The End Of The West

Euronymous

Euronymous

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http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007760


There is no "population bomb." There never was. Birthrates are declining all over the world--eventually every couple on the planet may decide to opt for the Western yuppie model of one designer baby at the age of 39. But demographics is a game of last man standing. The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge advantage. Even in 1968 Paul Ehrlich and his ilk should have understood that their so-called population explosion was really a massive population adjustment. Of the increase in global population between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9% of it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26%. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30% of the world's population to just over 20%, the Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%.

Nineteen seventy doesn't seem that long ago. If you're the age many of the chaps running the Western world today are wont to be, your pants are narrower than they were back then and your hair's less groovy, but the landscape of your life--the look of your house, the layout of your car, the shape of your kitchen appliances, the brand names of the stuff in the fridge--isn't significantly different. Aside from the Internet and the cell phone and the CD, everything in your world seems pretty much the same but slightly modified.

And yet the world is utterly altered. Just to recap those bald statistics: In 1970, the developed world had twice as big a share of the global population as the Muslim world: 30% to 15%. By 2000, they were the same: each had about 20%.

And by 2020?

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.
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I think the moral of this piece is "Fuck Islam."
 
Mark Steyn is known to spout bollocks supported by spurious facts. If he wasn't so dangerous he'd be laughable. Unfortunately many who share his views are powerful.

Anyone see part one of Richard Dawkins's The Root Of All Evil last night? Worth catching up on the secod and final part if you didn't. As an aetheist Dawkins managed to make his point about religion by upsetting fundamentalist Muslims in the middle east and fundamentalist Christians in the USA equally. Both as as dangerous as each other.

The new gospel of "A Muslim Europe within ten years" was trotted out by neo-con Christians on there too.
 
I can't see the logical basis for splitting the world into "the developed world" and "the Muslim world", unless you have a personal agenda against "the Muslim world".
 
I started to watch "The Root of all Evil" last night, the basic premise being something I wholeheartedly agree with.

However, Dawkins lets himself down badly by his quite patronising and damning attitude to those who do believe - especially evident when he was observing the rituals at Lourdes. He does himself no credit in my opinion and in fact I became almost embarrassed listening to him and switched over half-way through.

Religion - or zealots who masquerade under this banner - has most certainly caused more death and destruction over the millenia then most natural disasters. Dawkins is absolutely right but what a pity he doesn't come over better.

My alternative viewing was finishing watching the previously recorded "Three Men In A Boat" - hilarious!
 
Does it get a repeat? Would be interested to watch it, although upsetting fundies is surely shooting fish in a barrel.
 
Yes, Gareth, that was part of its rather simplistic problem: you need quiet, rational-seeming, non-rabid types to try to explain why the world needs religions, or beliefs (since not every belief is a 'religion', per se). To the converted atheist, he is only saying what they already believe. To the fence-sitter with half a brain, you'd want to hear from those who have at least that, not no independent thinking processes at all. To the committed fundie, he's the misdirected spawn of Satan destined for hellfire and eternal damnation, which is one of the key points he was making very sensibly: if you live a good life, or what you think is a good life, because you've been terrified into doing so, you're being tyrannized, so what sort of g/God is that?
 
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