Posted on 02/15/2006 10:15:37 AM PST by Wombat101
This assumes that the rationale behind low birth rates is primarily economic, but it's probably not.
Rather, I think the primary driver is the freedom of women to forego pregnancy in preference to other pursuits. A lot of women would rather not be mothers right away, but would rather do as us men do: have a rewarding career, and to do pretty much what we want to do. And then have a kid, as a matter of personal fulfillment.
This mindset is enabled by easy access to birth control and abortion, but those are merely enablers to the underlying mindset.
The solution is easy to describe, if beastly difficult to make happen (because it's a cultural change): having several children has to become an attractive goal for women.
Steyn should also do a rethink on the concepts of "universalism" while he is at it. He and his "liberal"
cohorts think about the same line, and that is the radical egalitarian concept of man is the same everywhere.
What????
Are you smokling something that should be (and probably is) banned?
"Universalism"? Where, please, tell me where Mr. Steyn's reasoning had any all-encompassing,touchy-feely ideology that was mentioned, alluded to or even implied, in this article? Other than advancing the concept of the Anglosphere, I can hardly remember Mr. Steyn putting forward anything that could be considered "universal".
"Radical egalitarian concept of man"? Did you copy that from your sociology textbook? Are you repeating something your hippie professor told you? If you're referring to the concept (created and advanced by many of the European societies that are now dying because of it) that inside "every Arab, Bushman and Coolie is an Englishman (or Frog or German) just dying to get out", you're seriously mistaken. Mark Steyn has never taken those kinds of positions, that I'm aware of atall.
The concept of the "Noble Savage" died a grisly death many centuries ago. That it is still taught in Western universities has more to do with wishful thinking and a sense of the romantic than it does with actual history. Or reality.
The question Steyn asked, in a nutshell: are you, Westerners, prepared to defend your culture against a force virulently inimical to it, or, are you going to continue to kow-tow to it? He's simply outlined one of the prinicpal facts in this battle: you're (Westerners) outnumbered, so you'd better think of something else. The current plan (cultural retreat) is a loser.
I'd hardly call that "Universalism" or "radical egalitarian" anything.
Steyn needs to do his homework. The populations of many of the nations conquered by Britain (e.g. India, and to all intents and purposes China) dwarfed that of the imperial homeland.
What transformed Britain into an empire was not medical progress (the work of Semmelweis, Pasteur, etc was still a generation in the future), but the Industrial Revolution. One soldier equipped by a factory economy is worth a dozen armed with handcrafted pointy sticks.
As far as I know, nobody has proposed that we "fight fair" in the sense of insisting that the foe shall be met hand-to-hand in single combat and shall be given all the same advantages of technology, training, etc. Thus, it's not an issue of numbers.
Addendum: Immediately after this message, it occurred to me that, yes, some people on the looney left have, in fact, whined that it's "unfair" that we can kill the terrorists with Predator drones, but if they want to kill us they have to get more up close and personal. I presume that you agree that sane people do, and should, ignore such nonsense.
I'm not arguing that this is a battle of numbers. Nor about medical science, since this is not my field of expertise. My only argument here is that there is a message "between-the-lines". That message is: you're in danger of letting your culture be destroyed from within by rampant immigration by unassimilable masses with a more energetic ideology.
The simple expedient of "outbreeding" your opponent, and thus checking his worst outrages by means of politics and stigma, has been taken away by modern ideology (feminism, for the most part, and espousal of the philosophies that elevate personal gratification above all else). Europe's democracies will be destroyed by simple democratic process; there's simply will be more Muslims to guarentee by vote that which they cannot gain by terror and demonstrations. Multi-cuturalism (another philosophy) stresses that such things are "just the breaks. Live with it and respect it".
So, if you're interested in protecting your native culture and heritage, you are, before a shot is fired, fighting with one hand tied behind your back.
The second point along these lines is that there is no energy in European culture. It is stagnating because that is the general trends of aging populations: maintaining the status quo. In simple mathematical terms, this is becoming more and more improbable without a new crop of replacement workers (and more importantly; VOTERS raised and educated in the Western tradition).
The current trend of immigration, especially in Europe, is to bring in enough people to pay the taxes to support a flabby European society, but don't attempt to assimilate the imports. In fact, so long as they merely labor anonymously and pay taxes, no one should care what they do or give a second thought as to what they want.
The problem is that the imports are now there in sufficient numbers that what they do and what they want DO matter. They are no longer just out-of-sight-out-of-mind taxpayers.
They are now out-of-sight-out-of-mind welfare recipients, voting blocs, and, increasingly, revolutionaries.
Addendum: The British Empire was just as much created by the fencing in of the English countryside, and the accumluation of formerly public lands in a private hands as it was the Industrial Revolution.
The loss of of farmland produced the excess bodies, the Industrial Revolution merely ensured they had the tools in sufficient quantity. Had not both arrived at approximately the same time, there would have been no Empire.
You're right, of course. But Steyn, in his normal half tongue in cheek half short sharp shock to the throat, is arguing what's in the state's interest. To any rational and moral person the question of the wrongness of abortion is a given. The state has interests of its own, the main one being perpetuating its existence and the phony baloney jobs (most of) its employees perform.
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. Like Mark said, do the math.
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.
Good point (see my tagline), but these numbers are set now.
That is good to hear, but at times the man can sound a bit squishy. But I agree he is no Mrs. Jellaby.
I forget, was Mrs. Jellaby in Nicholas Nickleby or Bleak House?
Anyways, Dickens aside, I think a more appropriate writer for this sort of thing would be Orwell (not the 1984 Orwell, the Lion and the Unicorn Orwell, although both are relevant). Espcially when he wrote something along the lines of "the well-being of the English dividend drawer is dependant on the sweating of Indian coolies". You know, that sort of thing.
It certainly sums up what's happening in France.
Amazing how many people have forgotten Orwell. He predicted many of the political and social problems we face today as far back as 1940.
Steyn bump
Boomkark
Another excellent but sobering article by Steyn.
bttt
If the Muslims are breeding at twice the rate of nativeborn Europeans, it doesn't take higher math to tell you that there is no OBVIOUS solution that will prevent Muslim population surpassing the locals in X years.....except deportation back to from whence they came.
Missing that point means that you missed the point of Steyn's editorial on demographics. Mark Steyn is hardly a " pro 3rd world immigration (legal or not) Multiculturalist" as you charge.
Well there is no sense in deporting them if you're still letting them in.
Stopping their immigration is first priority.
Then rounding up the illegals ones and shipping them out.
Then rouding up the legal ones, then shipping THEM out.
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