Mark Steyn on the Death of the West

Mark Steyn has an excellent column, originally published in the January issue of The New Criterion, and reprinted in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion page yesterday. This column has been quoted by Hugh Hewitt on his radio show and his blog (where he is soliciting links to other blogs that post on the column). Laura Ingraham didn't have time to quote it, but she's going to try to get Steyn on her show to discuss it. And many others are quoting it.

Steyn's column is entitled, "It's the Demography, Stupid." Basically, Western European countries have a half-life of about fifty years.

And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?

Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America, demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state Americans.

These numbers, and Steyn's reference to "red-state Americans" reminds me of what Rabbi Daniel Lapin discussed back in September. There are two Americas: the Secular, and the Religious. Secular America is losing population, while Religious America is gaining.

Looking at the world demographics, that split carries over. Secular nations are losing population, and religious nations are gaining.

So the world's people are a lot more Islamic than they were back then and a lot less "Western." Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims (officially)--or the equivalents of the populations of four European Union countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and Estonia). Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the West: In the U.K., more Muslims than Christians attend religious services each week.

Can these trends continue for another 30 years without having consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.

Steyn's analysis is depressing because it rings true. We can fight Islamofascism with our military, with homeland security, with individual vigilance. And we must. But in the long run, how will we fight if there is no other nation left to fight with us, or to be fought for? The picture Mark Steyn paints is that of a demographic tsunami in slow motion. You can resist the flood, but eventually it sweeps away most things in its path.

People can build barriers to prevent flooding, but Europe has shown no hint of being willing to withstand the population flood. And although America's people want immigration to be checked and controlled, our leaders--especially in the Senate--don't seem any more serious about it than Europe is. I suppose that's because much of our leadership lives in Secular America.

If a population "at odds with the modern world" is the fastest-breeding group on the planet--if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions--how safe a bet is the survival of the "modern world"?

Not good.