Archives
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Already. The Best of
2006.
Your granddaughter's prom dress.
Your granddaughter's prom dress.
DISTANT DRUMS. We're not going to waste a lot of time here. Read Mark Steyn's magnum opus about the real threat to western civilization that most westerners -- especially liberals -- are ignoring. The excerpt is just to whet your appetite. Read every word of the original piece.
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...
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....
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.
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...
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....
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.
If you've already read or scanned it, take this opportunity to read it again carefully. Then force-feed it to every lefty you know. They'll still be too blind and stupid to get it, but you will have tried.
