I'll give you something to worry about

Mark Steyn:

What's worrying is that we spend so much time worrying about things that aren't worth worrying about that we don't worry about the things we should be worrying about. For 30 years, we've had endless wake-up calls for things that aren't worth waking up for. But for the very real, remorseless shifts in our society--the ones truly jeopardizing our future--we're sound asleep.

So Steyn does his best to wake us up. Looking for a really depressing way to start the new year? Need something to worry about? Try reading this: Mark Steyn on Cultural Death by Demographics. If you can slog your way through to the end of that one, tackle this as well: James Lileks on Mark Steyn on Cultural Death by Demographics. Here's the short version, excerpted from Steyn's article:

When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is.

What will London--or Paris, or Amsterdam--be like in the mid-'30s? If European politicians make no serious attempt this decade to wean the populace off their unsustainable 35-hour weeks, retirement at 60, etc., then to keep the present level of pensions and health benefits the EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035. As things stand, Muslims are already the primary source of population growth in English cities. Can a society become increasingly Islamic in its demographic character without becoming increasingly Islamic in its political character?

This ought to be the left's issue. I'm a conservative--I'm not entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses like a slut: I'm with Mullah Omar on that one. Why then, if your big thing is feminism or abortion or gay marriage, are you so certain that the cult of tolerance will prevail once the biggest demographic in your society is cheerfully intolerant?

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%.

Since the president unveiled the so-called Bush Doctrine--the plan to promote liberty throughout the Arab world--innumerable "progressives" have routinely asserted that there's no evidence Muslims want liberty and, indeed, that Islam is incompatible with democracy. If that's true, it's a problem not for the Middle East today but for Europe the day after tomorrow. According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Shariah--in the United Kingdom. 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.

I'm not joking--that truly was the short version. I would elaborate on Steyn's view of the problem, but there's not much left to say.

On the other hand, there's plenty to say about how best to solve the problem. I'm in the middle of reading Thomas Barnett's The Pentagon's New Map. Barnett isn't writing about the demographic issues that Steyn identifies, but I think his analysis of America's current foreign policy challenges may be useful in understanding how to defuse Steyn's demographic time-bomb. As the Amazon.com review states, "Barnett calls globalization 'this country’s gift to history' and explains why its wide dissemination is critical to the security of not only America but the entire world." If we can't out-breed the enemies of our culture, our only hope is to export our culture faster than they can export their excess populations. Globalization is our Trojan horse. Or possibly it's our Trojan rabbit. I suppose we'll know if it was a horse or a rabbit in half a century or so...