insight, I can imagine 200 years from now an Eurabia in crisis being invaded by the Chinese or Africans. Who knows? Maybe the Africans will re-introduce Christianity to Europe. Enough wild speculation.
"Best case scenario: the Continent winds up as Vienna with Swedish taxes." If that's the best case, all is lost. I've spent time in Vienna. All the taxi drivers are Moslem.
"Namely, the fact that most of the civilized world as we know it--Europe, Japan, Russia--are going to die unless they act much more decisively than they are likely too within the next ten or fifteen years."
They've got to act decisively to have children, that is what it is. That's really not such an awful thing. If you could just get most women to have three children you could turn this whole demographic suicide bomb around in a generation, I'd bet. Two generations at most. That's how long it's taken to get us into this mess.
For this we can truly thank the Feminazis, stiking lefty commies that they always were.
They need to do two things: have children, and start moving the Muslims back to the Middle East and North Africa.
And they have to change their values, putting self-defense and hard work ahead of living high off the welfare hog.
What Steyn only makes partly clear is that demography is destiny, for at least for twenty years out. Because if Europeans started to make more babies tomorrow, it would still be twenty or twenty-five years before they grew up and joined the work force--depending on whether they finished college first. The dearth of young workers now is the result of selfish decisions made twenty or thirty or forty years ago.
Too many gems to cut and paste here- suffice it to say it's one of Steyn's best and most serious.
Although this is another great Steyn article, I am disappointed he did not point out that this is not just a natural human progression, it is planned. The Left/Communists/Democrats are using the Islamist/Russian Mafia/Drug Dealers as their strong arm surrogates while they themselves do the slow behind the scenes psychopathology of dissecting and destroying our society.
The Left/Communists/Democrats and Islamists get the taxpayers to finance them through phony social programs and charities while the Mafia and Drug dealers are self-financing.
None of this is by accident and we had better wake to it rather than considering it a benign progression of human nature.
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Yes, it's true that the leftists/Communists/Democrats are deliberately helping.
But they are fooling themselves if they think they will end up in control of anything. If their project succeeds, the Muslims will end up in control and the leftists will all be enslaved or killed. They are all so busy bringing down civilization they have no time to understand what that means for themselves.
As islam rises around the world, the collective IQ of humanity sinks.
Bump
Good one. It is interesting to ponder the fact that the beliefs of even the most moderate Muslim are in opposition to the most cherished beliefs of the left, yet they still favor mass Muslim immigration. The hatred of their own societies overrides all other considerations.
The left cannot comprehend that something they cherish (i.e. diversity) might also be their demise (i.e. Islam). It's as if they are colorblind to Islam.
Reference bump - you forgot the long read disclaimer! Still Steyn is the best! ;-)
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