Sorry that second sentence should be "the author only shallowly 
believes that the world of tomorrow will inherently NOT be like the world 
of today."
-Bill

On Fri, 20 Jan 2006, Bill Rand wrote:

>	One warning, I read indepth the first 3 or 4 pages and last 3 or 
> 4 pages and skimmed the rest.  However, I find the fundamental flaw in 
> this article not to be any of the things that you mention Michelle.  The 
> fundamental flaw is that the author only shallowly believes that the 
> world of tomorrow will inherently be like the world of today.  He takes 
> for granted that certain base principles about the way humanity operates 
> are to be taken for granted.	His whole project is flawed if humanity 
> moves forward and embraces a notion of not us vs. them and instead sees 
> that other nations, races, and religions are just another branch of 
> humanity.  If that is the case then yes the West will dissapear in the 
> sense that it will become part of something greater, the world.  I guess I 
> agree with him in the sense that we will lose this "war" due to our lack 
> of "civilizational confidence" but I don't see that as a bad thing, 
> instead I see it as a good thing.  To illustrate my point take science as 
> an analogy.  There is one thing that is known about all physical 
> scientific theories ever developed and that is that every single one of 
> them is wrong, they will eventually be replaced by something better. 
> Einstein replaces Newton, Quantum Mechanics replaces Einstein, etc. If 
> such a statement can be made about hard physical objects, then just think 
> about what that means about political and cultural theories and 
> instituions. Inevitably the West (though I despair slipping into the 
> monolithic phraseology) is flawed, and we need to move forward, figure 
> out what's wrong and fix it.	Not just keep trying to defend a system 
> that is inevitably flawed.  If we do that we might as well rename 
> America the United States of the Flat Earth...
> 
>	The more interesting and real question is whether and what we can 
> learn from Islam.  I personally have found some aspects of the East (again 
> apologies for the monolithic terms) quite useful in my everyday life, 
> Buddhism for instance has provided me with a deeper understanding of my 
> place in the universe.  However do to my own admitted ignorance I'm not as 
> aware of what Islam has to teach us...anyone want to help me out?
> -Bill
> 
> On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 mjste Æ umich.edu wrote:
> 
> > This essay is a long read but it is worth it. I find it quite
> > provocative. Though I do believe the author's unqualified adulation of
> > the West is unfounded and many of his views overly racist, his article
> > raises some interesting questions.	The paper speaks to questions of
> > moral relativism, the liberal challenge of tolerance toward the
> > intolerant, and its consequence for our way of life here in the US.  I
> > urge you to read it and respond.  Is the Western way of life inherently
> > superior?
> > 
> > I am eager to get your feedback
> > Michelle
> > -------------------------
> > 
> > THE CENTURY AHEAD
> > It's the Demography, Stupid
> > 
> > The real reason the West is in danger of extinction.
> > 
> > BY MARK STEYN
> > 
> > Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out
> > as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world
> > will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively
> > disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western
> > 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 called 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. The challenge for those who reckon
> > Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to
> > figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.
> > 
> >   One obstacle to doing that is that, in the typical election
> > campaign in your advanced industrial democracy, the political
> > platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much
> > all parties in the rest of the West are largely about what one would
> > call the secondary impulses of society--government health care,
> > government day care (which Canada's thinking of introducing),
> > government paternity leave (which Britain's just introduced). We've
> > prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national
> > defense, family, faith and, most basic of all, reproductive
> > activity--"Go forth and multiply," because if you don't you won't be
> > able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like
> > cradle-to-grave welfare.
> > 
> >   Americans sometimes don't understand how far gone most of the rest
> > of the developed world is down this path: In the Canadian and most
> > Continental cabinets, the defense ministry is somewhere an ambitious
> > politician passes through on his way up to important jobs like the
> > health department. I don't think Don Rumsfeld would regard it as a
> > promotion if he were moved to Health and Human Services.
> > 
> >    The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it
> > requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian
> > hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than
> > Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to
> > ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century
> > variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from
> > reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion.
> > The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their
> > weaknesses for strengths--or, at any rate, virtues--and that's why
> > they're proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.
> > 
> >   Speaking of which, if we are at war--and half the American people
> > and significantly higher percentages in Britain, Canada and Europe
> > don't accept that proposition--then what exactly is the war about?
> > 
> >   We know it's not really a "war on terror." Nor is it, at heart, a
> > war against Islam, or even "radical Islam." The Muslim faith,
> > whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for
> > the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but 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. Like the environmentalists, these guys
> > think globally but act locally.
> > 
> >   Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about.
> > Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the
> > HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too
> > weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S.
> > military, they lose--as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this
> > were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours
> > facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very
> > quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they
> > can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent
> > chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses
> > in on itself and Islam inherits by default.
> > 
> >    That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational
> > confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations
> > die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the
> > Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social
> > welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the
> > real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing about
> > multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about
> > other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of
> > Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other
> > cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was
> > subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that
> > all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced
> > Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some
> > wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of
> > getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your
> > holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American
> > spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have
> > to live in an African or Native American society. It's a
> > quintessential piece of progressive humbug.
> > 
> >   Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just
> > about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President
> > Bush did, the prince of Wales did, the prime minister of the United
> > Kingdom did, the prime minister of Canada did . . . The premier of
> > Ontario didn't, and so 20 Muslim community leaders had a big summit
> > to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque. I don't know why he
> > didn't. Maybe there was a big backlog, it was mosque drive time,
> > prime ministers in gridlock up and down the freeway trying to get to
> > the Sword of the Infidel-Slayer Mosque on Elm Street. But for
> > whatever reason he couldn't fit it into his hectic schedule.
> > Ontario's citizenship minister did show up at a mosque, but the imams
> > took that as a great insult, like the Queen sending Fergie to open the
> > Commonwealth Games. So the premier of Ontario had to hold a big
> > meeting with the aggrieved imams to apologize for not going to a
> > mosque and, as the Toronto Star's reported it, "to provide them with
> > reassurance that the provincial government does not see them as the
> > enemy."
> > 
> >   Anyway, the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died down, but it
> > set the tone for our general approach to these atrocities. The old
> > definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light
> > changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new
> > definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press
> > release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against
> > Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly
> > bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by
> > scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say,
> > there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the
> > West is awash in an epidemic of self-hate crimes. A commenter on Tim
> > Blair's Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody
> > of a Guardian headline: "Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash
> > from Tomorrow Morning's Terrorist Attack." Those community leaders
> > have the measure of us.
> > 
> >   Radical Islam is what multiculturalism has been waiting for all
> > along. In "The Survival of Culture," I quoted the eminent British
> > barrister Helena Kennedy, Queen's Counsel. Shortly after September
> > 11, Baroness Kennedy argued on a BBC show that it was too easy to
> > disparage "Islamic fundamentalists." "We as Western liberals too
> > often are fundamentalist ourselves," she complained. "We don't look
> > at our own fundamentalisms."
> > 
> >   Well, said the interviewer, what exactly would those Western
> > liberal fundamentalisms be? "One of the things that we are too ready
> > to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the
> > intolerance is something that belongs to other countries like Islam.
> > And I'm not sure that's true."
> > 
> >   Hmm. Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own
> > tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance,
> > which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become
> > the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you're nice to
> > gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like
> > that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense
> > /frisson /of pleasure to the multiculti masochists. In other words,
> > just as the AIDS pandemic greatly facilitated societal surrender to
> > the gay agenda, so 9/11 is greatly facilitating our surrender to the
> > most extreme aspects of the multicultural agenda.
> > 
> >   For example, one day in 2004, a couple of Canadians returned home,
> > to Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto. They were the
> > son and widow of a fellow called Ahmed Said Khadr, who back on the
> > Pakistani-Afghan frontier was known as "al-Kanadi." Why? Because he
> > was the highest-ranking Canadian in al Qaeda--plenty of other Canucks
> > in al Qaeda, but he was the Numero Uno. In fact, one could argue that
> > the Khadr family is Canada's principal contribution to the war on
> > terror. Granted they're on the wrong side (if you'll forgive my being
> > judgmental) but no one can argue that they aren't in the thick of
> > things. One of Mr. Khadr's sons was captured in Afghanistan after
> > killing a U.S. Special Forces medic. Another was captured and held at
> > Guantanamo. A third blew himself up while killing a Canadian soldier
> > in Kabul. Pa Khadr himself died in an al Qaeda shootout with
> > Pakistani forces in early 2004. And they say we Canadians aren't
> > doing our bit in this war!
> > 
> >   In the course of the fatal shootout of al-Kanadi, his youngest son
> > was paralyzed. And, not unreasonably, Junior didn't fancy a prison
> > hospital in Peshawar. So Mrs. Khadr and her boy returned to Toronto
> > so he could enjoy the benefits of Ontario government health care.
> > "I'm Canadian, and I'm not begging for my rights," declared the widow
> > Khadr. "I'm demanding my rights."
> > 
> >    As they always say, treason's hard to prove in court, but given
> > the circumstances of Mr. Khadr's death it seems clear that not only
> > was he providing "aid and comfort to the Queen's enemies" but that he
> > was, in fact, the Queen's enemy. The Princess Patricia's Canadian
> > Light Infantry, the Royal 22nd Regiment and other Canucks have been
> > participating in Afghanistan, on one side of the conflict, and the
> > Khadr family had been over there participating on the other side.
> > Nonetheless, the prime minister of Canada thought Boy Khadr's claims
> > on the public health system was an excellent opportunity to
> > demonstrate his own deep personal commitment to "diversity." Asked
> > about the Khadrs' return to Toronto, he said, "I believe that once
> > you are a Canadian citizen, you have the right to your own views and
> > to disagree."
> > 
> >   That's the wonderful thing about multiculturalism: You can choose
> > which side of the war you want to fight on. When the draft card
> > arrives, just tick "home team" or "enemy," according to taste. The
> > Canadian prime minister is a typical late-stage Western politician:
> > He could have said, well, these are contemptible people and I know
> > many of us are disgusted at the idea of our tax dollars being used to
> > provide health care for a man whose Canadian citizenship is no more
> > than a flag of convenience, but unfortunately that's the law and,
> > while we can try to tighten it, it looks like this lowlife's got away
> > with it. Instead, his reflex instinct was to proclaim this as a
> > wholehearted demonstration of the virtues of the multicultural state.
> > Like many enlightened Western leaders, the Canadian prime minister
> > will be congratulating himself on his boundless tolerance even as the
> > forces of intolerance consume him.
> > 
> >   That, by the way, is the one point of similarity between the jihad
> > and conventional terrorist movements like the IRA or ETA. Terror
> > groups persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their
> > targets: The IRA, for example, calculated correctly that the British
> > had the capability to smash them totally but not the will. So they
> > knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could
> > never be defeated. The Islamists have figured similarly. The only
> > difference is that most terrorist wars are highly localized. We now
> > have the first truly global terrorist insurgency because the
> > Islamists view the whole world the way the IRA view the bogs of
> > Fermanagh: They want it, and they've calculated that our entire
> > civilization lacks the will to see them off.
> > 
> >   We spend a lot of time at The New Criterion attacking the elites,
> > and we're right to do so. The commanding heights of the culture have
> > behaved disgracefully for the last several decades. But if it were
> > just a problem with the elites, it wouldn't be that serious: The mob
> > could rise up and hang 'em from lampposts--a scenario that's not
> > unlikely in certain Continental countries. But the problem now goes
> > way beyond the ruling establishment. The annexation by government of
> > most of the key responsibilities of life--child-raising, taking care
> > of your elderly parents--has profoundly changed the relationship
> > between the citizen and the state. At some point--I would say
> > socialized health care is a good marker--you cross a line, and it's
> > very hard then to persuade a citizenry enjoying that much government
> > largesse to cross back. In National Review recently, I took issue
> > with that line Gerald Ford always uses to ingratiate himself with
> > conservative audiences: "A government big enough to give you
> > everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have."
> > Actually, you run into trouble long before that point: A government
> > big enough to give you everything you want still isn't big enough to
> > get you to give anything back. That's what the French and German
> > political classes are discovering.
> > 
> >    Go back to that list of local conflicts I mentioned. The jihad has
> > held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy
> > about taking on the Israelis, the Russians, the Indians and the
> > Nigerians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians
> > and Danes and New Zealanders?
> > 
> >   So the jihadists are for the most part doing no more than giving us
> > a prod in the rear as we sleepwalk to the cliff. When I say
> > "sleepwalk," it's not because we're a blasé culture. On the contrary,
> > one of the clearest signs of our decline is the way we expend so much
> > energy worrying about the wrong things. If you've read Jared
> > Diamond's bestselling book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or
> > Succeed," you'll know it goes into a lot of detail about Easter Island
> > going belly up because they chopped down all their trees. Apparently
> > that's why they're not a G-8 member or on the U.N. Security Council.
> > Same with the Greenlanders and the Mayans and Diamond's other curious
> > choices of "societies." Indeed, as the author sees it, pretty much
> > every society collapses because it chops down its trees.
> > 
> >   Poor old Diamond can't see the forest because of his obsession with
> > the trees. (Russia's collapsing even as it's undergoing
> > reforestation.) One way "societies choose to fail or succeed" is by
> > choosing what to worry about. The Western world has delivered more
> > wealth and more comfort to more of its citizens than any other
> > civilization in history, and in return we've developed a great cult
> > of worrying. You know the classics of the genre: In 1968, in his
> > bestselling book "The Population Bomb," the eminent scientist Paul
> > Ehrlich declared: "In the 1970s the world will undergo
> > famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to
> > death." In 1972, in their landmark study "The Limits to Growth," the
> > Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981,
> > of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and
> > copper, lead and gas by 1993.
> > 
> >    None of these things happened. In fact, quite the opposite is
> > happening. We're pretty much awash in resources, but we're running
> > out of people--the one truly indispensable resource, without which
> > none of the others matter. Russia's the most obvious example: it's
> > the largest country on earth, it's full of natural resources, and yet
> > it's dying--its population is falling calamitously.
> > 
> >   The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from
> > terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the
> > perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote,
> > "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and
> > does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
> > 
> >   And even though none of the prognostications of the eco-doom
> > blockbusters of the 1970s came to pass, all that means is that 30
> > years on, the end of the world has to be rescheduled. The amended
> > estimated time of arrival is now 2032. That's to say, in 2002, the
> > United Nations Global Environmental Outlook predicted "the
> > destruction of 70 percent of the natural world in thirty years, mass
> > extinction of species. . . . More than half the world will be
> > afflicted by water shortages, with 95 percent of people in the Middle
> > East with severe problems . . . 25 percent of all species of mammals
> > and 10 percent of birds will be extinct . . ."
> > 
> >   Etc., etc., for 450 pages. Or to cut to the chase, as the Guardian
> > headlined it, "Unless We Change Our Ways, The World Faces Disaster."
> > 
> >   Well, here's my prediction for 2032: unless we change our ways the
> > world faces a future . . . where the environment will look pretty
> > darn good. If you're a tree or a rock, you'll be living in clover.
> > It's the Italians and the Swedes who'll be facing extinction and the
> > loss of their natural habitat.
> > 
> >   There will be no environmental doomsday. Oil, carbon dioxide
> > emissions, deforestation: none of these things is worth worrying
> > about. What's worrying is that we spend so much time worrying about
> > things that aren't worth worrying about that we don't worry about the
> > things we should be worrying about. For 30 years, we've had endless
> > wake-up calls for things that aren't worth waking up for. But for the
> > very real, remorseless shifts in our society--the ones truly
> > jeopardizing our future--we're sound asleep. The world is changing
> > dramatically right now, and hysterical experts twitter about a
> > hypothetical decrease in the Antarctic krill that might conceivably
> > possibly happen so far down the road there are unlikely to be any
> > Italian or Japanese enviro-worriers left alive to be devastated by
> > it.
> > 
> >   In a globalized economy, the environmentalists want us to worry
> > about First World capitalism imposing its ways on bucolic, pastoral,
> > primitive Third World backwaters. Yet, insofar as "globalization" is
> > a threat, the real danger is precisely the opposite--that the
> > peculiarities of the backwaters can leap instantly to the First
> > World. Pigs are valued assets and sleep in the living room in rural
> > China--and next thing you know an unknown respiratory disease is
> > killing people in Toronto, just because someone got on a plane.
> > That's the way to look at Islamism: We fret about McDonald's and
> > Disney, but the big globalization success story is the way the Saudis
> > have taken what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant
> > strain of Islam practiced by Bedouins of no fixed abode and
> > successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Rotterdam,
> > Manchester, Buffalo . . .
> > 
> >    What's the better bet? A globalization that exports cheeseburgers
> > and pop songs or a globalization that exports the fiercest aspects of
> > its culture? When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is
> > the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born
> > in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in
> > 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing
> > their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data
> > on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot
> > faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the
> > number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any
> > bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some
> > countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia,
> > is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those
> > nations have in common?
> > 
> >   Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders
> > and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at
> > replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New
> > Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to
> > 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the
> > brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1,
> > about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is
> > halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have
> > fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America,
> > demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for
> > honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won
> > the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26
> > states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer
> > Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state
> > Americans.
> > 
> >   As fertility shrivels, societies get older--and Japan and much of
> > Europe are set to get older than any functioning societies have ever
> > been. And we know what comes after old age. These countries are going
> > out of business--unless they can find the will to change their ways.
> > Is that likely? I don't think so. If you look at European election
> > results--most recently in Germany--it's hard not to conclude that,
> > while voters are unhappy with their political establishments, they're
> > unhappy mainly because they resent being asked to reconsider their
> > government benefits and, no matter how unaffordable they may be a
> > generation down the road, they have no intention of seriously
> > reconsidering them. The Scottish executive recently backed down from
> > a proposal to raise the retirement age of Scottish public workers.
> > It's presently 60, which is nice but unaffordable. But the reaction
> > of the average Scots worker is that that's somebody else's problem.
> > The average German worker now puts in 22% fewer hours per year than
> > his American counterpart, and no politician who wishes to remain
> > electorally viable will propose closing the gap in any meaningful
> > way.
> > 
> >   This isn't a deep-rooted cultural difference between the Old World
> > and the New. It dates back all the way to, oh, the 1970s. If one
> > wanted to allocate blame, one could argue that it's a product of the
> > U.S. military presence, the American security guarantee that
> > liberated European budgets: instead of having to spend money on guns,
> > they could concentrate on butter, and buttering up the voters. If
> > Washington's problem with Europe is that these are not serious
> > allies, well, whose fault is that? Who, in the years after the Second
> > World War, created NATO as a postmodern military alliance? The "free
> > world," as the Americans called it, was a free ride for everyone
> > else. And having been absolved from the primal responsibilities of
> > nationhood, it's hardly surprising that European nations have little
> > wish to reshoulder them. In essence, the lavish levels of public
> > health care on the Continent are subsidized by the American taxpayer.
> > And this long-term softening of large sections of the West makes them
> > ill-suited to resisting a primal force like Islam.
> > 
> >   There is no "population bomb." There never was. Birthrates are
> > declining all over the world--eventually every couple on the planet
> > may decide to opt for the Western yuppie model of one designer baby
> > at the age of 39. But demographics is a game of last man standing.
> > The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge
> > advantage. Even in 1968 Paul Ehrlich and his ilk should have
> > understood that their so-called population explosion was really a
> > massive population adjustment. Of the increase in global population
> > between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9% of
> > it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26%. Between 1970 and 2000,
> > the developed world declined from just under 30% of the world's
> > population to just over 20%, the Muslim nations increased from about
> > 15% to 20%.
> > 
> >   Nineteen seventy doesn't seem that long ago. If you're the age many
> > of the chaps running the Western world today are wont to be, your
> > pants are narrower than they were back then and your hair's less
> > groovy, but the landscape of your life--the look of your house, the
> > layout of your car, the shape of your kitchen appliances, the brand
> > names of the stuff in the fridge--isn't significantly different.
> > Aside from the Internet and the cell phone and the CD, everything in
> > your world seems pretty much the same but slightly modified.
> > 
> >   And yet the world is utterly altered. Just to recap those bald
> > statistics: In 1970, the developed world had twice as big a share of
> > the global population as the Muslim world: 30% to 15%. By 2000, they
> > were the same: each had about 20%.
> > 
> >   And by 2020?
> > 
> >   So the world's people are a lot more Islamic than they were back
> > then and a lot less "Western." Europe is significantly more Islamic,
> > having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims
> > (officially)--or the equivalents of the populations of four European
> > Union countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and Estonia). Islam is the
> > fastest-growing religion in the West: In the U.K., more Muslims than
> > Christians attend religious services each week.
> > 
> >   Can these trends continue for another 30 years without having
> > consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent
> > after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing,
> > but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a
> > remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or
> > ill, shaped the modern world.
> > 
> >    What will Europe be like at the end of this process? Who knows? On
> > the one hand, there's something to be said for the notion that America
> > will find an Islamified Europe more straightforward to deal with than
> > M. Chirac, Herr Schroeder & Co. On the other hand, given Europe's
> > track record, getting there could be very bloody. But either way this
> > is the real battlefield. The al Qaeda nutters can never find enough
> > suicidal pilots to fly enough planes into enough skyscrapers to
> > topple America. But unlike us, the Islamists think long-term, and,
> > given their demographic advantage in Europe and the tone of the
> > emerging Muslim lobby groups there, much of what they're flying
> > planes into buildings for they're likely to wind up with just by
> > waiting a few more years. The skyscrapers will be theirs; why knock
> > 'em over?
> > 
> >   The latter half of the decline and fall of great civilizations
> > follows a familiar pattern: affluence, softness, decadence,
> > extinction. You don't notice yourself slipping through those stages
> > because usually there's a seductive pol on hand to provide the age
> > with a sly, self-deluding slogan--like Bill Clinton's "It's about the
> > future of all our children." We on the right spent the 1990s gleefully
> > mocking Mr. Clinton's tedious invocation, drizzled like syrup over
> > everything from the Kosovo war to highway appropriations. But most of
> > the rest of the West can't even steal his lame bromides: A society
> > that has no children has no future.
> > 
> >   Permanence is the illusion of every age. In 1913, no one thought
> > the Russian, Austrian, German and Turkish empires would be gone
> > within half a decade. Seventy years on, all those fellows who
> > dismissed Reagan as an "amiable dunce" (in Clark Clifford's phrase)
> > assured us the Soviet Union was likewise here to stay. The CIA
> > analysts' position was that East Germany was the ninth biggest
> > economic power in the world. In 1987 there was no rash of experts
> > predicting the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact and
> > the USSR itself.
> > 
> >   Yet, even by the minimal standards of these wretched precedents,
> > so-called post-Christian civilizations--as a prominent EU official
> > described his continent to me--are more prone than traditional
> > societies to mistake the present tense for a permanent feature.
> > Religious cultures have a much greater sense of both past and future,
> > as we did a century ago, when we spoke of death as joining "the great
> > majority" in "the unseen world." But if secularism's starting point
> > is that this is all there is, it's no surprise that, consciously or
> > not, they invest the here and now with far greater powers of
> > endurance than it's ever had. The idea that progressive
> > Euro-welfarism is the permanent resting place of human development
> > was always foolish; we now know that it's suicidally so.
> > 
> >   To avoid collapse, European nations will need to take in immigrants
> > at a rate no stable society has ever attempted. The CIA is predicting
> > the EU will collapse by 2020. Given that the CIA's got pretty much
> > everything wrong for half a century, that would suggest the EU is a
> > shoo-in to be the colossus of the new millennium. But even a flop
> > spook is right twice a generation. If anything, the date of EU
> > collapse is rather a cautious estimate. It seems more likely that
> > within the next couple of European election cycles, the internal
> > contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way,
> > and that by 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots
> > and assassinations on American network news every night. Even if they
> > avoid that, the idea of a childless Europe ever rivaling America
> > militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there
> > will be 500 million Americans, and what's left in Europe will either
> > be very old or very Muslim. Japan faces the same problem: Its
> > population is already in absolute decline, the first gentle slope of
> > a death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan
> > be an economic powerhouse if it's populated by Koreans and Filipinos?
> > Very possibly. Will Germany if it's populated by Algerians? That's a
> > trickier proposition.
> > 
> >   Best-case scenario? The Continent winds up as Vienna with Swedish
> > tax rates.
> > 
> >   Worst-case scenario: Sharia, circa 2040; semi-Sharia, a lot
> > sooner--and we're already seeing a drift in that direction.
> > 
> >   In July 2003, speaking to the U.S. Congress, Tony Blair remarked:
> > "As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible
> > but, in fact, it is transient. The question is: What do you leave
> > behind?"
> > 
> >    Excellent question. Britannia will never again wield the
> > unrivalled power she enjoyed at her imperial apogee, but the
> > Britannic inheritance endures, to one degree or another, in many of
> > the key regional players in the world today--Australia, India, South
> > Africa--and in dozens of island statelets from the Caribbean to the
> > Pacific. If China ever takes its place as an advanced nation, it will
> > be because the People's Republic learns more from British Hong Kong
> > than Hong Kong learns from the Little Red Book. And of course the
> > dominant power of our time derives its political character from
> > 18th-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further
> > than the mother country was willing to go.
> > 
> >   A decade and a half after victory in the Cold War and
> > end-of-history triumphalism, the "what do you leave behind?" question
> > is more urgent than most of us expected. "The West," as a concept, is
> > dead, and the West, as a matter of demographic fact, is dying.
> > 
> >   What will London--or Paris, or Amsterdam--be like in the mid-'30s?
> > If European politicians make no serious attempt this decade to wean
> > the populace off their unsustainable 35-hour weeks, retirement at 60,
> > etc., then to keep the present level of pensions and health benefits
> > the EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the
> > Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by
> > 2035. As things stand, Muslims are already the primary source of
> > population growth in English cities. Can a society become
> > increasingly Islamic in its demographic character without becoming
> > increasingly Islamic in its political character?
> > 
> >    This ought to be the left's issue. I'm a conservative--I'm not
> > entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to
> > beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses
> > like a slut: I'm with Mullah Omar on that one. Why then, if your big
> > thing is feminism or abortion or gay marriage, are you so certain
> > that the cult of tolerance will prevail once the biggest demographic
> > in your society is cheerfully intolerant? Who, after all, are going
> > to be the first victims of the West's collapsed birthrates? Even if
> > one were to take the optimistic view that Europe will be able to
> > resist the creeping imposition of Sharia currently engulfing Nigeria,
> > it remains the case that the Muslim world is not notable for setting
> > much store by "a woman's right to choose," in any sense.
> > 
> >   I watched that big abortion rally in Washington in 2004, where
> > Ashley Judd and Gloria Steinem were cheered by women waving "Keep
> > your Bush off my bush" placards, and I thought it was the equivalent
> > of a White Russian tea party in 1917. By prioritizing a "woman's
> > right to choose," Western women are delivering their societies into
> > the hands of fellows far more patriarchal than a 1950s sitcom dad. If
> > any of those women marching for their "reproductive rights" still have
> > babies, they might like to ponder demographic realities: A little girl
> > born today will be unlikely, at the age of 40, to be free to prance
> > around demonstrations in Eurabian Paris or Amsterdam chanting "Hands
> > off my bush!"
> > 
> >   Just before the 2004 election, that eminent political analyst
> > Cameron Diaz appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to explain what was
> > at stake:
> > 
> >   "Women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our
> > bodies. . . . If you think that rape should be legal, then don't vote.
> > But if you think that you have a right to your body," she advised
> > Oprah's viewers, "then you should vote."
> > 
> >   Poor Cameron. A couple of weeks later, the scary people won. She
> > lost all rights to her body. Unlike Alec Baldwin, she couldn't even
> > move to France. Her body was grounded in Terminal D.
> > 
> >   But, after framing the 2004 presidential election as a referendum
> > on the right to rape, Miss Diaz might be interested to know that men
> > enjoy that right under many Islamic legal codes around the world. In
> > his book "The Empty Cradle," Philip Longman asks: "So where will the
> > children of the future come from? Increasingly they will come from
> > people who are at odds with the modern world. Such a trend, if
> > sustained, could drive human culture off its current market-driven,
> > individualistic, modernist course, gradually creating an anti-market
> > culture dominated by fundamentalism--a new Dark Ages."
> > 
> >   Bottom line for Cameron Diaz: There are worse things than John
> > Ashcroft out there.
> > 
> >   Mr. Longman's point is well taken. The refined antennae of Western
> > liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there
> > will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy
> > a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what
> > proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and
> > inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100%
> > of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it
> > doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if
> > one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy
> > and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance
> > whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%,
> > 45%.
> > 
> >   Since the president unveiled the so-called Bush Doctrine--the plan
> > to promote liberty throughout the Arab world--innumerable
> > "progressives" have routinely asserted that there's no evidence
> > Muslims want liberty and, indeed, that Islam is incompatible with
> > democracy. If that's true, it's a problem not for the Middle East
> > today but for Europe the day after tomorrow. According to a poll
> > taken in 2004, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under
> > Shariah--in the United Kingdom. If a population "at odds with the
> > modern world" is the fastest-breeding group on the planet--if there
> > are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those
> > nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more
> > and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational
> > institutions--how safe a bet is the survival of the "modern world"?
> > 
> >   Not good.
> > 
> >   "What do you leave behind?" asked Tony Blair. There will only be
> > very few and very old ethnic Germans and French and Italians by the
> > midpoint of this century. What will they leave behind? Territories
> > that happen to bear their names and keep up some of the old
> > buildings? Or will the dying European races understand that the only
> > legacy that matters is whether the peoples who will live in those
> > lands after them are reconciled to pluralist, liberal democracy? It's
> > the demography, stupid. And, if they can't muster the will to change
> > course, then "What do you leave behind?" is the only question that
> > matters.
> > 
> >   /Mr. Steyn is a syndicated columnist and theater critic for The New
> > Criterion[5], in whose January issue this article appears./
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Links:
> > ------
> > [1] http://www.wsj.com/?jopinemaowsj
> > [2] http://opinionjournal.com/
> > [3] http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id 0007760
> > [4] http://opinionjournal.com
> > [5]
> >
https://www.ezsubscription.com/cgi-bin/formgen.exe/add?db=CRITERIO&key=7WWW06
> > 
> > 
> > ----- End forwarded message -----
> > 
> > 
> 
>