Posted on 10/24/2006 8:36:16 AM PDT by kellynla
It's the end of the world!! Head for the hills!!!
No, wait. Don't head for the hills—they're full of Islamist terrorist camps. Let me put it in a slightly bigger nutshell: much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands—probably—just as in Istanbul there's still a building known as Hagia Sophia, or St. Sophia's Cathedral. But it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate.
With respect to Francis Fukuyama, it's not the end of history; it's the end of the world as we know it. Whether we like what replaces it depends on whether America can summon the will to shape at least part of the emerging world. If not, then it's also the end of the American moment, and the dawn of the new Dark Ages (if darkness can dawn): a planet on which much of the map is re-primitivized.
People Power
If your school has two hundred guys and you're playing a school with two thousand pupils, it doesn't mean your baseball team is definitely going to lose, but it certainly gives the other fellows a big starting advantage.
Likewise, if you want to launch a revolution, it's not very likely if you've only got seven revolutionaries. And they're all over eighty. But if you've got two million and seven revolutionaries and they're all under thirty, you're in business.
I wonder how many pontificators on the "Middle East peace process" ever run this number: the median age in the Gaza Strip is 15.8 years.
Once you know that, all the rest is details. If you were a "moderate Palestinian" leader, would you want to try to persuade a nation—or pseudo-nation—of unemployed poorly educated teenage boys raised in a UN-supervised European-funded death cult to see sense? Any analysis of the "Palestinian problem" that doesn't take into account the most important determinant on the ground is a waste of time.
Likewise, the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan, and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history. Most of us have seen a gazillion heartwarming ethnic comedies—"My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and its ilk—in which some uptight WASPy type starts dating a gal from a vast, loving, fecund Mediterranean family, so abundantly endowed with sisters and cousins and uncles that you can barely get in the room.
It is, in fact, the inversion of the truth. Greece has a fertility rate hovering just below 1.3 births per couple, which is what demographers call the point of "lowest-low" fertility from which no human society has ever recovered. And Greece's fertility is the healthiest in Mediterranean Europe: Italy has a fertility rate of 1.2, Spain, 1.1.
Insofar as any citizens of the developed world have "big" families these days, it's the Anglo democracies: America's fertility rate is 2.1, New Zealand's a little below. Hollywood should be making "My Big Fat Uptight Protestant Wedding," in which some sad Greek only-child marries into a big heartwarming New Zealand family where the spouse actually has a sibling.
As I say, this isn't a projection—it's happening now. There's no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for fun, here goes: by 2050, 60 percent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the dinosaurs.
Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all. Many of the developed world's citizens gave no conscious thought to Islam before September 11. Now we switch on the news every evening and, though there are many trouble spots around the world, as a general rule it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine," Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali, Muslims vs. Danish cartoonists in Scandinavia.
The environmentalists may claim to think globally but act locally, but these guys live it. They open up a new front somewhere on the planet with nary a thought.
Why? Because they've got the manpower.
Russia's collapsing and it's nothing to do with deforestation. It's not the tree, it's the family tree. It's the babes in the wood. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in. Because, when history comes a-calling, it starts with the most basic question of all: Knock-knock. Who's there?
bump
IOW, if you want to serve your country, have babies. Now if I can find someone who is desperate enough to have me, I can get started!
Some are actually dying to be a population bomb.
"Is there any reason to lament the decline of a civilization that has been the primary cause of its own demise?"
bumpmark. Steyn, as usual!
Don't give 'em your right name??? Jake
The only bright spot I see in the article is that I'll be dead before dhimmitude begins here...
The Do-Gooders inundated the developed world 40 years ago and said that we had a population crisis. We need birth control! We need abortion! We need people to give up on marriage and children! And in those parts of the world where children can grow up with enough to eat, where they can get a good education, and where they can contribute to the welfare of Humanity -- in those parts of the world, fertility began dropping like a rock.
Meanwhile, of course, the third world country was getting more food, more clean water, and more medicine. Any effort to tell them to stop having children would have been inherently judgemental and racist. Fertility skyrocketed, although actual opportunities and quality of life often did not keep pace.
Now the third world is full of angry teenagers and the developed world is full of old people.
It's almost seems like a plan to destroy the West.
Mark Steyn doesn't say so, but James Burnham did more than fifty years ago: "The Suicide of the West." The cultures that are disappearing are those infected with the life-hating, God-hating, modernist philosophies and the statist politics of the Left.
Once people had kids so that the kids would shelter, feed, defend, and clothe them when they were too old to take care of themselves.
Then we got social security. Now we have a phenomenon analagous to "the tragedy of the commons". If I can get the benefit of children without the expense and hassle, there's less incentive for me to have my own. I can have sex with birth control -- in fact if I use a barrier device I can have sex with lots of people without that burining sensation when I urinate, without the hassle of dealing with their Monday morning selves, and without the previously almost inevitable diapers, acne, tantrums, car-wrecks, ambarrassed interviews with school officals and the occasional police officer.
And, later, when I'm less interested in sex but more interested in getting my dentures repaired, I can use the taxes of other people's productive children to pay for me.
So, sooner or later, no kids, thus:
"Wait, I thought YOU were going to raise the kids."It's not wise to mess with God's plan.
"HAIL no, not me! I thought YOU were going to do that."
"Oops! Oh well. Pass the dog food and the can-opener, please."
"Sorry, the teenagers stole it last night."
FMCDH(BITS)
The bright spot, though, is that larger families are becoming more popular in the US among conservatives, while the libs are skewing the numbers by aborting themselves out of existence.
Don't worry, the "latest" theory is that child rearing is to important for the state to leave it in the hands of parents. It takes a village you know.
good article. but scary.
Yep. Weak, feminized men + selfish women = cutural suicide.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
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