Mark Steyn: The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization

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“Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.”

-- Mark Steyn, "It's the Demography, Stupid" for The Wall Street Journal

Thus begins a long but most read-worthy doomsday piece. You know how Monk has a thing for apocalyptic tales - why die alone, right? Mr. Steyn sees Western civilization dying before the relentless forces of "primal Islam":

'Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose--as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.

'That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb.'

I'll quote his longer rant on multiculturalism at the end, which has Canada at the center of his wry and withering analysis and wit, as Steyn is a Canadian himself.

The meat of Steyn's argument is the demographic one about the vanishing birth rates of advanced Western nations as compared with the growing Muslim population, and how the former has meant the acceptance of mass immigration of Muslims into the West. Given current circumstances, it's not difficult to see the dire implications that Steyn draws regarding the prospects for Western civilization, with the recent French riots being a leading indicator of the growing crisis. He is sensitive to the racial cast of his argument, and he explicitly makes a broader point:

'The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%.'

Personally, when I have thought about the large immigration of non-Europeans into the West, I fancied a happy outcome in the end, thinking that this may be how more peoples and such regions as the Muslim Middle East may assimilate and finally become more liberal and secular, even as recent events mean that a lot of growing pains may have to be overcome at first, so that in the end Western civilization and Western countries would not have to be such a white thing anymore while remaining free and liberal as well as prosperous. I am an optimist that way, contrary to the Hobbesian pessimism that generally marks my perspective. Even if the odds are against it, I still hope for a happy ending.

( Steyn excerpt )

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Mark Steyn: The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization

♠
“Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.”

-- Mark Steyn, "It's the Demography, Stupid" for The Wall Street Journal

Thus begins a long but most read-worthy doomsday piece. You know how Monk has a thing for apocalyptic tales - why die alone, right? Mr. Steyn sees Western civilization dying before the relentless forces of "primal Islam":

'Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose--as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.

'That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb.'

I'll quote his longer rant on multiculturalism at the end, which has Canada at the center of his wry and withering analysis and wit, as Steyn is a Canadian himself.

The meat of Steyn's argument is the demographic one about the vanishing birth rates of advanced Western nations as compared with the growing Muslim population, and how the former has meant the acceptance of mass immigration of Muslims into the West. Given current circumstances, it's not difficult to see the dire implications that Steyn draws regarding the prospects for Western civilization, with the recent French riots being a leading indicator of the growing crisis. He is sensitive to the racial cast of his argument, and he explicitly makes a broader point:

'The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%.'

Personally, when I have thought about the large immigration of non-Europeans into the West, I fancied a happy outcome in the end, thinking that this may be how more peoples and such regions as the Muslim Middle East may assimilate and finally become more liberal and secular, even as recent events mean that a lot of growing pains may have to be overcome at first, so that in the end Western civilization and Western countries would not have to be such a white thing anymore while remaining free and liberal as well as prosperous. I am an optimist that way, contrary to the Hobbesian pessimism that generally marks my perspective. Even if the odds are against it, I still hope for a happy ending.

( Steyn excerpt )

xXx