The death of the West
January 26th, 2006 at 7:28 am by David FarrarBeen meaning to link to this for a few days. Mark Steyn basically predicts the death of most of the West, and it’s all due to birth rates. This is a long article, but worth reading in full.
The replacement fertility rate is 2.1 babies per woman. Less than that and your countries are going to lose population or you will need significant immigration to replace them.
The US is above the replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76, Canada 1.5, Germany and Austria are at 1.3, Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That
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January 26th, 2006 at 7:58 am
I have a solution. Let’s all become Christian fundamentalists and outbreed these Mohamedans.
We have got to be the most manic civilisation that ever lived. One century we’re breeding like rabbits and conquering the world, next century we decide sex is actually just about having fun, become infertile and commit cultural suicide. Good one, The West. What a pack of losers.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 7:58 am
Well then…Perhaps it is my genetic and religious duty to start having babies.
Vote:Not quite sure how to have 2.1 children though
January 26th, 2006 at 8:04 am
General “Buck” Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Vote:Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
January 26th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Sagenz posted some criticism of this paper a while back. Steyn is a provocative journalist, not a demographer. This Pew Forum discussion covers the issues much more expertly.
http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=82
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:11 am
Steyn’s a bit all over the place on this. While there is some merit in some of what he says, statements such as “In other words, just as the AIDS pandemic greatly facilitated societal surrender to the gay agenda…” are offensive and untrue.
He overlooks the fact that change will occur in the Muslim world, change towards a more liberal perspective, just as it happened in the Christain world. Also the present problem’s are more to do with the remenants of tribalism, not of the Mulsim religion. The battle is civilisation vs tribalism, not civilsation vs Islam.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:13 am
It’s difficult because on the one hand, we need to keep population growth low so that the Earth can sustain us, but on the other hand we don’t want to be out-bred and extinct.
Encouraging people to have more children than they can afford and properly look after is irresponsible too.
So what is the right thing to do?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:20 am
QUOTE
He overlooks the fact that change will occur in the Muslim world, change towards a more liberal perspective, just as it happened in the Christain world. Also the present problem’s are more to do with the remenants of tribalism, not of the Mulsim religion. The battle is civilisation vs tribalism, not civilsation vs Islam.
Posted by neil morrison at January 26, 2006 08:11 AM
Neil, on what basis do you think that Islam will somehow have a reformation and liberalise?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:23 am
Isn’t it amusing when the right treat the rantings of a polemicist as truth?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:24 am
Well then…Perhaps it is my genetic and religious duty to start having babies.
Not quite sure how to have 2.1 children though
Posted by Chaucey at January 26, 2006 07:58 AM
I think that 10 couples have to have 21 children between them. Personally I have done my bit up to the 2.0 level.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Sure the Moslems in the UK for eg are led by lowlifes like this fellow
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4579146.stm
but there is nothing to say they are going to have any more political influence than the Church currently has.
Steyn is right about Europe being post Christian and birth rates are falling but Europe will also be Post Moslem as well. Haifa Wehbe means more to young Arabs than say that nut Abu Hamza al-Masri. The old order in the middle east is being slowly cleaned out.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:27 am
I’m not so sure that Islam will be come more liberal over the years.Catholocism had reformation which caused quite a few changes. However the Koran is held up as the absolute word of God whilst Muslims believe that the bible was written by men and therefore cant be absolute. You cannot argue with the word of God.The Pope recently discussed the issue. It will be interesting to see how they cope idealogically with the further advancement of science.PS NEVER tell a muslim taxi driver that Mohammed was “only” a man too, like Jesus.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:34 am
So what is so bad about Islam? Read the article in the NZ Herald this morning by Irfan Yusuf and you might begin to see past the Western medias focus on radical Islam.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:36 am
If population increases in a certain ethnic/religious group determine dominance of the planet, how come the Indians or Chinese don’t run the planet? After all, Indian and Chinese diaspora are significant and influential parts of Western and Eastern nations already.
It seems to me that the Muslim world is perfectly capable of destroying itself prior to their “destroying Western Civilization” through birthrate increases. And if the Soviet Union proved anything, its the fact that having an strapping pair of muscular thighs wasn’t much use when you have a pin head.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:42 am
Catholocism had reformation
When did that happen?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:47 am
I’m going to take back some of the things I’ve said about you Aaron – I’ve never seen the absurdity of the ‘muslims are outbreeding us’ canard pointed out with such succinct elegence.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:49 am
as observer noted, I blogged on this. Steyn is just being as stupidly alarmist as the UN was about energy & the environment. Better technology and the combined populations of the developed west, China & India will dominate Muslims breeding more rapidly. The Jihadist muslims get all the attention but the quiet muslims happily getting on with their lives in the west far outnumber them.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:57 am
The West doesn’t have strong family values like islam or other faiths. With High divorce rates amoung western countries, and most couples working, children are thought by some as more of a burden to their lifestyle.
I read that in the Netherlands there are now more Mosques than churches. It seems that by 2040 the Netherlands may be a country under Sharia law.
Vote:I remember reading a report about a similar thing some yrs back, the author made the point that the influx from the east are not great believers in State Superanuation. The argument could be from the now Eastern Majority, why do we have to pay for others.
The move also could change the way taxes are looked at leaving many baby boomers out on the street with nothing in their twilight yrs, and wondering what went wrong.
January 26th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Dim, I’m flattered. If the Indians do end up taking over the world, I’ll put a good word in for you.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 9:02 am
There are two inescapable truths behind Steyn’s essay.
Vote:First, the European birthrate is collapsing alarmingly. I have been pointing this out for a decade. This is compounded by a massive exodus of their best and brightest of the young to the United States. Europe is running out of steam.
Something will fill this population and intellectual vaccuum.
It may or may not by a Muslim culture which in turn may or may not be reformed.
But the second truth is that there is now a common and widespread fear among the populations of Europe that his will be the case.
Just as many Europeans left for the New World as they watched and feared the rise of the Nazis and Fascists in their world.
Already these fears are driving another round of migration to the New World
January 26th, 2006 at 9:08 am
The battle is civilisation vs tribalism, not civilsation vs Islam.
Brian I typed out a response to your “London mosque/spitting” post on the other thread and then deleted it, because sometimes even I get sick of stating the obvious. No one group has a monopoly on bad behaviour and no matter where you turn your attention you will find plenty to be working with. But Adolf’s little rant was just racist trash talk.
On the other hand your line above starts to delve closer to understanding the real issues. What really pisses me off is that even with my relatively modest knowledge and understanding of Islam and it’s history, I am appalled at the utter wilful ignorance of most of those attacking it. Their fear-filled rants actually distract from the real issues. It is like those foolish twats who spout all manner of anti-Semitic rubbish, that effectively acts an emotional smoke screen for any legitimate discussion.
About 2-300 years ago Islam, and most especially Shi’te Islam swung very profoundly towards fundamentalism, mainly as a means for a certain class of clergy to cement their grip on social and political power. In order to do this, these clergy deliberately focussed on the legalistic aspects of Islamic law, and combined this with backward attitudes and hillbilly social conservatism of the poorer tribal classes, alienated from the state by endemic corruption and misrule. It has proved a very toxic brew indeed.
Yet I like to draw the comparison with the Catholic Church at the nadir of it’s fundamentalist excesses centuries ago. Who would care to defend the Inquisition, or the astounding corruption and fundamentalist ignorance of the Chuch heirarchy of those times? And yet all this changed in Europe. The only thing I can say about the future of Islam, is that it is nothing like the present.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Aaron,
With High divorce rates amoung western countries, and most couples working, children are thought by some as more of a burden to their lifestyle.
The cost of the getting the average child from birth to 20 years old is in the order of $250,000. Each one.
When both partners HAVE to work, there is no physical or emotional buffer left in the family to deal with the unforeseen or the tragic. All long-term relationships reach some form of crisis point at some stage. Whether the result is divorce or the relationship transforms into a new stage of growth, depends on how much reserve and will the couple have to tackle the crisis. Sadly for many, there is not much to fall back on, and hence the divorce rate.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Logix, both partners never “HAVE” to work in the way you are alluding to. No-one has to spend $250 000 on raising a human being.
All your comments do is show how the modern, urban, worcaholic, consumeristic lifestyle flies in the face of a socially sustainable future for The West.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 9:32 am
‘So what?’ comes to mind. If Westerners don’t want children then so be it. We will slowly diminish, being replenished by more ‘vigorous’ stock. This has happened many times in history, that older civilizations which have stabilized are merged with wild barbarians from the woods. The barbarians multiply, the civilized remain. Ultimately the barbarians become more civilized, and the civilized become more vigorous, and everyone’s a winner, unless it involves huge wars.
Hardly something to lament, especially since, like global warming or peak oil, it’s probably not even vaguely going to happen in our lifetimes.
There does seem to be a direct correlation to poverty and high birth rates. Plenty of food for thought there.
I think as a planet, we’ve got to get out of the mindset of the middle ages. We have only got one planet, and we pretty much know where all the good bits are now. We have a vastly changed ability for humans to move around, and they are doing so accordingly. Naturally this means that the human species will converge to a mean more quickly, that geographical peculiarities will become less common. Lamenting the gradual integration of the planet is living in the past, which I can assure you was not as glorious as imagination makes it.
Cultural migration is the ultimate free market. It seems strange to me that people who glorify the freedom of capital to move around to the point of it being a ‘good in itself’ don’t feel the same way about freedom of physical movement. But then perhaps they were always two-faced about both points.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 9:37 am
Logix – I think you meant to address that comment to cadmus, not me!
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Catholocism had reformation
When did that happen?
Well gee, Vatican Two or the Council of Trent?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 9:53 am
I don’t know if Mark Steyn is right or not.
I do know that there is an historical precident for a civilization to be overwhelmed by immigrants and that is the Western Roman Empire. Roman citizens lost interest in military service and other duties necessary to supporting their civilization, Mercenaries were imported from Germany to fill the gap and eventually overthrew the old Roman order.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Sage and everyone else that thinks that Islam will become less radical with exposure to the West – the opposite seems to be occuring in Western countries with high Muslim populations. France is a case in point, the second and third generations are separating themselves from French society. The quiet Muslims are creating the fertile ground from which more and more radicals are being created.
An article on how Muslims in France are regressing back into more strict observance of Islamic law and ensuring others follow along : http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05192/536250.stm
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:12 am
It is almost universally touted as one of the strengths of the Roman civilization that it showed great wisdom in it’s tolerance to the inclusion of foreigners. Conquered territories became Roman, and that meant burdens but also privileges. You could move anywhere in the empire, including Rome itself. Every country conquered added to the pantheon of Roman gods, rather than them seeking to replace the foreign ones. Their civilization grew very dynamically until it became an empire.
It was only when Rome started to take christianity seriously that this started to end, as christianity doesn’t tolerate pantheism. Interestingly, this also corresponded in time with the end of the Roman dominance. I don’t blame christianity, but I do think it was symptomatic of the state of Rome at the time of their decline.
I can’t see that Germans ‘overthrowing the old Roman order’ was entirely bad. What was bad was that it needed overthrowing, which is an unfortunate consequence of all empires – they are very difficult to reform from within. If successful german generals could simply rise to power and even become emperor, then it could have been a very peaceful revolution. Instead Rome came to define itself in contrast to the barbarians from outside, fighting them and enslaving them at every turn.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Ben is right. It probably has to happen – The Muslims will overthrow the infidel West and restore law, order, duty and masculinity to an emasculated West. The parallels with Rome are obvious, but epicureanist humanism is to blame, just as it was in the time of Rome. The Christian revolution came too late to save Rome (read Augustine’s “City of God”), but God’s glory was that it was embraced by the invading Barbarians.
My prayer is that the fall of The West will be the salvation of the Islamic world. And when they turn up with their swords I’ll be showing them where the Quaran tells them they need not slay Christians and Jews who live as “people of the book”. But my first prayer is that this need not be, and that The West rediscovers God in time to avoid such a tragedy.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Our fertility rate is 2.01, not 1.79
New Zealand has around half a million people aged 65 plus. That number will rise to 1.325 million by 2051 if Statistics New Zealand medium series population projections hold water. We can expect a 273 percent increase.
By contrast, the working-age population will only increase from 2.7 million to 2.9 million – a mere seven percent rise. And the number of 0-14 year-olds will actually decrease.
In all likelihood I will be dead by then but my children will not. On their behalf I did a few rough calculations. These are not scientific but if somebody better equipped wants to dramatically contradict my findings I would be absolutely delighted. Please make my day.
http://www.lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Hey Ben;
Why do you think the period after the fall of the Roman Empire is called the dark ages?
If modern western civilization falls in a similar fashion due to being undermined by Islamic immigration it will be a new dark ages make no mistake about it.
I for one do not want my descendants living under the Sharia.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Hence the US trying to build democracy in Iraq so it can shine as a beacon for the rest of the middle east for civilisation as we know it. A huge gamble that has cost 2 trillion and climbing. I think the US deserves to be supported in this quest. I am glad to see various leftie Governments that opposed this war falling, the latest being Canada. Whereas Governments that supported to was were returned. NZ is an exception but Clark only staggered over the line in a booming economy. [I know perfectly well there are other factors in play but I love winding up the left who think they are on to a winner politically over the Iraq war
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:43 am
They were called the Dark Ages by enlightenment scholars who lamented the loss of Greek humanism and the rise of Christendom. “Enlightenment”, “Dark Ages”, it’s all relative to your philosophical position. After living in the dark ages of the last 300 years, clouded by the smog of the industrial revolution, I’m looking forward to a new age of religion, romance and chivalry. Meet you there.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:51 am
For the love of whatever supreme being you worship, what is it with all this eschatalogical drama? Why are so many people convinced that Western Civilization is going to fall in the face of higher birthrates from the Arab world? Large populations are not the determination of cultural success. Surely wealth, technology, organisation, law and order, open government, industry and natural resources all play a role?
Put it this way – I don’t see the Israelis EVER conceding to Sharia law. And all other times that Muslim nations have tried to run over Israel, they’ve failed miserably. I simply refuse to believe that the United States, having had their original Anglo-Saxon colonial stock inundated with Africans, Italians, Irish, Japanese, Chinese, Indians and Mexicans are going to somehow not be able to cope with a rise in Arab/Muslim population. America has always been a meltingpot of religions, races and creeds.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Aaron, Sharia law exists in Canada now.
http://www.youmeworks.com/sharia_canada.html
Of course Israel will not succumb to it, the Israelis know what it’s like to live amoung Muslims and how dangerous that is.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:10 am
Seems to me the towel heads are breeding because they have plenty of time on their hands and dont have any expectation for their kids.By contrast in the West we work like hell so we are too stuffed to breed and when we do we have high expectation so we need income to educate and provide for our kids.Mum and I have done our bit 2 kids 1 of each.It probably has cost me half a mill with private school and uni fees etc. Still one has the fond hops at least one of the kids will strike it rich and keep Mum and Dad in their dotage.We can but dream
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:12 am
I find that arguments based on being “out-bred” tend to remind me of one of Austria’s less celebrated exports.
The central premise of of Styen’s argument is that the growing Muslim commnunity in Europe will tend towards fundamentalism. Now, there is an element of truth to this in that there has been instances where liberal values have been threatened by conservative Muslim communities, Holland for example, and certain imams in Britain have spread poison.
But on the other hand the recent troubles in Paris involved young men of Middle Eastern origin whose inspiration came from American rappers, not bin Laden.
Overall, it strikes me that the most worrying aspect of the European Muslim community, from a liberal point of view, is really not that different to what is troubling about the Catholic Church, not any sort of move towards Sharia.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:17 am
You are correct. Israel will be the only state in the world which will fail to implement Sharia law.
Vote:Jews and Christians from all over the earth will flock to Israel to escape the mass-beheadings that are prophesied in the New Testament when the Mahdi (Antichrist) reigns over the earth.
January 26th, 2006 at 11:20 am
AJ, when you say “The Muslims will overthrow the infidel West and restore law, order, duty and masculinity to an emasculated West.
Do you mean law, order, duty and masculinity like they have in Saudi Arabia and Iran where women who are raped by those oh so very masculine men are either hung for defending themselves or stoned for being impure after the act?
You also said “.. I’ll be showing them where the Quaran tells them they need not slay Christians and Jews who live as “people of the book”.
You might want to also look up the bits that say that Muslims are superior and that Dhimmis (that’s those conquered People of the Book) have to pay horrendous taxes as a result of their lowly status. But hey, at least you’ll not be dead.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:29 am
Lindsay Mitchell said
“In all likelihood I will be dead by then but my children will not”
Well I hope you are still alive Lindsay.
But one thing that will be dead and burried will be the ACT Party, thank goodness!
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:31 am
In the world I see – you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Aaron – it seems to be a modern angst to worry excessively about highly unlikely things. quite why lucyna for example is confident that 4m Israelis will prevail whilst 3-4 billion others will not is beyond me.
Turkey will join the EU within 20 years. In a choice between living in a comfortable capitalist democracy or a cave in the mountains it is not difficult to see which will prevail.
To suggest that Jihadist Islam will take over the EU is sheer fantasy. I live about 5km from one of the largest concentrations of Muslims in the UK. Lucyna I think you need to get a reality check.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:40 am
Lucyna you make a good point. I’m sure there are many Islamic states that are corrupt to the core and inconsistently apply a law of honour and duty, resulting in the sorts of situations you talk about. This is why it is best that we, The West, swing back from the permissive libertarianism of our age and find a healthy balance somewhere between us and the Moslems. Because if we don’t we’ll only continue to get weaker and will have to face being second-rate citizens in our own land.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:46 am
Sage, it is the duty for every Muslim to wage Jihad, unless it is being waged satisfactorily – that gets them off. So Muslims have the choice currently to remain “moderate” or do what their religion tells them to.
Free speech in the UK is not going so well. Heard of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist controversy over there?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1677330,00.html
And pigs are under threat, as they are offensive to Muslims, their images (and associated books) are starting to be banned from schools and public places.
http://relapsedcatholic.blogspot.com/2005/10/our-bulging-go-back-where-you-came.html
Jihad takes many forms.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Ben Wilson,
A German miltary leader did, in fact, reign supreme in Rome and the Roman law and religion was rose to supremacy over the entire continent of Europe, even extending beyond its previous bounds into Scandinavia and Russia. They did this by offering to surrender Roman cities to barbarian leaders in exchange for their conversion to Christianity and continuance of Roman law.
The Ottomans were able to use Islam in a similar, though more aggressive, way. They typically expanded dominion over the Arabs, first by defeating an Arab leader’s forces in the field, then the Ottoman religious leaders offered the Arab leader confirmation of his dominion in exchange for his tribe’s conversion to their particular brand of Islam, acceptance of missionaries, recognition of their interpretation of the Sharia etc. As recently as the 1930s, the Saud family was able to conquer the Hadj in this way.
As for Steyn’s article, I think he makes some good points. For half of the 20th century western countries countries have attempted to contain population growth in a bid to ‘do their bit’ to reduce the world population, yet in doing so they were ignoring the strategic realities posed by a shrinking population.
Many argued that we could boost economic growth by keeping women in the workplace for longer (thus, feminism) while headhunting the best and brightest from poorer countries to sustain the working population.
This has backfired terribly – too many immigrants just don’t fit in and end up costing us more than they’re worth. The lower number of children with parents who speak English as a first language has played havoc with the education system as well. The only solution is to have a more discriminatory immigration system and fill the gap by increasing the birthrate.
I think most governments, even New Zealand Labour, have implemented policies to this effect in the past five years or so, though there is much more that needs to be done, particularly for the support of large families, discouraging divorce, restricting abortion, better education etc.
We in New Zealand have the benefit of not having to worry about overpopulation as Australia is able to absorb any excess… we just need to break down those traditional relationships that tie high growth groups to the land, i.e. Iwi, gang and what not.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Chestwas, your comments are NZ Firstism gone mad! The whole point in our having a democracy in Western nations is that we all hold the same level of rights. An increase in birth rates from Muslims is not going to change the rights guaranteed to us in legislation.
I recall PJ O’Rourke’s book Holidays in Hell, where O’Rourke talks about his experience in Lebanon where he talks about a young man who told him that “America is pig satan devil”, but then sought advice on how to get a green card so he could become a dentist in New York.
And O’Rourke was probably also right when he said that if the Arabs ever try to run over Israel again, then the next Israeli Knesset will be spent debating whether to build settlements on the outskirts of Damascus and allowing Arabs the right to self-governance on the west bank of the Euphrates.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
“Human rights” are great when they protect people and enable them to express their lives in virtous ways. Sadly reference to “human rights” for us in The West is more often than not a plea for license to live wreckless, tasteless, selfish and destructive lifestyles. It is this concept of “rights”, which I believe you are alluding to Aaron, and which is part of the mindset that is undermining the peoples and religious institutions of The West. It’s time we stop standing up for our rights and start kneeling down for our wrongs.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
So do I get to choose between Chesswas’ state mandated Christian Fundamentalism or state sanctioned Muslim Fundamentalism? Oh joy.
Good news is, I read on this blog last week we only have 100 years to live before the planet is toast, so on that note I’ll uncork another bottle and let the Christian/Muslim fundies inherit the empty coal pits.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Chesswas, I think the influence is the other way round. I have every confidence in the corrupting influence of Western Capitalism. “wreckless, tasteless, selfish and destructive lifestyles” is just about what every teenager wants.
I’m sure there is a very large proportion of the population of Iran who would like to dress like Britney Spears, like a slut as Steyn puts it. And most of those are probably women.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Related to all of this, today is Blue Scarf Day in France. Sit in a public place to protest Islamic thuggery. http://www.claudereichman.com/larevolutionbleue.htm
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
First it was piglet and piggy banks that got the chop in Britain, but Allah be with us, now the French are banning pork soup as a gift to the homeless as it is racist.
Vote:Granny Herald today ran the story in itrs foreign section, which I cannot find on;line, but the Toronto Globe and Mail has the same story.
The BBC, The Scotsman have other versions.
The interesting thing is, it is not Muslims trying to ban Western freedoms, like serving pork, but we ourselves are doing it out of political correctness.
When Westerners wopn’t stand up for Western culture, what hope is there for us?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20060125/PORK25/TPInternational/Europe has tghe story.
January 26th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Logix, if you’re going to take my name in vain, you might at least make sure I’ve actually made a comment on the thread.
It strikes me a number of commentors here would have advised the Jews of Germany to stay put in 1936-39 on the grounds that Hitler was actually quite a good bloke. All the trouble is really just a few fringey extremist Brown Shirts, you know. Nothing really to worry about, old boy.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Adolf I think the jews that stayed behind, many of them did not really think the Nazis were that bad. They had comfortable lives or they had no alternative so they stayed until it was too late and they got exterminated. The political activists however got out if they could because they knew what was coming for them.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
It strikes me a number of commentors here would have advised the Jews of Germany to stay put in 1936-39 on the grounds that Hitler was actually quite a good bloke.
Adolf – you’re a racist, an authoritarian and an easily lead fool – does anyone else here doubt that he’d been around in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich Adolf would have been ranting about the danger posed to aryan civilisation by the evil Jewish-Bolshievik conspiracy (citing excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as ‘irrefutable proof that a plot exists’ and damning anti-Nazi newspapers as ‘biased Zionist Communist proaganda’), all the while praising Hitler as a hero who would save Germany from the evils of democracy and socialism?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
AJ Chesswas said
“Logix, both partners never “HAVE” to work in the way you are alluding to. No-one has to spend $250 000 on raising a human being.
All your comments do is show how the modern, urban, worcaholic, consumeristic lifestyle flies in the face of a socially sustainable future for The West.”
AJ, I totally agree with that comment. Not going to comment on your other comments.
Aaron Bhatnagar said
“If population increases in a certain ethnic/religious group determine dominance of the planet, how come the Indians or Chinese don’t run the planet? After all, Indian and Chinese diaspora are significant and influential parts of Western and Eastern nations already.
It seems to me that the Muslim world is perfectly capable of destroying itself prior to their “destroying Western Civilization” through birthrate increases. And if the Soviet Union proved anything, its the fact that having an strapping pair of muscular thighs wasn’t much use when you have a pin head.”
Aaron, That is a very insightful post, and it make alot of sense. About the only thing I can think of is that perhaps we should wait 50 years or so before writing off Chinese/Indian world dominance.
About the only other thing I have to add is that I’d like to think that Islam is going through a 500-year adolescence of sorts, in much the same way that Christianity did in the dark/middle ages. However as someone noted before, some people are starting to be sceptical of that, because of some of the differences in the religions.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
It strikes me that those who are most concerned over this are those of us who have children and hence a stake in the future.
Am I wrong?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
I have children too, and I’m very concerned.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Makes sense, andrei.
Just like people who use busses have the most interest in having decent afforable bus services etc etc.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
It’s always interesting how the lessons of history can be read in many ways. My statements about Rome have not been interpreted in the manner I was intending at all.
Andrei, yes Rome’s collapse led to the dark ages. But Rome was always going to collapse, indeed it had been collapsing for hundreds of years. My point was that Rome stopped being expansive and inclusive, and became stagnant, then died. We don’t need to follow the same path. We could stay inclusive, and live.
AJ, I don’t think it’s inevitable. Nothing in history is. I was saying it’s not ‘lamentable’. It is in the nature of the world that things change in time, and if we change to have wider cultures included in the umbrella of ‘the west’ that’s not bad.
Aaron, too right. I don’t see the west getting darker and including other religions as ‘falling’.
BJ, I’m not sure what the point you were making to me was. Was that just some history for my edification?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Ben – I could hardly claim that now, could I!
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
I third that one, Andrei. Good call. I’d be proud to spend $250,000 per child… they’re worth every penny and you get most of it back when you retire. Cheap at any price.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Ben really;
My point was that Rome stopped being expansive and inclusive, and became stagnant, then died. We don’t need to follow the same path. We could stay inclusive, and live.
We are the most inclusive society ever! The trouble with being inclusive is where to draw the line. Female circumcission is a cultural artifact, should we tolerate it? Are we intolerant if we don’t?
And exporting democracy to the middle east is being (expansive and inclusive) is it not? Yet I bet you decryb this.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Duh. The best solution is to kill everyone over 60. Or even over 55 so we don’t need to worry for an ever longer period of time.
Unfortunately, we’re all going to suffer unnecessarily as people demand a higher standard of living than previously feasible. More expensive energy will cause slower growth or a contraction, but we’ll blame it all on the politicians and sincerely believe we deserve the same standard of living. The older population will see it as their right to have free health care and superannuation. The younger generation will suffer due to the thriftlessness of their elders. Stupid pyramid schemes.
The whole pyramid will collapse at some point anyway. Best to do it early, so it’s less damaging. But it’s politically unfeasible and will hence be held up until it’s horribly destructive.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
This discussion has moved away from Steyn’s discussion about Europe to a discussion of some unspecified group known as “we”.
He is not making some argument about the West and Islam but about the future of Europe.
Vote:My argument is that his perception is now shared by many Europeans and that will trigger another wave of immigration from the old world to the new – the third major one since 1900.
January 26th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
I believe the problem has been brought on by Western Europe & Scandinavia itself.
Bringing immigrants in saying we are a tolerant society to all who want to live her. Thats fine when the particular ethnic group is small, and in employment. Trouble is when the group gets large and 2nd 3rd generation see themselves as second class citizens in there parents adopted country, with poor job prospects, and living a life of 2 cultures. Well you certainly are going to get problems.
The answer in a tolerant society is- There is no answer to the problem.
The US have always kept the population loyal by always having an enemy. White, Black, Latino, Asian, all unite against the common foe Nazism, Japanse invasion, communism.
Trouble is the world is facing a Religious threat. Not just a scrape between Christian groups, but a full on battle between 2 idiologies not seen since the time of the Crusades.
This is now the type of world we are living in, it won’t get better, only worse.
As the old US Revolutionary saying goes
“Eternal Vigilance Is the Price of Freedom”
The answer is to find a place country to live and work which is reasonably safe. Get used to it.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
well DPF, be this right, be this wrong, you have certainly rattled everyone out of the drywood. in the meantime, i guess we should continue the art of sex for another 100 years until we all vanish.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
dim, thanks for demonstrating why you have been banned.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Adolf,
Rhetorically using Nazi metaphors is generally a bad idea in debating.
Two can play at that game, leading to a fast and bloody race to the bottom. It also tends to simulataneously stretch arguments to hyperbole and degrade the real attrocities of the period.
Play nice. You too, Dim.
Cheers,
Vote:Matt
January 26th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
A.J. Chesswas wrote:
” “Human rights” are great when they protect people and enable them to express their lives in virtous ways. Sadly reference to “human rights” for us in The West is more often than not a plea for license to live wreckless, tasteless, selfish and destructive lifestyles…It’s time we stop standing up for our rights and start kneeling down for our wrongs.”
Mark Steyn wrote:
“That
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
I thought dim’s post was a good estimation of what you would do in that situation, given your displayed attitudes, adolf. The truth obviously is not welcome on sir humphs.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
As well as saving Western civilisation, sex has other uses.
It is good for relieving stress, according to today’s (UK) Independent.
Even if you are single and have no lover, this is a handy thing to know.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article341112.ece
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
I have children, and I’m with Aaron on this one. Moslems and most other third-worlders consider children a blessing from god (whichever one they happen to delude themselves about), so there’s no expecting sense from them when it comes to population growth.
I’m not sure at what point between now and when there’s standing room only on the planet children would cease to be a blessing from god and become “what happens when you have sex at the right time of the month” for these people. But not before we’re eating each other for food, that’s for sure.
The Moslem world is full of countries whose only real skill is in producing more people. These countries are a threat only to the extent that they’re going to make the planet harder to live on for the rest of us. If Europe does just allow liberalism to die out through encouraging the immigration of fundamentalists, it would deserve it. Personally I don’t imagine for a second that that would happen.
In Western countries, we should be more concerned about the illiberal sections of our own population – for illustration, I draw your attention to the posts by Mr Chesswas on this thread.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
The West has crept and weaseled its PC way to a position where I believe Mark Steyn is correct, and worse, that it is already too late to reverse.I have some sympathy for so called moderate Muslims but not much…all they seem to do is wring their hands and proclaim their own innocence and/or ignorance of what they MUST know about.But,quess what?…they are too scared to “inform”. I have the confidence of a local Muslim woman who trusts me enough to tell me the truth about the extreme element of her religion and that some of these immigrants are busy in Auckland.Busy doing what….Not sure but don’t like it.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
The decline in birth rates is merely a symptom:
“The principle enemy of Western civilization is within the West itself. The West’s great enemy today is the contemporary version of the Enlightenment, especially the French Enlightenment. Because of its universalist pretensions and illusions, its adherents have made the peoples of the West undiscriminating about other cultures and unconfident about their own. They have therefore made the West disoriented and vulnerable to assault from the East, and especially from Islam. This assault may come from sustained or catastrophic attacks by transnational networks of Islamic terrorists. Or it may come from similar attacks by members of the large and alienated Muslim communities now residing within the West, especially in Europe. However, for Western civilization, Islam is merely a disease of the skin; the Enlightenment, has mutated into a disease of the heart.
[...] The protagonists of the contemporary version of the Enlightenment may think that they will create a global and universal civilization, both abroad and at home, but the evidence is accumulating that they have instead opened the doors to the barbarians, both without (e.g., Islamic terrorists) and within (e.g., pagan disregard for the dignity of human life). The best defense against the new barbarians will be found in the Christian religion. With the Christian tradition, Western civilization became the most creative, indeed the highest, civilization in human history. Without the Christian tradition, Western civilization could come to nothing. With a revival of the Christian tradition, Western civilization will not only prevail over the new barbarians, but it will become more truly civilized than it is today.”
(James Kurth)
http://www.isi.org/western_civ.html
Amen.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Rhetorically using Nazi metaphors is generally a bad idea in debating . . . It also tends to simulataneously stretch arguments to hyperbole and degrade the real attrocities of the period.
Funny you should mention that.
(For those who can’t be bothered to click on the link, Adolf argues that Helen Clark is responsible for the deaths of people on Hospital waiting lists – like my great uncle who died of a stroke while awaiting hip-replacement surgury – in the same manner that Hitler and Hirohito were responsible for the combat deaths of troops in World War II. Nice.)
I like to avoid Nazi analogies as well, and whenever they get raised I tend to provide the offender with a link to the wiki article on Godwins Law, and inform them that they’ve lost the argument by default (this never works).
But the truth is that I often think of the Nazis when I read Adolfs ‘work’, especially when he’s writing about President Bush. This isn’t because I think Bush=Hitler, or anything so pedestrian, but I DO think that Hitlers followers must have sounded an awful lot like Adolf.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Still think that those of us raising families in this country are not worthy of better tax concessions than we’re getting from MS antifamily PM at present David?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Let me tell you peasant, the people of this contemporary version of the Enlightenment that Kurtz speaks of are very confident of their own culture. In fact, we are the mainstay of what’s good about Western culture these days.
I mean it. The protagonists of the contemporary version of the Enlightenment are the ones that actually take the concept of doing unto others as you would be done by seriously, unlike the the protagonists of Christian tradition, who are more in favour of making others do what they want. When it comes to the question of whether women are the equals of men or under men’s authority, or whether it’s anybody else’s business if guys put it up each others’ bums, give me the contemporary Enlightenment over the Christian tradition any day.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Lusting,thrusting young party animal that I am,I think that on this topic we should all now go to bed with a hottie ..Sorry wrong season, and a hot milk drink.Don’t worry..something new will grab your attentions tomorrow.Sad.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Since I have read of the low birth rates in the Western countries also in Japan I have felt Europeans will either die out or become a minority race. The emergence of China suggests to me that Asians might become the next dominant people. So far none of the Islamic countries have shown much scientific or technological ability. No matter what their numbers are I don’t see them predominating but I do see the Chinese dominating the world.
Throughout history races and populations have come and gone and no doubt will in the future. I don’t think Europeans living now will need to worry. But there could be big differences in the next century. Also the EU hasn’t reached it’s peak yet.
But why are Western birth rates so low? It would seem when people reach a high standard of living they don’t want the bother of children and domestic drudge. So at a time in the future when Africans and Arabs reach our standard of living will they go the same way. We might eventually underproduce ourselves to extinction.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Andrei, yes there’s a question of where to draw the line. But I think the line should be drawn on practices, not races. Female circumcision is something I don’t agree with particularly. As with male circumcision, but even more so. Similarly with owning a gun, and other frontier world practices. But that’s just my opinion. I don’t expect to pre-decide for the future world what will be allowed or acceptable.
And you are damn right that I don’t think waging war to ‘bring democracy’ to Iraq is being inclusive, no. Imposing a system on people by violence doesn’t count, and really doesn’t come to bear on this argument. Are you suggesting the US is helping to control Iraq’s population as a gesture of kindness?
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
I don’t expect to pre-decide for the future world what will be allowed or acceptable. -Ben Wilson.
No wonder we are dying out with attitudes like Ben Wilsons.
You have to believe in something.
You have to believe that life will be better for your kids than it was for you. And you have to do your darndest to make sure it is so, as our forefathers did before us.
And if you believe, as I do, that the sharia is a gross violation of human rights and is an inhumane system, you should say so, loudly. Because if you don’t your descendants may end up being stoned and having their limbs amputated in public. And I don’t want that for my descendants thankyou very much.
Is our civilization perfect? No.
But it a damn sight better than anything that has gone before and it is a damn sight better than the middle east is today or china or India and anywhere in Africa.
We have nothing to be ashamed of but the Ben Wilsons of this world keep on flagellating themselves and us and telling us how bad we are.
See I happen to believe that despite western civilization’s flaws we have a lot to be proud of.
And I notice that people are not rushing to emigrate to Iraq or Iran or Mozambique rather the people from those places seek to live in the west and given half a chance they do! Which would suggest to any rational person that living in the west beats life in the third world.
So we need to stick up for what we believe in and be proud of our heritage and encourage people in the third world to adopt our institutions, that have served us so well.
Perhaps then the world will know peace.
And if that is arrogance so be it.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
If anyone wants a very good book on this precise issue: “Mosques and Miracles” by Stuart Robinson, ISBN 094779055-4.
Aaron, regarding China and India, do you think it’s possible that YHWH has been constraining them? He’s obviously let them loose now, but why, for centuries, have those superior Asian intellects been unable to dominate? Studies show Asians are superior in average IQ, which is about 15 points above Caucasians. So why did China and India remain stagnant while Caucasians surged ahead, for centuries? What about the Japanese? Why are they creatively deficient? With everything else they have going for them, if they were creative to the same extent Caucasians are, they would have dominated our region long ago. Maybe they’re genetically restrained in that area. And if so, might that genetic constraint have been designed?
Personally, I don’t find it coincidental that the rise in Islam and China, India, has come at the same time as the Christian nations and Israel have turned their back on YHWH. And reversing that trend brings the solution to this issue, not of course by asking or expecting YHWH to destroy the threat, but by reinvigorating the original Christian values and principles that once made us great and embracing our spiritual brothers and sisters, of all creeds.
Vote:January 26th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
This doesn’t mean we should resign ourselves to it happening
Vote:I think birth rates can be raised, if the government runs a basically free market economy but with some payments to those that have children. And does other things such as restricting (not necessarily banning) abortion.
Birth rates in some rich countries (Anglosphere and NW Europe/ignoring the muzzie problem) have risen slightly in the last few years, so I reckon they may be okay. But I don’t know if any thing can be done for countries with very low birthrates such as Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan and Russia, it may be to late for them to avoid a total collapse in their economies and societies.
January 26th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
“Andrei, yes there’s a question of where to draw the line. But I think the line should be drawn on practices, not races. Female circumcision is something I don’t agree with particularly. As with male circumcision, but even more so. Similarly with owning a gun, and other frontier world practices.”
What’s wrong with owning a gun?
Just another working tool for us in rural NZ.
I hardly think we are the ‘frontier’
We need to shot pests, put down injured/sick stock and hunt for the table. Aside from that, many townies have a lot of fun target shooting.
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 4:38 am
So white people get out bred by others. So a different philosophy becomes more prevalent. Who cares? Why are some of you so frightened by this?
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 7:41 am
“So white people get out bred by others. So a different philosophy becomes more prevalent. Who cares? Why are some of you so frightened by this?”
I live at the front end of over a millenia of heritage shared amongst a fairly similar people – the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts of Britannia. My identity is so wrapped in this, and I so proud of what I’ve inherited from this culture, that I want to do my utmost to preserve it for as many generations to come. As the Jews, the Serbians and the Assyrians need a homeland, so do the Brits. The Arab Moslems have their Middle East, we should do our darnedest to keep our Britain, our America, our Canada, our Australia and our New Zealand.
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Andrei, you mistake having an opinion with having the opinion that your opinion is more important than everyone elses. Naturally I have my own opinion on how society should be run, and guess what? It doesn’t run that way because other people have a say. I use the most important tool humanity has devised to try to push my views, and it is not a gun or a border. It is reason.
If you think the reason for the European way of life is so tenuous that it requires guns and borders to protect it then I’m not surprised you are afraid.
I see European style democracy as something that stands as a reason in itself to live that way, and I believe that anyone who freely wants to come there believes it too. And they continue to believe it, so long as they have access to the goods it provides, like security, freedom, opportunity, wealth.
The chance of Sharia law taking over a western country during my life is practically zero. Neither the original inhabitants nor the bulk of the immigrants want it. In centuries to come, who can say? Perhaps there will be a strong fundamentalism Islamic backlash to centuries Western attempts to control the Middle East. Perhaps not. Perhaps as Muslims move to Europe, they will adopt much of the local culture, and soften their harsher ancient views (if we do the same). I think that far more likely, and not a bad outcome if it happens. We both gain something – Muslims have plenty to offer Europe. They have just as many geniuses, hard workers, nice food, beautiful people, rich history as any people do.
I personally will always be opposed to any group which craps on about ancient religious texts as containing more profound truths than what we can come up with now. But I ALREADY do that with my own society – I find bible bashers to be a sorry sorry artifact, and tell them where to go whenever I can. It has not brought the west crashing down that we have had fundamentalist christians here for ever. We just laugh at them and move on.
Oswald, I can see a very slim argument for rural people owning a rifle for pest control. It is slim because there are better ways – you could use poison, or you could hire a pest control expert (who would have access to a rifle, but would have to check it back in under tight control at the end of his/her working day). I can’t see any argument for handguns, assault rifles, submachine guns, etc. Perhaps for clubs, with the same very strict controls over the use. NZ has a good formula, but still more guns than I think is necessary. But I accept that other people see it differently, despite it making me feel uncomfortable.
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 11:16 am
We seem to have been diverted to all the things various people are comfortable to talk about (and sling insults about).
What I had hoped to see from the likes of Dim, Logix and Ben, were some direct responses to the main point of Steyn’s article. That point has nothing to do with “white people” being “outbred by others”, or “The West” collapsing – or anything much about population growth in Muslim countries.
Still less had it anything to do with fears of India and China – both societies having demonstrated an ability to change – the latter by dumping communist practices in economics at least, the former by holding to democracy over many decades of strife. Not to mention the fact that both have long had a global diaspora that has held firmly to their cultures even while adapting to the key local practices of whatever country they were in and, more to the point, not pushing hard to impose their practices on those societies. For these reasons most people (NZ Firster’s aside) have not been alarmed by them.
Steyn has praised India in particular as the non-Western nation-state that is perhaps most likely to bring the key elements of “The West” along with it in it’s ride to the future. They will have Indian modifications and I’m comfortable with that, in the same way that I am with the many of the tweaks that our societies have added to the West’s socio-political inheritance from Greece and Rome.
Instead of these red herrings, Steyn’s constant point is to ask how the social democracies of Europe expect to survive as they are now – with all the wonderful things progressives love about them such as gender, social and sexual freedom and a comprehensive welfare state – when embedded in their midst is a group that does not believe in almost any of these same things, indeed when it actually despises much of what it sees in those societies – and when that group is likely to become a significant majority in the next 50 years.
His conservative subtext, part of his answer, is that those countries will not survive as they are unless they begin to address the points that weaken them – and that they cannot do so because most of those are precisely the things so beloved of left-wing social democrats and their voters – the things that they think make their societies fit to live in.
How does one pay for cradle-to-grave social welfare systems with a declining population? Via an immigrant group that believes more in reliance on family and extended family links? If one wants to get rid of antiquated notions such as nationality or patriotism as part of the path towards to a larger community of humanity how does one then leapfrog from tribalistic thinking? How does one separate race/ethnicity from practices in dealing with a group that views them as inseperably bound together, as part of their very identity? How does one convince these groups that church and state must be seperate when 2000 years of tradition insists that they are bound together? How does one provide the opportunities for wealth when jobs and businesses (in a word, capitalism) are as restricted and controlled as in Europe, as is required by European democracy, with France and it’s very high unemployment among Middle East youth being merely the leading indicator.
Moreover, how do progressives intend to pull all this off when, in the name of multiculturalism, they are no longer willing to utter actionable judgements on other such societies, no longer willing to claim the superiority of their own culture and society for fear of being labelled with racism or some other ‘ism’? People have long noted the two-faced nature of this as progressives loudly and proudly proclaim such superiority over nasty old Western conservatism.
And then there is the biggest question of all, how does a secular society, convinced of the insanity and sheer stupidity of religion, convinced of it’s own rational superiority to such things, intend to cope with a truly living faith in God? One that actually practices what it preaches on an everyday basis?
I’ve not seen very specific answers to these questions in this thread, which is not surprising since I’ve not seen any such answers from any progressive figures in Europe. What I have seen expressed are vague, dreamy expressions of hope that I can sympathise with but that seem at odds with recent events. I generally have a very optimistic view of the future for humanity in general, even for Islamic societies, but I do not have the touching faith that Logic expresses when he simply suggests that the future of Islam will be nothing like the present. I’d like to believe that too but where is the evidence that such changes are underway and how believable are they in the face of millennia of lack of such ‘improvements’. If the “good example” approach is to work we must ask why it has not appeared to do so with Muslim immigrant groups in Europe to date? What will make them follow the good examples of progressive thought? Ben believes (belief again) that anyone who freely wants to enter European style democracy believes that it stands as a reason itself to live that way. Fine, and if Islamic groups don’t actually want to live that way?
Alternatively we have Ben simply telling religious believers where to go, laughing at them and moving on – the “PissChrist” approach. It is a symbol of lighthearted courage and conviction and there is no question that such things work in our society, with some 14% of the population attending Christian church regularly. Good fun in kicking through the ashes of Christian institutions, safe from any real retaliation when one has only cheesy American imports and their local ‘bitches’ to deal with at the front door.
The question is whether it can work in other contexts, or whether it is even attempted. Seen any artists proposing to exhibit a Koran dumped in urine? A common Maori artifact perhaps? The lack of such “bold”, “challenging”, and “intended to shock” proposals, combined with the lack of specific answers to the questions above, leads Steyn and many Western conservatives to wonder whether there is really any conviction at all to many progressive touchstones and principles. There does not appear to be much light-hearted, courageous laughter in the free-spirited artistic groups in Holland following Theo van Gogh’s death.
Indeed the po-faced solemnity with which many non-Western or non-Christian dingbat beliefs are greeted, even defended, by modern social democrats, draws a very two-faced picture of such societal convictions and principles.
The other part of Steyn’s answer is that there is a Western society that can (and indeed may already have) avoided this future because it has the answers to those questions. That society is the United States and that conclusion and implication is absolutely unacceptable to the believers in European democracy.
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
> The old order in the middle east is being slowly
> cleaned out.
Ah, so that’s how you’d describe Palestine’s election of a majority-Hamas Government then?
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
tmh,
The original Steyn article is rather too long to comment on point by point, but one very cogent line does stand out:
The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birth rate to sustain it.
Historically I can only agree.Yet along with Pat Buchanan who writes in a similar vein, both authors somewhat melodramtically beat the same drum of impending doom as did Paul Erhlich did when postulating runaway global overpopulation back in the 70′s. (And I confess to being prone to giving the same instrument a whack myself from time to time.:-)
What tends to confound all such predictions is that the future is never a complete replay of the past. And most especially in our era, as a whole new range of factors, technical and social, re-work the dynamics of civilisations in ways we have never seen before. This is what tripped up Erhlich and his mates, they failed to predict the impact of the Pill and the impact of economic freedom on the ability of women to choose when to have children.
(Just to sidetrack a moment. It is of course deeply ironic that DPF, a single, childless young dude as far as I am aware, and an enthusiastic embracer of the “try before you buy” sexual outlook, should be linking to articles about “de-population”.)
The simple fact may well be that Western civilisation’s time has run it’s course. There is no reason to assume the future is necessarily white, western, and middle class. We can point to much achievement, we have generated an astonishing legacy, but objectively we also have a long list of failures…for example, being collectively responsible for the two most destructive wars of all history, is not the highlight on our cultural CV.
But returning to the line from Steyn’s essay I quoted above, if underlying the core of all civilisations is the generative impulse of a religious tradition, then it is plain that the emasculation of Christianity in the Western world is the equivalent of cultural sterilisation, both demographically and spiritually. Viewed in this light it is entirely reasonable to view Islam as the stroppy bad boy on the block…and as all us males learn at some point in adolescence, nice guys tend to finish last. Steyn’s essay simply boils down to this in a nutshell.
My counter to that argument is equivocal. To my way of thinking the lessons of history are only an element of the future. Most people are very prone to being captured by their own personal experience, and can only imagine the future to be an extension of the past. This is true, but only up to a point. History repeats, not in circles, but in spirals. Patterns repeat, but each cycle actually represents a stage as well, like a child progressing through school, each year is a cycle, but also an advancement.
We live in the age of globalisation. This is the unique aspect of our times. The borders of the nations and empires have all butted up against each other, there is no room for expansion or conquest, the physical borders are almost irrelevant and the arrival of the Internet has rendered the cultural borders far more porous than just a generation ago. In the crowd of 220 odd nations in the modern world, any nation attempting to weild unrestrained sovereignty is a welcome as fart in a spacesuit.
Yet the reason why I am equivocal is that I have no solid feel for the timing or sequence of how events may play out from where we are now, to some point in the future when an entirely new form of global civilisation appears. And in order to be consistent, if we are to imagine such a global civilisation, then logically I must also propose a new religion to underpin it, a religion specifically modelled around the concept of a unified human race in order to breath life into such a form. A development such as this would render obsolete the paradigm of “clash of civilisations between Christianity and Isalm” that Steyn is trapped in.
So while Steyn’s prognostications hold a potentially gloomy validity, at the same time the entirely unique stage of human development we are passing through will very likely mean that we will look back on them in 30 years time with the same bafflement as we do with Erhlich’s predictions. How did someone so intelligent get it so wrong?
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Logix -
I agree that predictions about the future are often wildly wrong. Nevertheless, the future is something that we determine and the best possible future can only be obtained using our current best theories about what is right and by acknowledging that objective truth does exist.
As in every generation, the best future won’t happen unless we fight for it, and fight for it now.
I believe Western society will be prevalent because Western society has a remarkable capacity for problem solving through our traditions of freedom, respect for the individual, and belief in objective truth. No other society can solve problems like we can and declining birth rates and the memetic intransigence of other cultures are problems we will solve!
What Mark Steyn’s article ignores is that the future may not be human at all, but rather post-human. Indeed, his article could be seen as a call to arms for the genetic revolution to well and truly get under way.
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Logix
Vote:It should of been clear in 1968 that Ehrlich was way off the mark with the “The Population Bomb”
Most countries were well into the demographic transition and the “Green Revolution” had been under way for some time. It was clear that there would be no global Malthusian population collapse.
Policies were then enacted that made his prediction seem even more prepostorous
We could laugh at his predictions even then, but we can laugh a hell of a lot louder now.
With Steyn’s predictions of a population collapse in Europe especially.
It is not clear that catastrophe will be avoided. Even if there has been a slight increase in fertility rates in the last few years, it is probably only in the order of .1 or .2 births per woman. Although that is not to say that fertility rates may increase enough naturally to avert this catastrophe, we cannot laugh at his predictions now unlike Ehrlich’s in 1968.
Only policies designed to increase the birth rate will definately save certain countries, and the we can all laugh at Steyns predictions in the year 2044.
January 27th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
I think the iminent decline and fall of Capitalist Democracy is all but inevitable; not because of any demographic trends (empires don’t need demographic dominance to succeed – vis Rome)… but because our system is rotten to the core.
Vote:Capitalist Democracy has virtually no commonly held beliefs that make it worth fighting to defend. We are united behind the idea that sex with children is repulsive (even though our whole society is dominated sex fetishes that border on the inane). Aside from that, what do we have? The idea that all marine mammals are gods; an all-pervading fear of progress and science; the soul-eating sense of guilt for all the terrible things we have done to indigenous people… My goodness, what a wonderful belef system! But the real killer for the West (and Europe in particular) is the insane idea that we must be ‘tolerant’ of everything and everyone regardless of the stupidity and evil inherent in their beliefs and actions. Our incapacity to act against those who we know are out to destroy our society will in the end be our destruction… and it won’t take as long as 50 years.
India and China will inherit the West’s legacy. These two giants are already jostling for pole position and India certainly has plenty of experience fighting Islam – they have been doing it for centuries.
Islam will take over Europe, but it will not establish a ‘civilisation’, simply because it is not itself civil or capable of being civilised. Islam will simply plunder Europe (again) and then squat like a plague of rats amongst the ruins of their cities, spitting venom and hate at the remains of the US and the two new vital and vibrant powers that will have emerged from South and East Asia.
Islam’s only potential (as evidenced by its beliefs and history) is for destruction. They wil build nothing.
January 27th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Islam will simply plunder Europe (again) and then squat like a plague of rats amongst the ruins of their cities,
Another disgusting racist. Substitute the word “Jews” for “Islam” in the above quote and see what kind of response you get buster.
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
tmh, if you have some questions you wanted answered, ask them. Yes we didn’t argue what you thought we would because we’re not you, or telepathic.
You raise a lot of questions. It would be an essay to answer all of them, and I’m not sure I understand your answers to them any more than you understand mine. Is your ‘solution’ to force Islam to stop breeding, or stop moving to the West? Or is it for the West to have more kids? Or is it to convert everyone away from Islam?
You had some questions for me:
“Ben believes (belief again) that anyone who freely wants to enter European style democracy believes that it stands as a reason itself to live that way. Fine, and if Islamic groups don’t actually want to live that way? ”
Then they will be at loggerheads with the local population. They will need to convince the existing people that their way is OK. In some cases they will succeed. In others they will not. Most of the time their own people will simply defect from their ways when it suits them, which it does, a lot of the time. The reason behind the western ways makes itself abundantly clear to people living within it. And if it doesn’t then maybe we should take heed.
When you consider that secular western democracy emerged from strict religious roots, with far less proof of concept, and far more adverse conditions, you realize that our society is actually pretty resilient to the ideas of localized extremists.
Which is my reason for the “PissChrist” approach, so called. 500 years ago it could have been quite hard to tell people trying to push a view on you with no evidence but their obvious faith to stop bothering you. You could have easily died for it. Now it’s the work of a few minutes, and any fundamentalist muslim that turns up at my door telling me the koran should figure highly in my daily thoughts will receive similar short shrift. I suspect most people would feel the same way as I do.
I have had religious things pushed on me far more serious than doorknockering mormon tag teams. Family pressure can be quite strong, but again, telling them no, and here’s why, is an option more and more people take. The exact same thing goes in Muslim families living in Western countries.
It’s not symbolic of lighthearted courage and conviction to tell people that you don’t agree with their views. What more would you have me do? Beat it into them?
Vote:January 27th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
There’s a lot of reactionary nonsense being spoken here. Talk of a clash of civilisations will be self-fulfilling if you rewrite history to label several hundred million people “a plague of rats.”
Indeed, without Islam holding libraries together during the dark ages the Western englightenment may not have even happened.
To wit: “It was through Arabic translations that the West learned of Hellenic medicine, including the works of Galen and Hippocrates.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Islam
Cheers,
Vote:Matt
January 27th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
Oh purleezzz, Logix! The howl of your out-of-tune violins is torturing me!
Vote:You illustrate my point exquisitely, thank you. Your pathetic offended knee-jerk reaction is exactly why your (our?) civilisation is doomed. Its perfectly OK for a bunch of mad fanatics to bomb the fuck out of the West and preach psychopathic hate from their mosques…. but for you it seems that the biggest, most disgusting crime imaginable is when we react by focusing on the facts and fighting back – albeit only with words.
It is a fact that, compared to the ‘West’, Islam is non-progressive, violent, destructive and ….. oh shit – do I have to spell it out for your small brain?
For your information, I am best described as a virulent anti-Islamist. Islam is a religion, not a race! Honestly.
January 27th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
A bit more of a think on this long polemic of Steyn’s. It’s essentially playing on two old themes. The old ‘paradox of tolerance’, and ‘populate or perish’. The paradox is that you can tolerate intolerance. It’s not a new paradox, or about demographics at all. The same could be said of many internal western factions. And populate or perish is an idea as old as time.
Steyn argues that because we are not populating, we will perish, and perishing will mean we will have to tolerate intolerance. He makes an enormous leap to then blame all of it on the secular left.
All of these points have many weaknesses.
1. Populate or perish is wrong. Otherwise the fastest reproducing organism would dominate the planet. If your slower growing population is much stronger in some way (for instance it is much more wealthy and developed), then it will not perish. You might notice that grass grows a lot faster than trees, but prior to humanity, the planet was mostly covered with huge slow growing trees. Having a huge population does not guarantee the ‘success’ of your group, it could consume it’s resources and wither. Or it could just limp along with a big population and no real power or control.
Furthermore, populate or perish really only applies to the genetics. Western or Islamic *ideas* are not passed on in that way, and each new generation can be quite different. I’m pretty sure what Steyn is lamenting the most is the death of Western ideals, not the gradual reversion of the entire human species towards a genetic mean.
Sure, families wield power over young minds, but so do circumstances and things like education. My way of seeing the world is different to my parents, and theirs to their parents and so on. Muslims are just the same. Who knows how quickly they will move away from poring over old scrolls for their beliefs when they enjoy the privilege and wealth of the West. I venture that if they are *in* the West at the time, it will be a lot quicker than if they are excluded.
2. The paradox of tolerance. This one is pure sophistry. Western tolerance relates to the belief that individuals have the right to freedom of belief, and in many cases speech. This means that you can disagree with someone, but still have no right to force them to change their minds. But neither can they do it to you. So you can tolerate ‘intolerance’ only so far as it doesn’t involve any kind of force over people. It’s not really a paradox, it just looks like one if you play with words. Intolerance is not tolerated in the West at all. You can’t force anyone to believe many things here. You can’t force them to believe in God, or in global warming, or even tolerance. That does not mean that force can’t be used – it is just that it can only be used in the defence of one’s own beliefs, not in the forcing of others.
There are exceptions to these basic principles – you can force people to respect property rights and other laws. Whether they genuinely change their minds about abiding by these laws is another matter, but certainly people have troubles when they *act* as if they don’t agree with these things.
So if ‘intolerant muslims’ become more and more common in Europe, the response is extremely simple – act as you always did, when it was intolerant priests, or intolerant parents, or intolerant teachers or neighbors. Stand up for your beliefs. Preferably using reasoning to try to influence the intolerant, and force when they try to force you. It’s an age-old battle, to develop your own mental karate. People will be convinced – perhaps not the intolerant, but maybe their children, and other associates.
3. The leap to blaming the left. I can’t really see where this comes from, other than through the tenuous correlation between birthrates and ‘how far left is that country?’. He manages to find a nice slide down through a list of ‘more and more leftist’ countries. Let’s ignore that the political placement of these countries has changed considerably over time, and placing one country as ‘more left’ than another is a very subjective judgement call. Let’s assume there is a correlation. Does that mean the left is to blame for declining birth rates? Or is this the classic ‘confusion of cause and effect’. Perhaps declining birth rates have the effect of pushing countries more to the left? This could easily follow from the evidence given.
4. Who cares? This is still the biggest weakness of all in the argument. It is fundamental to Steyn’s stance that Western society is a model of perfection and that the only influence the east can bring is evil. Both of these points are wrong. The West is not perfect (although I do think it is ‘better’), and the east has a lot to offer.
I don’t wish to make sweeping generalizations about the whole of the Islamic world to back that up. I can only comment that of the muslims I know, some have been idiots, some have been geniuses. Most have been in between. The idiots get told where to go, until they see the error of their ways, and the geniuses tell us what to do. The rest just fit in in some niche that suits their talent and training. The end result was we all changed and mostly for the better.
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 12:35 am
Matt, if you scroll down to the bottom of the Wikipedia link you gave, you’ll find reference to dissent over whether there was any such thing as an Islamic Golden Age or if it were just a myth. Be most interesting following that up, don’t you think?
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 12:51 am
Lucyna,
Indeed. Srdja Trifkovic, the source cited by Wikipedia as saying there was no Islamic Golden, has has a page of his own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srdja_Trifkovic
Choice highlights, mostly from his time as a Bosnian Serb leader:
*He insists that the massacre of several thousand Muslims in Srebrenica was a “long-debunked myth”.
*He also claims that the figure of 250,000 Bosnian Muslims dead in the entire Balkans conflict is actually as low as 2,500.
*”For a Christian the real task is to help our fellow humans who are trapped in Islam and to help them become free.”
My conclusion? I’ll take my history from sources other than crusading nutjobs.
Cheers,
Vote:Matt
January 28th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Dave,
For your information, I am best described as a virulent anti-Islamist.
My humble apologies. I take back the “racist” charge. You are in fact a disgusting bigot.
Its perfectly OK for a bunch of mad fanatics to bomb the fuck out of the West and preach psychopathic hate from their mosques.
Umm…exactly were did I say that? Maybe if I re-quote myself from earlier in this thread:
“About 2-300 years ago Islam, and most especially Shi’te Islam swung very profoundly towards fundamentalism, mainly as a means for a certain class of clergy to cement their grip on social and political power. In order to do this, these clergy deliberately focussed on the legalistic aspects of Islamic law, and combined this with backward attitudes and hillbilly social conservatism of the poorer tribal classes, alienated from the state by endemic corruption and misrule. It has proved a very toxic brew indeed.”
Fundamentalism, racism and bigotry are the enemies Dave. Thank you for so exquisitely illustratiing my point.
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 10:27 am
No, Logix, fundamentalism, racism and bigotry are not the enemies at all. The actual, real enemies the millions (probably) of Muslims who hate the West and support the tens of thousands (probably) of fanatical arseholes who are actively working violently against us. These are the enemies.
Vote:This is why you will be destroyed… because you don’t yet know who the real enemy is and people are afraid of even thinking and opening their eyes.
Anyway… I guess we’ll just have to agree to differ on this one!
January 28th, 2006 at 10:45 am
Muslim fundamentalism and fanatical bigotry = BAD
Christian fundamentalism and fanatical bigotry = GOOD
Get back to us when you think you can justify that one Dave. In the meantime it’s a nice day for the beach.
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 11:37 am
Bravo, Ben Wilson, for a well-reasoned and enlightening rebuttal of the thinking behind the Steyn article. What the scaremongers lack is rational faith in the power of argument, the legal framework, and the experience of modernity to reduce the influence of fundamentalism. Even in America, reason prevailed in the Kansas School Board case.
I agree with Logix that fundamentalism, racism and bigotry are the enemies. So, too, is ignorance.
Further up the thread, tmh asks:
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Yes, I deliberatly avoided the question of the ‘crisis of the aging population’, as it is a red herring. The fundamental idea behind the welfare state is not that the young pay for the old. It is that everyone pays for themselves, and the effect of wealth disparities are spread through the population more. So old people pay for themselves, when they can. This manifests in many ways, typically they lose their houses when they go into care, which the state takes first dibs on to cover the costs. Only people who literally have nothing left fall entirely on the state for their care. These are fewer than the tax cut champions suggest.
A declining population in a welfare state does not mean hard times for the young, since the bulk of the nation’s wealth is already held by the old. They simply have to lose some of it. Sure, aged care is a large part of our tax, but inheritance also gives windfalls back all the time. It must be remembered also that when we were young the elderly were paying for us, so it’s not like they’ve just got their hand out, giving nothing. They gave us life and nurture, and they deserve our nurture and respect in return. This is the case whether you are a capitalist or a socialist, the only point of departure being whether the burden should fall entirely on the family, or if it should be spread across society.
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Things are never as bad as the worst secnarios people offer. I think democracy will fall but so too will islam due to similar forces.
Like brian hints – the genetic revolution is coming amongst other things and as dave suggests I think democracy wont survive long enough for their population game to work anyway (some do see it as a strategy).
Also even if islam was in charge of europe it wouldnt matter too much its like taking over a sinking ship. Maybe the islamic population in india is more of an issue.
In the meantime however I still wouldn’t want to have 5 million palestinians move to NZ because of course then we would have an islamic government – we might be represented by hamas -uuugghhhh.
But I guess if europeans realy want that they can arrange their immigration accordingly and those that want it (or are stupid) will get it and those that dont wont or will just move. No need to get too upset in the big scheme of things.
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Iran provides a good illustration of the difficulty of sustaining fundamentalism over generations. This was written in 2003 but still holds true.
“Iran is a country in which about 70 percent of the population is below the age of 30. It is within this age group that the unemployment rate is reported to be hovering around 24 percent. It seems that Iran’s ruling class and its young population are focused on entirely different agendas. Within the rank and file of the ruling establishment, the issues of contention are liberalization of the government (rather, the denial of it) and strict interpretation of Islam. The youth of Iran, on the contrary, like young people anywhere else in the world, are driven by their collective ambitions of getting quality education so that they can get promising jobs and a good standard of living. Many are also enticed by the consumerism and free lifestyle of the West. But the hardliners’ insistence on making their lust for the “good life” a crime, becomes just another reason why the feeling of alienation regarding the Islamic government is reported to be mounting among young Iranians.
“While the hardline ayatollahs see popular demands for liberalization as a threat to their authority, the liberal or moderate clerics do not fare that much better among Iranian youth because of their unwillingness to challenge the hardliners. The hardliners in Iran have learned nothing from the miserable legacy of the regime of Reza Pahlevi, its brutality, and, above all, its repudiation to compromise. By wittingly or unwittingly emulating those traits of the previous regime, the hardline Islamic clerics are pushing their rule toward the same fate.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG22Ak03.html
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Ouch Logix! Methinks you doth cut me to the quick with thy rapier-like humour!
Vote:Actually, I’m not a Christian at all; I’m an atheist witha slight leaning towards exploring the Hindu mysteries of the unknowable Brahma.
Anthropomorphic fantasising is not really my thing old chap. (Aaron… help me out here! hehehehe)
January 28th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Dave,
Rapier? I was using something a lot more blunt, like a sodding cudgel.
Actually, I’m not a Christian at all;
So I see you are no more receptive to being on the receiving end of a sweeping generalisation than anyone else.
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Iran provides a good illustration of the difficulty of sustaining fundamentalism over generations.
No, it does not. Utter crap, in fact. Islamists seized power in Iran, they weren’t voted into it by 51% of the population, or even 25%. They are not representative of anyone except their own very small subset of Iranian society.
The Shah was involved in an active 10-year campaign against Iranian ultra-conservative Muslims. His methods were highly repressive, including one notorious massacre in the early 60′s and more in the late 70′s. Iranian liberals and Muslim ultra-conservatives banded together to form an opposition dedicated to terminating the Shah’s rule.
US President Carter threatened to halt aid to Iran unless various western-style political and free-speech reforms were introduced. When the Shah complied, ultra-conservative Muslims and others discontented with the regime took to the streets in great numbers.
The Shah responded with force. To cut a long story short, there were more massacres, Iranian government units (police and military) started to ‘defect’, disappear, or refuse orders. Martial order was declared in Tehran, and most of the country went on strike. The Shah then turned power over to a fairly liberal dissident politician.
But the Ayatollah controlling the ultra-conservative muslim faction instead sent his religious thugs to seize government buildings. And having a defacto militia army like that effectively gave him control over the Iranian government.
If you estimate the Islamist street thugs controlled by the Ayatollah numbered around a million, that only amounts to one twenty-fifth of the 25-million strong Iranian population of the mid 1970′s, or about 4% of its population.
In other words the extreme fundies in Iran, those willing to follow their words with violent action, have always been a tiny minority.
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
Correction… according to the following page Iran had a much bigger population of around 34 million in the 70′s, thus the proportion of the population which actively participated in the ‘Islamic Revolution’ was much smaller.
http://www.un.org/Depts/escap/pop/journal/v10n1a1.htm
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
The main thing we’re worried about seems to be entryism. It’s one of the problems with democracy. That even with no actual force, a group can grow in size to outvote the others. It doesn’t have to be through immigration, it could be with higher birthrates of certain groups. What this can mean is that simply because the other side of the country had a whole lot of population growth, some others who had nothing to do with it could be forced to change.
A hypothetical country enjoys a high standard of living. They have certain beliefs reflected in their legislation. However, because of abnormally large population growth among people that do not share these beliefs, either through birthrates or immigration, they find in 50 years time that their beliefs are no longer in the current’s legislation, since they are not shared by the majority. They used to be, but now, because of events out of their control in democracy, they can’t.
Everybody needs to live in a nation that can share their beliefs. Otherwise we live under the tyranny of the majority.
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Matt,
Choice highlights, mostly from his time as a Bosnian Serb leader:
He was never the Bosnian Serb leader. The closest he came, is “former spokesman”.
*He insists that the massacre of several thousand Muslims in Srebrenica was a long-debunked myth”.
The only reference that works in this item, is a reference to your next item, so the reference is basically wrong in that someone was sloppy.
*He also claims that the figure of 250,000 Bosnian Muslims dead in the entire Balkans conflict is actually as low as 2,500.
The reference [7] doesn’t actually work. If you actually read the reference noted as [6] (for the prior statement) it says :
“At the height of the war western officials spoke of a death toll as high as 100,000. President Clinton said the Nato campaign had prevented “deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide”. Geoff Hoon, then a Foreign Office minister and now the defence secretary, later scaled down the estimates. “It appears that about 10,000 people have been killed in more than 100 massacres,” he said. The most outspoken challenge to these figures has come from Emilio Perez Pujol, a pathologist who led the Spanish team looking for bodies in the aftermath of the fighting. He said: “I calculate that the final figure of dead in Kosovo will be 2,500 at the most, including lots of strange deaths that can’t be blamed on anyone.”
So, as a journalist (a biased one at that, but aren’t you all?) he was reporting what a man on the ground actually thought. At that in the Wikipedia page is actually attritubed to Serge Trifković. Very, very sloppy and misleading.
Think someone was trying to do a hatchet job there, Matt?
*”For a Christian the real task is to help our fellow humans who are trapped in Islam and to help them become free.”
I agree with this. Islam is a cult from which you can only leave (apostate) with the Islamic court’s permission. You ought to look up just how difficult that is for many people in Islamic countries. Check out what’s been happening in Malaysia lately. I’d recommend going to Western Resistance and searching for Malaysia. It has a secular government, too, btw.
My conclusion. If this is how you check your history, you need a lot more practise, Matt.
Vote:January 28th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
AL wrote: In other words the extreme fundies in Iran, those willing to follow their words with violent action, have always been a tiny minority.
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Vote:Are full of passionate intensity.
January 29th, 2006 at 12:07 am
AL, you appear to have entirely missed the point of my post. It was that the majority of the Iranian population is young and their only experience of the theocratic revolution has been a negative one, therefore the prognosis is that they will seek to get rid of the mullahs in time. The repressive rule of the mullahs will be their own undoing, just as the repressive rule of the Shah was his.
Vote:January 29th, 2006 at 5:53 am
Returning to this late, have to respond to this from thm: “Moreover, how do progressives intend to pull all this off when, in the name of multiculturalism, they are no longer willing to utter actionable judgements on other such societies, no longer willing to claim the superiority of their own culture and society for fear of being labelled with racism or some other ‘ism’? People have long noted the two-faced nature of this as progressives loudly and proudly proclaim such superiority over nasty old Western conservatism.”
It’s a common failing of American right-wingers and their NZ enthusiasts, that they imagine Europe is some kind of hotbed of wet liberals who wouldn’t dare to stand up for their own culture against a foreign one. Where this comes from I don’t know, and can only assume that none of them have ever lived in Europe. Steyn’s article is bullshit on two points:
1. Europeans are no more wet liberals than anyone else is. If anyone in the French govt wants to tell French voters that the answer to huge numbers of uneducated, unemployed Moslem immigrants is to import even larger numbers of the uneducated and unemployable, the voters will eventually elect people with more sense. And I recently saw a CNN report from Germany, in which the minimum-wage hairdresser cheerfully told the reporter if Hitler were alive today he’d be getting millions of votes. Wet liberal multicultis? I don’t think so.
2. 3rd-generation “immigrants” are not immigrants. The fact is that the child born 3 or 4 generations after the Pakistani peasant arrived in Britain is not going to grow up to be a Pakistani peasant himself. The more children the Moslem population of Europe has, the more they’re weakening their own culture, not the Europeans’.
Dave Mann – it’s refreshing to see such considered prose from a man who’s clearly had a lot of contact with Moslem culture. Your thoughtful input shows you have a lot of facts about this at your fingertips. Yes I am being sarcastic you bigoted fuck.
Vote:January 29th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Lucyna,
“Think someone was trying to do a hatchet job there, Matt?”
It’s possible. I hadn’t gone to Wiki’s primary sources, and I have neither the time nor energy to dedicate to picking about a lone dissenter about what is a commonly accepted period of history.
Writing about Islamic civilization, Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy states; “From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time (699-1000) was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary… To us it seems that West-European civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view.”
Again, my point is not to whitewash Islam, but merely that history doesn’t support the assertion that they are an uncivilized plague of rats.
Serge Trifkovic is a lone dissenter. The vast degree of history scholarship does not support his claims.
I would note that Serge Trifković has his own reasons for vilifying Islam as a whole – he was on the side fighting against the Kosovo Liberation Army.
His publisher, “Regina Orthodox Press”, and his clear evangalism make his statements about Islam look less scholarship than partisan barracking. The quotes from the Pope you’ve listed on SH should be read with the same caveats.
And the Western Resistance site looks (and sounds) like an global National Front.
If you want to get into playing selective quotes and religions, I can direct you to the Heretics Guide to the Bible. But this game will get either of us nowhere.
Cheers,
Vote:Matt
January 29th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Or, put another way, if a radical Saudi-Arabian cleric who openly loathed Christianity and the West wrote a book claiming the Renaissance and the Enlightenment never happened how much credibilty would you give to their claim?
Vote:January 30th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
I’ve read thru this entire thread and man, Logix, you are such an ingenuous fool, unbelievable. You are the worst sort.
Vote:January 30th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
“Muslim fundamentalism and fanatical bigotry = BAD
Christian fundamentalism and fanatical bigotry = GOOD”
I’d like to have a go at this one sometime. Would have something to do with the difference between Islam and Christianity as religions methinks, given that the political framework of each are not too dissimilar.
Islamic fundamentalism will always be inferior to Christian fundamentalism. Islam sees Christ as a prophet, not as The Son of God, and as a result his death and resurrection are rendered much less meaningful with regards to a person’s salvation, hope and morality. Christian fundamentalism is more holistic – it provides a legal political framework, but by honouring Christ as Lord and Saviour provides the regenerative power to enable people to attain to that law.
Vote:January 31st, 2006 at 8:23 am
AJ, alchemy may also have been a little better than witchcraft, but both are still wrong, wrong, wrong.
And that’s IF I accept your point, which seems to be merely the tired assertion all pestersome doorknockers give me about the superiority of christianity to all other belief. It is this kind of thing which would be the death of the West, if it wasn’t simply ignored by most westerners. Certainly in practice.
Vote:January 31st, 2006 at 10:41 am
Matt,
You said Again, my point is not to whitewash Islam, but merely that history doesn’t support the assertion that they are an uncivilized plague of rats.
Sir Winston Churchill said: “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensual ism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
“Individual Muslim’s may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science – the science against which it had vainly struggled – the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
I think you might find that history does support the assertion that they are uncivilised. Look at all the Muslim states today – are they more or less civilised that the West? What about the true islamic states, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Just what exactly are they contributing to the civilisation of the world right now?
I personally find it very, very odd that such a backward religion wasn’t backward in the the past. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Matt said: “If you want to get into playing selective quotes and religions, I can direct you to the Heretics Guide to the Bible. But this game will get either of us nowhere.
I’m not sure why you think I would want to do this. I’m more interested in staying on topic. You were the one that brought up the Islamic Golden Age, to prove what? That the West reverting to Islam would be a good thing?
Vote:January 31st, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I think you might find that history does support the assertion that they are uncivilised.
You do realise that a thousand years ago Christian Europe was a small, barbaric backwater on the fringes of the vast Islamic Caliphate? Have you ever heard of the Mughul Empire? Do you even know Isfahan exits?
I don’t think you’re onto a winner here Lucyna – the historical evidence that Islam is ‘civilised’ (whatever that means) is pretty overwhelming. Just because YOU are personally ignorant of something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
You might also want to try and pin down what you mean by ‘civilised’. Presumably you think that New Zealand is more civilised than, say, Saudi Arabia – I’m curious to know what basis you have for making that claim?
Vote:January 31st, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Funny Dim, you want me to pin down civilised for you, when you use the presumably opposite word of “barbaric” for Christian Europe of 1000 years ago. Not even mentioning that Islam had overrun Christian Africa and Europe in the centuries prior.
Here’s a definition of uncivilised, or more to the point absolute barbarity for you, Dim. In Saudi Arabia, a raped 13 year old can get stoned to death after her child is born. Not really heard of that happening in NZ.
Vote:February 1st, 2006 at 7:00 am
No existential problems for European social democracy then?
First off, Logix, thank you for that thoughtful response. A post-humanist religion – hmmm! I’m reminded of one aspect of tieing seemingly disparate groups together in a long ago National Geographic piece on the US. The author pointed to a number of Mexican and Polish marriages as both sides of the aisle said “Well, at least they’re both Catholic”. As you say, something will be needed to bind the Christian and Islamic religions together, and given the commonalities it would seem possible, but given the schisms that still exist in Christianity it’s going to take a few hundred years perhaps – and who knows how much blood in between.
As far as questions go, I do not approach these threads as some sort of mano-a-mano debate but as a forum where everybody can contribute something. I simply felt, after seeing some 60-70 posts, that we were rather forgetting the actual article’s points. I’m not much interested in placing red herrings.
Which brings me to my question about social welfare systems coping with declining populations and where Islamic immigrants and their descendents fit into the picture. Many of these systems the world over have existed as pay-as-you-go schemes. I too can imagine various ways this might be resolved but such theoretical solutions do not make the question a red herring – especially for Europe’s far greater problems. Or course Steyn as a right-winger does not raise the same question in regard of capitalism but others have noted that there too – theoretical answers involving increased productivity aside – the system has never had to work with long-term population decline.
It’s always nice to to see confidence in the future but Ben’s dismissiveness of this question as it applies to Western Europe rather flies in the face of the last twenty years of argument in this country as to whether future generations could afford to pay for the Boomers superannuation. That argument has involved well educated demographers, economists, and even informed politicians and various pundits, and it was tackling a population bulge problem that rather pales in comparison to that facing Western Europe. Even in the wake of the Cullen Fund many such people (including Cullen himself) have insisted that more needs to be done – probably private savings – before we can consider the system to be supportable in the future. And many others have pointed out that this does not even begin to tackle the potential health care demands. Pity to hear they’ve all been wasting their time!
I’m glad that Reason has identified at least one tenet of Islam that is compatible with the Welfare state: rather like those aspects of Christianity that speak to aiding the poor and passing through the eye of a needle. Of course those have been honoured more in the breech but that did not stop early Labour politicians describing social welfare systems as “muscular Christianity”. In fact large parts of Christian belief were claimed to support socialism, by both Christians and socialists, and their hybrids.
That was merely one extension of a centuries old debate among Christians themselves as to how modern societies could be built. Some years ago an article in The Nation attempted to demonstrate that the primary contributors to the US Bill of Rights and the Constitution had been atheists – an exercise in claiming pure virtue that would have done any religious believer proud. It would seem that this theme continues with some of the secularists on this thread, the arrogant assumption that it is they who have been the main drivers of our modern socio-political systems (“In fact, we are the mainstay of what’s good about Western culture these days”).
In fact huge chunks of our society owe their debt to people who argued for these things from within a Judeo-Christian context – and they remained in those religions because they did not think there were any fundamental conflicts between the new social institutions and their beliefs. The fact that confronting modern evangalists takes only a few minutes owes a lot to Christians who fought within their religion for tolerance. This is not a history that appears to be appreciated by modern secularists – instead there seems to be the belief that secularists confronted Christian conservatives to hold the line while finding commonalities that could appropriated and waiting for successive generations to fall away from the churches – seduced into the new, wonderful world of material plenty and hedonistic freedoms.
The assumption of the left-secularists on this thread (the answer to several of my questions it would appear) seems to be that this will work a second trick with Islam. There are a lot of reasons to doubt that, and if the secular viewpoint lumps both religions together as equally irrational and stupid and that disdain causes one to ignore the key differences between them, differences that allowed Christianity to cooperate in separating church and state, religion and economics and so forth, over the last few hundred years, then finding an accomodation is going to be a lot tougher than it was with Christianity. Even setting aside the far more encompassing view of society that Islam has compared to even early Christianity, perhaps the biggest obstacle to secularists playing the same card is that many of those Christians did not live to see the practical affects of what they supported or aquiesed to – whereas Muslims have the result staring them in the face – and many of them (not just the fundamentalists) do not appear to be impressed. Disgusted might be a better word and while we can easily absorb that opprobrium when it comes from Imams in the Middle East it is another question entirely when it is happening within Western Europe.
Cooking up Iran as an example of how this confrontation with Islamic fundmentalism will go is all very well – I too have been chuckling at the increasingly stupid and desparate ructions of the mullahs as they battle with a large, youthful population that disdains them and their beliefs. However I would also note that we have been waiting for this revolution of Western oriented youth for over a decade – and the Mullahs seem to be as much in control as ever. It would not be the first time that popular revolutions have been destroyed or even strangled at birth by elites who control power. When that is combined with the larger vision provided by Islam the hold they have over society may be far more deepseated than that provided by Nazism and Communism.
Given the assumptions, examples, and contempt for religion extolled I can only wish left-secularists good luck in those reasoned debates with Muslims. I look forward to a fuller exploration of how well this tenet of charity has been implemented in Islamic societies (assuming one can exclude the effect of oil wealth where it occurs), not to mention whether it will be given lower priority than other tenets in supporting your vision of a welfare state.
My hope (belief, faith) is that reforming forces will arise from within Islam itself. In Iran I look not just to the post-Islamic youth but to those mullahs who have long argued that direct involvement with the state leads to a corrupted religion – something that Sistani in Iraq seems very aware of as well despite the aspect of Shia he has in common with the Iranian mullahs. In Europe I look to people such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali to lead the fight for internal reform.
My twin fears are that we have seen precious little of this in the last thousand years and worse, that the faint glimmerings we see now do not appear to be being assisted by the very people – Western progressives – who normally demand such reforms and supposedly promote mocking bad religious or cultural practices as a way of confronting them. Ayaan is now under 24/7 guard, but aside from that here are some examples of how she is not being helped by post-modern, multicutural leftists:
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Vote:“They say that in calling for European governments to protect Muslim women from Muslim men, she and her admirers recycle the same Orientalist tropes that the West has used since colonial times as an excuse to control and subjugate Muslims. “White men saving black women from black men
February 1st, 2006 at 11:40 am
tmh, I think you make some good points in your second to last paragraph. There has been an intellectual disjunction on the Left that has seen support for multiculturalism give way to minimising tyhe threat of fundemnatlism from one religion- Islam (and over-emphising it from anotehr – Christianity).
But there has been a shift away from that. I think you also inderestimate the differences within the Muslim world. I’m still firmly of the opinion that Western consummer society with its bikinis, drugs and clubs will win out over medieval beliefs. It happned before.
Vote:February 1st, 2006 at 4:56 pm
tmh, your suggestion that I’m simply dismissive of the horrors of the aging baby boomers is incorrect, as is your assertion that the overwhelming evidence says we will not be able to pay for them. That is merely one side of an argument to which I presented the other side – we will be able to pay for them, indeed they will pay for themselves. The Cullen fund is a good idea, one of many that will help us continue our level of care for the elderly that vastly outstrips that of any booming population centre.
You further say you’re not convinced reason and resistance will not work with Islam the way it does with Christians, and that there are ‘many reasons for this’. But you only give one, that the christian west is already somewhat secularized and that Muslims don’t like what they see.
I disagree with that. I think many Muslims do like what they see, which is why the west is the most popular destination for immigration for followers of that religion. Sure there are plenty that don’t and they tend to stay home. If they come to the west with their families and then try to act as if they were still at home, very quickly their children rebel against some aspects. This is an ongoing process.
Then you say, as if the point were settled:
“Given the assumptions, examples, and contempt for religion extolled I can only wish left-secularists good luck in those reasoned debates with Muslims.”
I have had many debates like this. One of my closest colleagues in years gone by was an Iranian muslim. He was pigheaded and stubborn in his arguments, but ultimately a rational man, and some good came of the debates, I think. For me particularly, since I found many of my views weren’t the no-brainers I thought they were. I was particularly interested to hear that back in Iran they regularly had televised debates between clerics and atheists. Typically the clerics won, but that does undermine the idea that there was no tolerance of debate against the faith. I have had plenty of debates with muslims over the years and have found them no less amenable to reason, although coming from a different perspective.
Here’s my challenge to you: Good luck trying to beat secularism into Muslims. It will hurt you, it will hurt them, and they will rebel against it. That is the source of most of the West’s difficulties with Islam – we can’t resist using a cudgel when we should use words.
Vote:February 1st, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Tmh: “Psycho said that “The more children the Moslem population of Europe has, the more they’re weakening their own culture, not the Europeans’. Fine theory that makes sense to me – but in practice it does not appear to be working out that way.”
It doesn’t? I don’t have the data to say. But I do think Europeans won’t just sit there and watch Steyn’s predictions of their doom come to pass. The loonier Moslems of Holland are driving Dutch voters rightwards, and Moslem immigrants will suffer for it. It’s pretty much inevitable, also inevitable that the Moslem immigrants will blame the Dutch, or liberal Moslems, not their own loony element, for the outcome. Have a look at your own post again – who are the Moslems mad at? Hirsi Ali, not the twat who killed Theo van Gogh. As long as there’s that cultural chasm between them, there is no place for Moslem immigrants in Holland – and eventually a govt will be elected on that basis. You might consider it “the heirs of Mussolini” (and the Germans I was talking about grew up in the DDR, not the West), I consider it protecting liberalism.
That’s not exactly a “leftist” position, but I’m influenced by the fact that I’m living in an Arab country where I’m not allowed to immigrate, own property, or own/start a business. I can be kicked out of the country whenever my local sponsor feels no further need of my services. The locals would kill me rather than endure me sleeping with one of “their” women. If any Moslem immigrant in Europe wants to complain about not getting any respect, I can only laugh in their faces.
Vote:February 1st, 2006 at 10:36 pm
You know, Psycho, I think you are right and the Europeans will not go quietly … it’s just a matter of when the tipping point comes to pass. I think with the cartoon rage and what’s happening in Holland and New Years Eve riots in France, that that tipping point has just past.
Vote:February 1st, 2006 at 11:01 pm
“The locals would kill me rather than endure me sleeping with one of “their” women.”
But jump on a plane and a couple of hours later you can have your choice of 2million european prostitutes and 250,000 Australian backpackers. Aint liberal democracy grand?
Vote:February 1st, 2006 at 11:25 pm
It is so tempting to reduce this whole thing to simplistic caricatures isn’t it?
The West: Liberal, enlightened democracies promulgating the rights of the individual and secular tolerance, or a corrupt materialistic cess-pit of effete bloated wimps ripe for the plucking?
The East: Evil fundamentalist bomb toting terrorists, breeding like macho brown rabbits, eager to impose oppressive medieval superstitions as law, or as the inheritors of the youngest religious tradition, still possesed of both piety and moral discipline?
We all KNOW that these two systems are in fundamental and inevitable conflict with each other, and with Israel as the perpetual irritant, ignoring each other is not an option. I truly wonder quite what the outcome will be:
1. A nuclear Armageddon in the East?
2. The Dissapative Death of the West?
As we sway between atomic or spiritual disintegration, are we hoping that our “drugs, bikini’s and clubs” will corrode the Muslim world faster than it will us? And Ben is right, fearing that the “backward Arab” isn’t listening to our blandishments, we have resorted to sticks and stones, when words may have sufficed as a safer path.
But now? I wonder if we simply have not reached this clarity of understanding about the situation we are in…just a little too late for safety?
Vote:February 2nd, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Logix, there’s a 3…
3. Gradual global integration and organisation encompassing all viewpoints
I think that one is actually the most likely, how ever much the current US government may favour a more apocalyptic approach.
A particularly good read on the subject is Bertrand Russell in the final chapter of ‘Skeptical Essays’, entitled ‘Some prospects: Cheerful and Otherwise’. He seems to think the world will be militarily dominated by one power eventually, but that democracy and socialism are likely to increase thereafter. His remarks are interestingly prophetic, given that he wrote it in 1935.
Particularly sad is the observation:
“A study of history reveals a somewhat humiliating fact about organisation. Whenever an increase in the size of organisations has been desirable in the interests of those concerned, it has had to be brought about (with negligible exceptions) by means of force on the part of the stronger. Where voluntary federation was the only available method no unity has been acheived. It was so with Ancient Greece in the face of Macedonia, with sixteenth century Italy in the face of France and Spain, with present day Europe in the face of America and Asia. I assume, therefore, that the central authority will be brought into being by force, or the threat of force, not by a voluntary organisation such as the League of Nations, which will never be strong enough to coerce recalcitrant Great Powers.”
This kind of thinking may be of great inspiration to US policy planners.
Germaine to the current thread is this speculation:
“The white race may thus gradually become a numerically small aristocracy, and be finally exterminated by a negro insurrection.”
And humorously:
“The daily Press, presumably, will be killed by broadcasting. A certain number of weeklies may survive for the expression of minority opinions. But reading may come to be a rare practice, its place being taken by listening to the gramophone, or to whatever better invention takes its place. Similarly, writing will be replaced, in ordinary life, by the dictaphone.”
which shows the difficulties of prediction, particularly with respect to the unknown technology of the future.
I found it interesting, but I don’t accept all of old Bertie’s points. Particularly I think it is extremely difficult to predict the future since it is very much driven by technology, and future technology is extremely unpredictable. It is common in history to talk of the inevitability of certain changes, but I think this ignores how impossible it would have been at the time to see them coming. Russell did not forsee the contraceptive pill, or nuclear weaponry, or personal computers, the internet, and open source projects. How could he? But these things have altered our world quite drastically. He could hardly have forseen that I would carry both the Bible and the Koran, and half of his own works around in my pocket PDA (and hundreds of other books), to be read at any time, when he makes his dictaphone comment.
But the organisational observations are still poignant.
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