Europe's non-European future

Reposted from donaldsensing.com; links were good at time of original

With the demographics of ethnic Europeans apparently at the cusp of an irreversible death spiral because 17 countries of the continent have birth rates of 1.3 or lower, here's a peek inside one of Europe's chief problems by Bruce Bawer, author of the forthcoming book, While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Writing in the Hudson Review last fall after living in Europe for several years, Bawer observed:

Living in Europe, I gradually came to appreciate American virtues I'd always taken for granted, or even disdained - among them a lack of self-seriousness, a grasp of irony and self-deprecating humor, a friendly informality with strangers, an unashamed curiosity, an openness to new experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and speak one's mind and question the accepted way of doing things. (One reason why Europeans view Americans as ignorant is that when we don't know something, we are more likely to admit it freely and ask questions.) While Americans, I saw, cherished liberty, Europeans tended to take it for granted or dismiss it as a naive or cynical, and somehow vaguely embarrassing, American fiction. I found myself toting up words that begin with i: individuality, imagination, initiative, inventiveness, independence of mind. Americans, it seemed to me, were more likely to think for themselves and trust their own judgments, and less easily cowed by authorities or bossed around by “experts”; they believed in their own ability to make things better. No wonder so many smart, ambitious young Europeans look for inspiration to the United States, which has a dynamism their own countries lack, and which communicates the idea that life can be an adventure and that there's important, exciting work to be done. Reagan-style "morning in America" cliches may make some of us wince, but they reflect something genuine and valuable in the American air. Europeans may or may not have more of a sense of history than Americans do (in fact, in a recent study comparing students' historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America has something else that matters - a belief in the future.

Europe is the very front line against Islamism. Whatever one might say about Osama bin Laden, et. al., to say that they lack faith in the future isn't it. They are convinced to the marrow of their bones that Islam is mere years away from dominating not just Europe, but the entire planet. Will Europeans succumb without a fight? Well, their governments probably will, but that the people will is not at all certain. After the brutal, Islamist murder of Theo van Gogh in Holland, some ethnic Dutch torched some mosques, which was decried as a terrible thing at the time. But after Muslims across the world  went on rampage because of the Muhammed  cartoons published in a Danish newspaper, who can say that violence is actually not a valid response to being made angry?

In The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?, Tony Blankley speculates that the coming years in Europe may be bloody as ethnic Europeans (my term, not his) realize that their governments are determined to surrender to the Islamists. The masses, he says, may suddenly decide not to stand for it and the prospect of open battles in the streets of major cities may become reality. Or maybe not, Blankley says, because it's far from certain as well that the masses of Europe have that kind of energy or fight left in them. But even if they do, they will still lose. The death spiral is real, not speculative. Unless the European masses decide to accept 20 years of a dramatically lower economy so that women can leave the work force to have 2-3 babies apiece, Europe, as a European continent, is done for. What do you think the odds of the masses deciding to do that are?

Europe’s non-European future

reposted from Feb 17, 2006, at my previous site (no longer online)

Don't say no one foresaw what was going to happen to Europe once the Middle East figured out that the continent - or at least its political class - was not really interested in remaining European.

With the demographics of ethnic Europeans apparently at the cusp of an irreversible death spiral because 17 countries of the continent have birth rates of 1.3 or lower, here’s a peek inside one of Europe’s chief problems by Bruce Bawer, author of the forthcoming book, While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Writing in the Hudson Review last fall after living in Europe for several years, Bawer observed:

Living in Europe, I gradually came to appreciate American virtues I’d always taken for granted, or even disdained—among them a lack of self-seriousness, a grasp of irony and self-deprecating humor, a friendly informality with strangers, an unashamed curiosity, an openness to new experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and speak one’s mind and question the accepted way of doing things. (One reason why Europeans view Americans as ignorant is that when we don’t know something, we’re more likely to admit it freely and ask questions.) While Americans, I saw, cherished liberty, Europeans tended to take it for granted or dismiss it as a naïve or cynical, and somehow vaguely embarrassing, American fiction. I found myself toting up words that begin with i: individuality, imagination, initiative, inventiveness, independence of mind. Americans, it seemed to me, were more likely to think for themselves and trust their own judgments, and less easily cowed by authorities or bossed around by “experts”; they believed in their own ability to make things better. No wonder so many smart, ambitious young Europeans look for inspiration to the United States, which has a dynamism their own countries lack, and which communicates the idea that life can be an adventure and that there’s important, exciting work to be done. Reagan-style “morning in America” clichés may make some of us wince, but they reflect something genuine and valuable in the American air. Europeans may or may not have more of a “sense of history” than Americans do (in fact, in a recent study comparing students’ historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America has something else that matters—a belief in the future.

 This is the continent that is the very front line against Islamism. Whatever one might say about Osaama bin Laden, et. al., that they lack faith in the future isn’t it. They are convinced to the marrow of their bones that Islam is mere years away from dominating not just Europe, but the entire planet.

Will Europeans succumb without a fight? Well, their governments certainly will, but that the people will is not at all certain. After the brutal, Islamist murder of Theo van Gogh in Holland, some ethnic Dutch torched some mosques, which was decried as a terrible thing at the time but which we realize from the cartoon protests is actually a valid response to being made angry. In The West’s Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?, Tony Blankley speculates that the coming years in Europe may be bloody as ethnic Europeans (my term, not his) realize that their governments are determined to surrender to the Islamists. The masses, he says, may suddenly decide not to stand for it and the prospect of open battles in the streets of major cities may become reality. Or maybe not, Blankley says, because it’s far from certain as well that the masses of Europe have that kind of energy or fight left in them.

But even if they do, they will still lose. The death spiral is real, not speculative. Unless the European masses decide to accept 20 years of a dramatically lower economy so that women can leave the work force to have 2-3 babies apiece, Europe, as a European continent, is done for. What do you think the odds of the masses deciding to do that are?

RealClearReligion - Faith, No Faith, and 2.1 Babies

Demographers have long know that in a modern society, it takes an average birth rate of 2.1 live-born infants per woman to maintain a steady population level. Almost all of Europe, however, has been for many, many years now is a "demographic death spiral" with dramatically falling birth rates.

Not coincidentally, the smaller families have become (and even in many cases, vanished altogether), the lower the ratio of people in Europe who adhere to religion (any religion, but especially, of course, Christianity).

However, the news about falling fertility rates, vis-a-vis religion, is not all bad:

Since the 1980s, fertility rates in several Muslim countries have collapsed at rates even faster than Europe's. The change is most spectacularly marked in Iran, where a typical woman can expect to bear 1.88 children in her lifetime (down from over 6.0 in the mid-1980s). Almost as dramatic are the falls in North African countries such as Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

Coincidentally or not, the wave of social protest that we call the Arab Spring began in Tunisia, where sharply declining fertility illustrated the radical ongoing changes in gender and family structures, and individual expectations. I believe that these changes are the harbingers of a long-term secularization that within a few decades will make countries like Iran as cool to organized faith as Western Europe itself.

Read the whole thing:
RealClearReligion - Faith, No Faith, and 2.1 Babies

However again: As Mark Steyn has pointed out,

... demographics is a game of last man standing. The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge advantage.

Despite their falling birth rates now in Iran and many other other Muslim lands, the rate is till very well above the replacement rate.

"... our best hope is a quiet death ..."

"... in a clean facility where the immigrant workers speak our language."

So bemoans Margret Kopala, writing in The Ottawa Citizen. Canada's birth rate has fallen to 1.5 births per woman. As I've written about before, the West is committing demographic suicide. It takes 2.1 births per woman just to stay level in population. Canada's rate of 1.5 means that it is not far from falling off a demographic cliff. If the rate falls to about 1.3, as it has done in two or three European countries, there is almost no chance that it can recover.

There is no longer a single country in Europe where people are having enough children to replace themselves when they die. Italy recently became the first nation in history where there are more people over the age of 60 than there are under the age of 20. This year [1998 - DS] Germany, Greece and Spain will probably all cross the same eerie divide. [link]

Ms. Kopala also observes,

Greece has 1.3 births per couple -- the "lowest low" from which no society has ever recovered; Russia, where 60 per cent of pregnancies are terminated, has the fastest-growing rate of HIV in the world and, by 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts or uncles. ...

Most European countries compensate for their low birth rate by importing very large numbers of immigrants, particularly from or through Turkey and from northern Africa. This habit produces its own set of problems, especially since most of these immigrants are Muslims and "Old Europe" has never actually desired that they become assimilated into traditional European culture. France especially has had very rough time which I wrote about in some length in Nov. 2004 in part four of "The Forever Jihad" (all parts combined here).

But back to the original topic. In Canada, Kopala says, one couple out of 15 are medically diagnosed as infertile. And women who do bear children are delaying it much longer than before; a mother's average age of of first birth is 29.5 years. But the older women are the less likely they are to conceive and the more likely the pregnancy will miscarry.

Compounding the problem, earlier and increased sexual activity means a greater likelihood for contracting gonorrhea or chlamydia. In women, pelvic inflammatory disease and, in turn, blocked fallopian tubes or ectopic pregnancy may result. In men, sterility is possible. According to healthyontario.

com, rates of STD infection are up 60 per cent since 1997, with girls between the ages of 15 and 19 incurring the highest rates. In 2003, 20,000 new cases of chlamydia were reported in Canada. ...

On this front, Mark Steyn blames the "progressive agenda" -- abortion, gay marriage, endlessly deferred adulthood -- and he's right. He doesn't get into many specifics but they are easily identified. In the U.S., 48.5 million abortions since Roe v. Wade only slightly exceeds the estimated 47 million civilians lost in the Second World War. And, as the University of Calgary's Rainer Knopf predicted, gay marriage means any public distinction between procreative and non-procreative sexuality is now totally abandoned.

On that last point, see my Wall Street Journal op-ed of march 2004, "Save Marriage? It's Too Late" - their title. not mine.

When society decided--and we have decided, this fight is over--that society would no longer decide the legitimacy of sexual relations between particular men and women, weddings became basically symbolic rather than substantive, and have come for most couples the shortcut way to make the legal compact regarding property rights, inheritance and certain other regulatory benefits. But what weddings do not do any longer is give to a man and a woman society's permission to have sex and procreate.

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce without social stigma, and talk in 2004 of "saving marriage" is pretty specious. There's little there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages till death do them part do so in spite of society, not because of it.

That the United States' birth rate is barely under the 2.1 repalcement rate should be of no comfort. The demographic trend has been for decades that American women are having their first children at steadily advancing ages (see "The Vanishing American Family).

"Shrinkwrapped," the nom de blog of a psychoanalyst, writes that the "me" generation (meaning practically anyone born after World War II) exhibits a kind of social narcissism that also helps drive down the birth rate:

People decide not to have children for all sorts of reasons and much of the time their narcissistic pathology doesn't enter into the calculation. However, on the margins, a society that has exalted the individual as its highest value, is a society that will have many individual members who do not know how, or are poorly equipped psychologically, to make the difficult compromises necessary to raise children. In such cases, eschewing children in favor of "self actualization" becomes the choice of enough people that Demographics are effected. When this is combined with a loss of faith in one's society (as seems to be so prevalent in Europe, where nothing but the profane is sacred), a staggering financial burden, and social opprobrium, Demographic decline can border on Demographic suicide.

The procreation of children is the ultimate expression of faith in the future. Yet to come, how religious environmentalism devalues human life and has convinced countless people (most astonishingly, Christians) that human beings are bad for the planet. Some advance reading assignments:

Nature is not your friend

"Environmentalism as Religion," by Michael Crichton

"Children 'bad for planet'"

"Eco-Extremist Wants World Population to Drop below 1 Billion. Sea Shepherd founder says mankind is a 'virus' and we need to 're-wild the planet.' "

Shrinking government is no longer an ideology

It is an absolute matter of survival.

The establishment press, including USA Today and even the Los Angeles Times, are waking up to the fact that America’s unsustainable entitlement programs and bloated public employee pensions put us on the path to the sort of fiscal crisis we see in Europe today. Indeed, we are far closer to Greece’s spending levels than many think, though our demographics are less disastrous.

Beginning now, we must shrink the actual size and expenditures of the federal government. I do not mean the shell game both parties have been playing of equaling "shrinking" with "slowing the rate of growth." I mean shrink in absolute terms. This cannot be done unless we eliminate programs and reduce the number of federal employees.

But fat chance:

See also, "We Are Out of Money," at Reason.com.

American conservatives, particularly the fiscal variety, tend to hold up the European Union as a model of irresponsible, big-spending economic policy. But consider this: According to E.U. rules, member countries cannot maintain budget deficits above 3 percent of gross domestic product; nor can their total debt rise above 60 percent of GDP. As Veronique de Rugy points out in this issue, the U.S. budget deficit in 2009 was three times the E.U.’s limit, and total debt will zoom past the 60 percent threshold sometime this year. Washington makes Paris look frugal.

In March the federal government created the most expensive new entitlement in four decades, even as the bond rating company Moody’s Investors Service warned that debt levels could soon precipitate a downgrade in U.S. Treasury bonds. The main opposition party fought the bill by decrying “cuts” to Medicare, and it has kept itself at arm’s length from one of the few politicians talking seriously about long-term reform.

I still stand on what I wrote back in 2007.

Related:

"The end of entitlements"

"American reliance on government at all-time high."

"California is a greater risk than Greece, warns JP Morgan chief"

"The entitlement mentality knows no boundaries"

"How democracies perish"

"Government's new motto: It's good to be king!

Abortion as surrender

Reposted from donaldsensing.com; links were good at time of original

Mark Steyn continues to explore the near-future implications of Western and non-Western demographics and birth rates. He asks two questions:

Is abortion in society's interest? Can a society become more Muslim in its demographic character without also becoming more Muslim in its political and civil character?

The two questions are directly related.

The reason Europe, Russia and Japan are doomed boils down to a big lack of babies. Abortion isn't solely responsible for that but it's certainly part of the problem. ... Seventeen European nations are now at what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility - 1.3 births per woman, the point at which you're so far down the death spiral you can't pull out.

There are severe implications for the West. Update: Reader Hazen D. emails a good point:

Steyn wants to talk about abortion as a demographic factor but he ignores the demographic elephant in the room, namely contraception. Clearly abortion plays a part in the decline in birthrates but I have to believe that its role is dwarfed by the effect of widespread use of contraceptives. However, due to the popularity of contraceptives, no one wants to raise that issue. However much we like being able to control the timing and number of our children (and I'm in that group too), I can't shed the belief that the Vatican is right on contraceptives as well.

James Taranto at OpinionJournal framed abortion in political-impact terms in his essays about "the Roe effect." And there's no way to argue against Hazen's observation that using contraceptives reduces the absolute number if babies born. Instead of hoping for three kids but settling for five - pretty common two generations ago - parents now plan on two and that's that.