Demographic Hysteria

People who didn't get my reference the other day to a "wave of pretty odd demographic hysteria" sweeping the country should definitely check out Johann Hari's review of Mark Steyn's America Alone. Alternative, you could read Steyn's book and experience the hysteria first hand. For a much less hysterical (and less racialist) take that still sees falling birthrates as a huge problem, pick up Philip Longman's The Empty Cradle.

It seems to me that the Longman version of the thesis, where population decline creates serious economic problems, at least could be true. To be convinced, though, I'd want to see more in the way of models that explicate the argument. Also relevant in this regard is Megan McArdle's non-alarmist take on the aging of the baby boom generation. In the greater scheme of things, replacing "maybe a proxy war will spin out of control and Soviet ICBMs will destroy major American cities" with "maybe a rising dependency ratio will lead to flat GDP per capita" as a problem scenario seems like a change for the better.

Comments

All I know is that as I look around me in South Florida, I do not think to myself "You know, the problem with this place is that there's just not enough people around here."

Posted by Brautigan | February 29, 2008 12:59 PM

These arguments are merely disguised nativism. There's no birthrate problem when millions of people are hoping to come here to work. It's only a problem if you think being truly American requires you to be a purebred anglo-saxon.

Posted by Helter | February 29, 2008 1:12 PM

Wouldn't the immigration 'problem' become the solution?

Posted by judson | February 29, 2008 1:12 PM

That, Judson, is precisely what they are panicking about!
.

Posted by sunsin | February 29, 2008 1:17 PM

Thanks for filling me in. The Steyn book sounds fairly poisonous; Longman's anxiety is merely disproportionate.

As problems go, I think rising dependency ratios are also vastly preferable to a world with shrinking ice caps, rising sea levels, vanishing species, and food full of mercury. We're probably going to get the latter scenario, unfortunately, before we get the former one.

Posted by Ted | February 29, 2008 1:25 PM

A few more of the many masses of potential immigrants wanting to enter our country, from all over the world, if they're anything like every other group of immigrants who've ever come to this country, will add even more economic prosperity through their hard work. Obviously that's exactly what Steyn's concerned about, but more immigration leading to a minority-majority America sometime midcentury.

Posted by jkd | February 29, 2008 1:37 PM

The real fit subject here should be Russia. Our demographics are just fine thanks to immigration. The crashing population in the other ex-superpower is a scary and getting worse situation with big international ramifications.

Posted by Bob Powell | February 29, 2008 1:41 PM

Where is Steve Sailer with his usual (cough) insightful comment?

All kidding aside, the issues do tend to be different in Europe and in the United States. Given our history and national makeup, nativists in the United States are reduced to one of two positions: (1) explicit racism, or (2) repudiation of 230 years of U.S. history. But the dynamic is a little different in Europe, where massive immigration is something relatively new, and arguably culturally more problematic. That could (and probably should) change, but advocating massive immigration in Europe as a solution to demographic decline can be opposed with non-racist arguments (though as we can see from Mr. Steyn and company, a generous dollop of racism, not to mention mendacious carelessness with regard to the facts, is usually a part of the mix).

Posted by LarryM | February 29, 2008 1:41 PM

"a generous dollop of racism, not to mention mendacious carelesness with regard to the facts...."

Perfect description of Steyn, LarryM.

Posted by Ben Cronin | February 29, 2008 2:04 PM

One thing we really need to work on is distinguishing quality of life from economic growth. An economy can continue growing, and incomes can even be increasing, while the mean quality of life is getting worse -- because rising population produces resource scarcity and pollution overall, as well as more immediately perceptible kinds of scarcity at a local level (e.g., magnifying the scarcity of real estate in desirable locations).

A good deal of opposition to immigration is based on nativism, which I'll happily denounce and reject. But I agree with LarryM: you could make a good argument for limiting immigration on quality-of-life grounds, even if doing so reduced aggregate economic growth.

Posted by Ted | February 29, 2008 2:15 PM

Megan's theory has a hole in it. She says we can ignore the shortening ratio of workers to retirees because workers are having fewer children, so the overall ratio of workers to "dependents" will remain fairly stable. However, she neglects to explain why workers will agree to pay more and more to aging people who are not their relatives.

There's a big psychological difference between sacrificing for your close kin (especially children) and relative strangers. For many decades the Social Security system has been (falsely) advertised as a forced-savings scheme. Most workers vaguely thought they were financing their own (or their family's) benefits. When you try to put FICA taxes up from 7.5% (15% really, counting the employer's match) to 20% (40% really) to finance the declining years of childless boomers, many workers are going to resist.

Posted by Veracitor | February 29, 2008 2:23 PM

When you try to put FICA taxes up from 7.5% (15% really, counting the employer's match) to 20% (40% really) to finance the declining years of childless boomers, many workers are going to resist.

Good thing we won't have to raise FICA, then.

Posted by BrianA | February 29, 2008 2:35 PM

"There's a big psychological difference between sacrificing for your close kin (especially children) and relative strangers."

Same issue with public education. Property taxes fund public schools in many states. Whether you have children in the in public school system or not, many households end up paying years of property tax for a service they don't use.
However, most Americans believe that an educated populace is crucial and is then a cost the public shares (whether they directly benefit or not). Wouldn't basic, subsistence care for the elderly be the same?

Posted by CParis | February 29, 2008 2:38 PM

Megan McArdle's written article was actually quite solid and sane and free of the kind of wild speculation and egregious lapses of logic that mar her blog. Apparently there was some kind of quality control in place (external or internal) when she was appearing in the print magazine.

Posted by mq | February 29, 2008 3:10 PM

And the Hari piece is great.

The fact that someone like Mark Steyn is treated seriously on the right is a symptom of an extremely dangerous situation.

Posted by mq | February 29, 2008 3:16 PM

No worries. We will soon have Robot slaves to toil day and night for us. And Robots need no stinkin social security or medicare.

Posted by Tootat | February 29, 2008 3:34 PM

Re: However, she neglects to explain why workers will agree to pay more and more to aging people who are not their relatives.

That's incorrect: except for a few younger people whose parents and grandparents died young, they will be (and are) supporting their relatives. That's why Social Security remains popular with young and middle age people today. For most people it's far cheaper and easier to pay FICA taxes than it would be if they had to provide for their elderly relatives directly. An older person's medical bills would easily wipe out an entire extended family financially.
Oh, and if you want birthrates to really crater, get rid of Social Security so that everyone is forced to care for their parenst and grandparents and no one except the rich can afford children.

Posted by JonF | February 29, 2008 6:59 PM

Tootat: "We will soon have Robot slaves to toil day and night for us. And Robots need no stinkin social security or medicare."

Well, in fifty years or so, you'll have Transhumans who aren't going to work for you at all.

And they don't need no stinkin chimpanzees trying to make them.

Actually James Albus made the argument for turning society's production over to robots back in 1976 in "Peoples' Capitalism: The Economics of the Robot Revolution". He argued that if the country developed robotics to the point where most production could be turned over to them, the cost savings would permit everyone to have a sufficient stipend that no one would have to work at what we currently refer to as a "job" unless they wanted to.

Check him out here:
http://www.james-albus.org/vision.htm

And here:
http://www.peoplescapitalism.org/

I personally haven't studied this in any detail, so I have no position on it.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 29, 2008 11:36 PM

You guys really miss the point. Mark Steyn is pointing out factual events and trends that are happening right now, confirmed by independent sources. As he says many time - people may or may not be unhappy with the results of these facts and trends, but facts they are. You are angry with the facts and so you call Steyn a bigot.

Posted by GuyInCT | February 29, 2008 11:47 PM

Re: Mark Steyn is pointing out factual events and trends that are happening right now, confirmed by independent sources.

Today's facts are tomorrow's history. As for trends, is there any reason to think that they are permanant? A generation ago the trend was the Population Bomb. Now it's the Population Bust. what next? Maybe he steady state future?

Posted by Jonf | March 1, 2008 12:40 AM

Many of your readers who are commenting, Matthew, obviously do not understand that Steyn’s book, America Alone, is about European demographics, not American! And, no, the book has absolutely nothing to do with immigration to the U.S. As the book points out, U.S. demographics are healthy. What the book factually states is that our traditional allies are in a demographic death spiral (many are now below the replacement level that any country has ever recovered from), which will literally leave the U.S. alone as one of the few survivors of “western civilization”. The book is far from being hysterical and, as is usual with Steyn, is actually quite amusing.

Posted by John Adams | March 1, 2008 2:15 AM

“Europe is a dying continent. I say this not as a criticism, but rather as a statement of fact. In Europe, an acute failure to produce the next generation has created a looming demographic crisis.”

“According to research by both the CIA and the U.N., every single member of the European Union has a birthrate significantly below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. In the CIA World Factbook, Germany had a birthrate of 1.36 children per woman in 2007, and Spain and Italy had birthrates of 1.29. At such low levels of fertility, within 100 years, those three nations would have populations 80 percent lower than they are today. And Germany, Italy and Spain are far from alone……………”

Trevor Wagerner, Yale Daily News, Feb. 27, 2008

Please tell us more about the “hysteria”. Mattheu.

Posted by Pat West | March 1, 2008 3:20 AM

Well, I'll be. I didn't realize Steyn's vision of the future was based on observable facts! In that case, I guess it can't be exaggerating the cultural consequences of population decline in order to play on racist fear. Facts are facts, after all. You just can't bend 'em!

Moreover, it sounds like Steyn's thesis has been independently confirmed by one of the nation's leading college newspapers! Since I'm married to a former editor of the Yale Daily News, I can hardly doubt anything printed in that estimable publication. I've never known a Yale undergraduate to exaggerate.

Posted by Ted | March 1, 2008 7:54 AM

Feel free to judge Steyn's book without reading it. The kind of knee-jerk accusations I've seen posted here can only come from ignorance. There's not a drop of racism in his book, just the facts, ma'am. If you are afraid of the facts, don't read it. America Alone has yet to have any kind of valid intellectual skewering that most of you are hoping for-- the Hari piece being a perfect example--simply because you can't argue with the facts ("tomorrow's history"). All you have is that last resort of the ignoramus, name calling and accusations of 'racism'. Way to go, guys.

Posted by Victor Daveikis | March 1, 2008 7:56 AM

In the long term, low to negative population growth would seem to be desirable or even necessary from an ecological perspective. Whether it's overfishing or peak oil, we're putting a lot of stress on the planet and it's only going to get worse as the developing world lifts itself out of poverty.

While we're discussing this, let's not forget Asia. Japan and South Korea (1.08) both have issues with an aging populace. China clamped down as hard as it could to get it down, but is now at 1.7.

Posted by Anthony Damiani | March 1, 2008 9:37 AM

re: many are now below the replacement level that any country has ever recovered from

Nonsense. In the 14th century Europe lost 1/3 of its population. A century later (with birth rates stil quite low) it began to its rise to worldwide dominance.
Or if you'd like a collapse of Biblical proportions, in the 6th century 100 million plus people died worldwide from multiple calamities produced by a "volanic winter" that disrupted climate and created famines and pandemics across the whole planet. The population of Constantinople at the end of the century was barely 1/10 what it had been at the beginning. Many of the great cities of antiquity turned into ghost town ruins. Yet Byzantium had its renaissance in the 8th and 9th centuries, and China recovered even faster, enjoying a new golden age under the Tang dynasty a century or so later.

Re: China clamped down as hard as it could to get it down, but is now at 1.7.

Yes indeed. But no one writes a book claiming that China, or even Japan, are dying cultures.

Posted by JonF | March 1, 2008 10:07 AM

JonF, did 14-century Europe lose 1/3 of its population because of low birth rates? Your examples of the 100 million deaths and of Constantinople are certainly irrelevant.

Oh, and don't forget that only the poor can afford to have children. As soon as nations became more wealthy--as in Asia--they can no longer afford them.

Posted by JonV | March 1, 2008 11:12 AM

JonF, I'm sorry. Your examples of the 100 million deaths are not irrelevant. They show that a civilization can rebound if it has a high birth rate.

Posted by JonV | March 1, 2008 11:24 AM

What Steyn's book factually states is that our traditional allies are in a demographic death spiral. (Many have a birth rate below the replacement rate, and no country has ever recovered from such a situation.)

Posted by JonV | March 1, 2008 11:28 AM

Yes, it is pretty odd and racist of whites not to want to die out and be replaced.

Posted by Glaivester | March 1, 2008 1:08 PM

What Steyn's book factually states is that our traditional allies are in a demographic death spiral.

Yesterday, I withdrew $60 from my bank account. If these trends continue, I will be broke!

Posted by Tyro | March 1, 2008 1:28 PM

Yes indeed. But no one writes a book claiming that China, or even Japan, are dying cultures.

There is a book actually that talks about the serious problems with Chinese and Japanese birthrates, and raises the alarm that both countries need to stabilize their birthrates.

What's that book's name again? Oh yeah, "America Alone" by Mark Steyn.

Posted by FACLC | March 1, 2008 3:12 PM

Re: JonF, did 14-century Europe lose 1/3 of its population because of low birth rates? Your examples of the 100 million deaths and of Constantinople are certainly irrelevant.

I fail to see the irrelevancy. You are claiming some dreadful apocalypse because of a mild (potential) population decline in Europe. I have pointed out two eras of massive population decline that certainly screwed at lot of things up for a couple of generations, but which were followed by renaissances and golden ages. And while we don't have exact statistics from either era, there's good evidence that both eras also saw a drop in birth rates due to cultural pessimism and a feeling that the end of the world was nigh. Monasticism absorbed a lot of people in the early Middle Ages and while some of them may have cheated on their vows, many did not. And it is estimated that in 15th century Britain a quarter of the adult population was unwed and childless.

Re: Oh, and don't forget that only the poor can afford to have children. As soon as nations became more wealthy--as in Asia--they can no longer afford them.

Sounds like a paradox, but it isn't. The poor have children simply to have them. In times past children meant workers whose income could help contribute to the family (and nowadays children for the poor may mean a welfare entitlement). Plus about half those children died so you needed six kids to ensure that two or three made it to adulthood. Wealthier people don't just want children, they also want to provide those children with the social capital (education etc.) needed to pass on their upper (or upper middle) class status. So they have fewer of them and lavish resources on the one or two that they do have (with childhood mortality no longer being such a fear among the wealthy nations these days). And in the long run that strategy may be the better one. You're far better off having a doctor or a Wall Street banker in the family than having five shiftless kids who can't find decent jobs and are constantly coming to you for financial help. In the long run too the whole society is better off with a smaller but better educated and more productive population than with a glut of surplus mouths to feed stuck on the dole. And there's a long record of small but highly competent (and usually freer) nations outcompeting or defeating populous empires of illiterate serfs and slaves.

Re: They show that a civilization can rebound if it has a high birth rate.

See above. There is no evidence that either mass mortality was followed by a birth rate rebound. Quite the contrary actually.

Re: Many have a birth rate below the replacement rate, and no country has ever recovered from such a situation.)

Bullshit. I have given examples of cultures recovering from instances where their death rates exceeded their birth rates (which is what "replacement rate" really means; replacement being the point where births=deaths).
And while we're at it, there's no reason to believe that Europe's (non-immigrant) population in 100 years will be less than Europe's population 100 years ago. If the European population of 1900 was not a demographic disaster why should those numbers be ruinous in 2100 when (presumably) even more functions will be automated and the need for human workers be correspondinly less?

Re: What's that book's name again? Oh yeah, "America Alone" by Mark Steyn.

And what does the Great Scaremonger of the Right predict for China and Japan? Taken over by Thais and Papuans?

Posted by JonF | March 1, 2008 5:21 PM

What many here don’t appreciate is the difference between prediction and projection. For example it is a projection that on current birth rates, Yemen will by 2050 have a bigger population than Russia. However, because demographic trends rarely run in a linear fashion, it is not a serious prediction.
Many of Steyn’s projections will probably not come to pass, but this does not mean that there is no problem at all. Just because the worst case scenario might not happen, we would still be wise to worry about the middling case ones.
Many amazing claims are made about the other issue confronting us, climate change. Our “Australian of the Year”, one Tim Flannery, says that sea levels could rise 80 meters this century. Clearly a farcical suggestion. However, it does not invalidate the whole idea of global warming.
The fact that European Muslims are breeding at a much faster rate (in UK, Pakistanis have 4.9 children per couple, while Anglos have 1.7), and more importantly that each generation is more fundamentalist than the last, may not worry most contributors to this page. It should do.

Posted by Sholto Douglas | March 1, 2008 6:23 PM

Re: The fact that European Muslims are breeding at a much faster rate (in UK, Pakistanis have 4.9 children per couple, while Anglos have 1.7), and more importantly that each generation is more fundamentalist than the last,

Given that thereh ave only been two (or at most three) generations of Muslims in Britain, in any significant numbers, claims about "each generation being more fundamentalist than the last" are suspect because there is too little data to substantiate them.

Posted by JonF | March 1, 2008 7:19 PM

Wonder how many kids Yglesias or Hari have?

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

Posted by Dave | March 1, 2008 8:19 PM

JonF, although Muslim migration to UK is ongoing, it started in the early sixties. So we are up to four generations in some cases. Enough time for secularisation to kick in, one would think.
Check the figures. The most radical group are the 17-24 year olds. The least radical are the 50+, probably because they knew the reality of life in a theocracy.
Sure, it may go out of fashion. However to confidently assert that it will, and to label as racist anyone who expresses concerns about it, reminds me of MAD magazine’s take on Kipling – “If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs, maybe you don’t appreciate the seriousness of the situation”.
I guess I must be a racist.

Posted by Sholto Douglas | March 1, 2008 8:36 PM

“Given that there have only been two (or at most three) generations of Muslims in Britain, in any significant numbers, claims about "each generation being more fundamentalist than the last" are suspect because there is too little data to substantiate them.”

Well, golly gee, I guess I simply don’t recall all of the bombings of London and elsewhere by the first and second generations. Yes, memory loss is sitting in and I will soon be a goner!

Will there always be an England? Well, geographically on a map, but without any Englishmen!

Posted by John Adams | March 1, 2008 9:13 PM

Here's a article to further elicidate the subject:
http://tinyurl.com/2a7ue8

Posted by psyklik | March 1, 2008 9:59 PM

Here's a article to further elucidate the subject:
http://tinyurl.com/2a7ue8

Posted by psyklik | March 1, 2008 10:01 PM

Here's a article to further elucidate the subject:
http://tinyurl.com/2a7ue8

Posted by psyklik | March 1, 2008 10:01 PM

Re: Well, golly gee, I guess I simply don’t recall all of the bombings of London and elsewhere by the first and second generations.

You're becoming offensive, and for no better than reason than because people are not agreeing with your propaganda. What did you expect here? This is the "Reality Based Community" not some bastion of wingnuttery where the Gospel According to Steyn is worshipped with chant and incense.
Now back to your statement. You use "generations". Technically two generations qualifies as a plural, but two data points does not make a very complete set. If, after five or six (or better yet, ten plus) generations your statement held up you could claim it as a fact. Right now the jury is very much out and will remain out for an other century at least. Also, I am not sure that "fundamentalist" is the right term. "Criminal" might be a better description of people who commit wanton murders. Finally, why tar a whole generation with the sins of the few? That's a little like blaming all baby boomers for the antics of the Weather Underground and the Black Panethers in the 60s. Or my generation for the atrocity committed by Tim McVeigh.

Re: Will there always be an England? Well, geographically on a map, but without any Englishmen!

I will bet you any amount of money you care to name that in 250 years there will still be plenty of Englishmen.

Re: JonF, although Muslim migration to UK is ongoing, it started in the early sixties.

????
The sixties are 40 years ago. That's maybe two generations, not four, Even Muslims do not reproduce at age 10. Indeed, their culture requires men to have sufficient income and assets to support a family before they wed so their generations tend to be almost as long as ours.

Re: The most radical group are the 17-24 year olds.

LOL. The most "radical" group in any population is that age range! What do you want to bet that by the time those folks are forty-something they will have settled down a great deal, due to the burdens of children, jobs, and the accumulation of experience that sometimes passes for wisdom. Seems to work that way with all other human populations.

Posted by JonF | March 2, 2008 9:42 AM

All well and good, folks, but which of you wants to live under sharia? And when Europe begins imposing bits and pieces of first-millennium Islamic law on its citizens, which of you will say "Oh, guess I was wrong?"

I think Steyn is spot on.

Posted by Henry | March 2, 2008 1:39 PM

Since when has 'racism' included religion? Lat time I checked, race is something you are born as, religion is some dumbass idea you 'believe' in. Try as you may you can't change your race (kudos to Michael Jackson for trying, though), but you can change religion at the drop of a hat. So how is it that criticizing ignorant and arrogant ideas is the same thing as criticizing race?

Posted by Victor Daveikis | March 2, 2008 3:35 PM

Since when has 'racism' included religion? Last time I checked, race is something you are born as, religion is some dumbass idea you 'believe' in. Try as you may you can't change your race (kudos to Michael Jackson for trying, though), but you can change religion at the drop of a hat. So how is it that criticizing ignorant and arrogant ideas is the same thing as criticizing race?

Posted by Victor Daveikis | March 2, 2008 3:36 PM

*Sorry for the double post*

Posted by victor Daveikis | March 2, 2008 6:35 PM

And in the long run that strategy may be the better one. You're far better off having a doctor or a Wall Street banker in the family than having five shiftless kids who can't find decent jobs and are constantly coming to you for financial help.

Unless, of course, the poor guy living down the street has a dozen kids and they are constantly coming to you for financial help (or they vote liberals into office to do it for them).

In the long run too the whole society is better off with a smaller but better educated and more productive population than with a glut of surplus mouths to feed stuck on the dole.

Great. So maybe the rich shouldn't breed too much. But for that to work, we have to stop the poor from breeding too much as well. Perhaps paying them to get sterilized?

Posted by Glaivester | March 2, 2008 9:04 PM

Psyklik asserts that the liberal left is a reality based community. That’s wonderful, Sir, absolutely wonderful! When I make my semi-annual trip to England and France this Spring, I will certainly make a point not to stroll around, of an evening, in any suburbs of Paris, or Newcastle, or Leeds, or Sheffield, or Birmingham, etc. By not doing so, I will live to return to see my relatives in the Fall. But, by all means, Mr. liberal leftist realist, try it yourself, you will not be missed!

Posted by John Adams | March 2, 2008 9:07 PM

Having read Mark Steyn's book and many of his articles, I understand quite well that the problems he foresees involve race only incidentally. What you, Steyn, the Europeans, the Americans, and I have in common are opinions about good politics that, despite our differences, are nevertheless broadly liberal and democratic. Steyn's claim about Europe is that its broadly liberal-democratic peoples are dying out, while the people moving in are broadly theocratic, and too little or not at all reconstructed. In his own way, Mark Steyn is on your side, even though you're not on his. He thinks your friends in Europe are being lost. I think you'll do better for yourselves if you read Steyn's book patiently and sympathetically. We'll still consider you free to disagree with him; we think the imams will extend that sort of courtesy neither to us nor to you.

Posted by Kralizec | March 2, 2008 11:50 PM

America Alone has yet to have any kind of valid intellectual skewering that most of you are hoping for-- the Hari piece being a perfect example--simply because you can't argue with the facts....

So the Hari piece is perfect example of a valid intellectual skewering of the book? I agree.

Posted by fp | March 3, 2008 12:16 AM

Yes, the Muslim youth of Europe are just like those everywhere. Full of exuberance and just typical, not unlike the youthful Jap pilots who took out Pearl Harbor one morning or the youthful Germans who took out part of London. Why the youthful Muslins, themselves, like to take to the skies! And, like the wonderful, youthful Japs and Germans, they too enjoy bombing London and the U.S.

I am certainly delighted to have had the opportunity to read some of the foregoing comments from the always insightful liberal leftists who are part of their highly respected, and always youthful, “reality based community”.

Posted by John Adams | March 3, 2008 11:38 AM

Kralizec for President
John Adams for VP

Posted by Wayne | March 3, 2008 2:07 PM

Of course there will be assimilation in the next 200 years. The great-etc.-granddaughter of my Italian friends will get used to her burqa in no time.

Posted by Jim | March 3, 2008 4:25 PM

Ted seems to be very anxious about environmental damage caused by all the nefarious and greedy activity of those rascally European and American cultures. So much so, it appears, that he apparently believes it better to commit cultural suicide to preserve an ice flow somewhere in the Antarctic.

But for now, let's not get bogged down in such trivialities as ice caps -- particularly as I need to get back outside to once again shovel away another snowfall in this now record-breaking year here in the Northeast. But lest I feel put out by all the snow and bone-chilling unseasonably cold temperature, at least I can take comfort in knowing that it is a shared misery by folks in such traditional winter wonderlands as Baghdad and Beijing.

One quick question Ted: do you really believe the cultures that you presumably would have supplant the dreaded Euro/American models (particularly Muslim cultures) really give a hoot about the environment? By the looks of their wretched parts of the world, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess no.

Oh by the way, would someone point out to Ted and his fellow Mensa Society friends on the left that the energy conserving light bulbs that we will all soon be mandated by his liberal cohorts to use in order to save the planet contain mercury. I'm sure Ted will be pleased to know that we will soon be able to absorb our daily recommended doses of mercury without the need to harm a single tuna. What a comfort.

Posted by Bob | March 3, 2008 5:42 PM

Re: Of course there will be assimilation in the next 200 years. The great-etc.-granddaughter of my Italian friends will get used to her burqa in no time.

A far more likely future will be one in which the Europeans get tired of the lawlessness and demands of the Muslims in their midst and turn on them. America may be called on rescue European Muslims from rabid ethnic cleansers in Paris and Berlin. Don't think it can happen? Then you are amnesiac about history. Europe has a long record of that sort of thing and we shouldn't mistake the current halcyon days as evidence that the civilization which gave us the Holocaust (and many lesser horrors) has forgotten how to do pogroms.

Posted by JonF | March 3, 2008 6:57 PM

Re: Technically two generations qualifies as a plural, but two data points does not make a very complete set. If, after five or six (or better yet, ten plus) generations your statement held up you could claim it as a fact.

Great treatise JonF. Let's wait a mere 100 to 120 years and see how it all pans out.

You may find this a bit disappointing, but the basis of this entire discussion is not an abstract math problem to be plotted out with "data points". Now it's you who is becoming offensive by being so patently condescending.

Re: LOL. The most "radical" group in any population is that age range!

A valid observation, JonF, except most people (in most populations) during their "radical" days (mine being in the early seventies) have a tendency not to blow up innocent men, women, and children. I am again offended, this time by your frightening predilection toward moral equivalancy. The Weathermen, Black Panthers, and Tim McVeigh were aberrations; reviled and marginalized by a society that properly does not -- nor should not -- tolerate radical expression in the barbarically violent forms they used, particularly McVeigh. However, Islam not only tolerates radical violence, it promotes and rewards it (martyrdom and virgins handed out at the end of every successful mission). Please come off your intellectual high horse and stop attempting to present contemporary Western culture as nothing more or nothing less than that of Islamic culture. It's offensive.

Posted by Bob | March 3, 2008 7:58 PM

Re: A valid observation, JonF, except most people (in most populations) during their "radical" days (mine being in the early seventies) have a tendency not to blow up innocent men, women, and children.

Absolutely! But there's always a small fraction of people who do fall off the deep end and become ferociously violent. Example (from my generation): Tim McVeigh. And after all, most Muslims, even most young, play-at-radical, nasty-talking Muslims, do not go around blowing up people either.

Re: I am again offended, this time by your frightening predilection toward moral equivalancy.

Why are you offended if I point to Tim McVeigh or any other American or European blood-stained worker of atrocity as the moral equivalent of any Islamic blood-stained mass murderer? Murder is murder after all. Are the deaths of those children in the OKC Fed building somehow less objectionable because the author of their demise was some nice-looking white boy from Buffalo? Is some half-baked, crackpot plan of starting a race war in the US any more palatable than a half-baked, crackpot plan of starting a religious war in Europe? Good grief, whose moral compass is really askew here?

Re: Please come off your intellectual high horse and stop attempting to present contemporary Western culture as nothing more or nothing less than that of Islamic culture. It's offensive.

Sorry if you're so offended, but what Christianity calls Original Sin is the common property of all humankind. There is no "Kingdom of Saints" in this world. In every land under the sun there lives in at least some hearts a love of ruin and terror and death. We stand under that shadow too, and should never forget it.

Posted by JonF | March 4, 2008 10:06 PM