Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Mark Steyn on Europe's Future

Mark Steyn's Saturday column in the Jerusalem Post is titled, "A continent hurtling toward the abyss." And he makes the case uncomfortably well.

He starts the column by describing the way he has been surprised to find himself quoted by other writers as an example of American anti-Europeanism.

If the best evidence of the pandemic of anti-Europeanism in the United States is a Canadian columnist writing for a Canadian newspaper (Jewish World Review is a plucky New York Web site that happened to reprint a piece of mine from Toronto's National Post) that would seem to be self-refuting. Until now.

Two books have just hit the shelves - While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within by Bruce Bawer, and Menace In Europe: Why The Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too by Claire Berlinski. In media-speak, two of anything makes a trend[.]

The difference between "anti-Americanism" and "anti-Europeanism" is obvious. In, say, 2025, America will be much as it is today - big, powerful, albeit (to sophisticated Continentals) absurdly vulgar and provincial. But in 20 years' time Europe will be an economically moribund demographic basket case: Seventeen Continental nations have what's known as "lowest-low" fertility - below 1.3 live births per woman - from which no population has ever recovered (emphasis added).

The only question about Europe is whether it's going to be (a) catastrophically bad or (b) apocalyptically bad, as in head for the hills, here come the Four Horsemen: Death (the self-extinction of European races too self-absorbed to breed), Famine (the withering of unaffordable social programs), War (civil strife as the disaffected decide to move beyond mere Citroen-torching) and Conquest (the inevitable victory of the Muslim successor population already in place).

I'd say Option (b) looks the better bet, for a few if not all Continental nations: United they'll fall, but divided a handful might stand a chance.

He talks about the fall and spring "youth" riots in France and the change in the once-freewheeling culture of Amsterdam. And he hints at this being America's future, only farther down the road. Read it all.

If Bawer's book is a wake-up call, [Charles] Murray reminds us [in his new book, In Our Hands]that western Europe long ago threw away the alarm clock and decided to sleep in.

1 comment:

SkyePuppy said...

Charlie,

Have you heard of or seen any signs of a Christian revival in Europe?

Quite a few years ago, our church had a visit from some American missionaries to Ireland. They said the group they were with (can't remember which one) considered a country to be a mission field when less than 5% of the population was believing Christian. That would be most of Europe.

God help us all (literally).