Prepare to Die, Eurabians!

Wake up, Europe! You're on the edge of doom! In a couple of decades, your prancing fairy-men are going to be fighting Islamic insurgencies in burned-out cities and your women will be wearing veils.

Or so says the new book "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" by right-wing polemicist Mark Steyn. Steyn, perhaps best known for his fervent, nay unhinged advocacy of the triumphantly successful invasion of Iraq, has now written a book comparing the United States and Europe. It's been adoringly reviewed by right-wing commentator on Middle Eastern affairs Daniel Pipes, also a big fan of the invasion of Iraq (Pipes on the Iraq war in April 2006: "Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing."). Over to you, Daniel:

[Steyn] begins with the legacy of two totalitarianisms. Traumatized by the electoral appeal of fascism, post-World War II European states were constructed in a top-down manner, "so as to insulate almost entirely the political class from populist pressures." [Err, what is 'almost entirely' supposed to modify there? - ed.] As a result, the establishment has "come to regard the electorate as children." Second, the Soviet menace during the Cold War prompted American leaders, impatient with Europe's (and Canada's) weak responses, effectively to take over their defense. This benign and far-sighted policy led to victory by 1991, but it also had the unintended and less salutary side effect of freeing up Europe's funds to build a welfare state. This welfare state had several malign implications.

• The nanny state infantilized Europeans, making them worry about such pseudo-issues as climate change while feminizing the males.
• It also neutered them, annexing "most of the core functions of adulthood," starting with the instinct to breed. From about 1980, birth rates plummeted, leaving an inadequate base for today's workers to receive their pensions. Structured on a pay-as-you-go basis, it amounted to an intergenerational Ponzi scheme under which today's workers depend on their children for their pensions.
• The demographic collapse meant that the indigenous peoples of countries like Russia, Italy, and Spain are at the start of a population death spiral.
• It led to a collapse of confidence that in turn bred "civilizational exhaustion," leaving Europeans unprepared to fight for their ways.

Leaving aside the rather unsettling mixed metaphor of a "state...annexing" the "instinct to breed," I should like to ask, if European men have been "feminized" and "neutered," how do you explain the Finnish wife-carrying contest (prize: your wife's weight in beer), or the cover of the German punk band Die Toten Hosen's album Reich & Sexy?

But I digress. Back to the doom-mongering:

Arriving at a time of demographic, political, and cultural weakness, Muslims are profoundly changing Europe: "Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare." Put differently, "Premodern Islam beats post-modern Christianity." Much of the Western world, Mr. Steyn flat-out predicts, 'will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries." With even more drama, he adds, "It's the end of the world as we know it."

I should note that Mark Steyn is Canadian, so he cannot be held responsible for noble America's tragic error, which was to pursue "far-sighted and benign" policies that somehow led foolish, wicked Europeans to create their "malign" welfare states and obsess themselves with "pseudo-issues" like global warming.*

If only the Americans had implemented the Morgenthau Plan (G)! As a fine songwriter once put it, sometimes you've got to be cruel to be kind.

Oh well, at least when the Musulmann takes over, I'll finally be allowed to have several wives. If he doesn't behead me with his scimitar (Krummsäbel) first.

* German readers who are upset to know Europe is headed down the toilet: Don't fret! You'll have good company. For, you see, American is also headed straight down the toilet, according to Morris Berman's "A Culture on the Way to Collapse: America Leads the Way", which has helpfully been translated into German for your Schadenfreudig pleasure.

Comments

[Marek Möhling]

Dang, taz redirects to "Tasmanian Devil" - it's die tageszeitung, a leftist German newspaper, that was meant. ...I still read it daily, a habit I just can't seem to lose. Anyway, worse than being hooked on crack, I suppose.

[Marek Möhling]

> It should welcome immigration in order to survive

No problem with that, provided we do that omelette à la australienne, nouvelle-zélandaise, or canadienne - Omelette Surprise sucks here big time. Yes, they do check the incomers, yes, they do have points to dispense, and yes, not everyone gets one. And no, they're not fascists nevertheless. I just read the taz lamenting on the new German immigration law, as they allege that it is meant to discourage lower class immigration. Actually, that's true, and it's sickening that this is something the government can't be honest about. Ordinary working class people tend not to be overly infatuated with our do-good clowns' neurotic affection. So, god forbid, that they lose more helpless masses, whose interests they can valiantly champion.

[Don]

"(purely a result of America taking over European defence because Europeans are too stupid to do it for themselves you understand)"

I dunno, Stuart. It seems to me that the Europeans are the cunning ones and it's the americans who are being stupid - at least in the short term.

In the longer term let's assume that the US somehow acquires the idea that NATO has reached it's sell-by date and tells most of Europe to defend itself that judgement may change, but not until that happens.

[Norbert]

"Cut off all non-EU immigration" - now that is the very opposite of what Europe should do. It should welcome immigration in order to survive. "Make more babies" can only be complementary because under the existing demographic situation, there simply is no way that the existing populace can sustain itself (i.e. not even enough hypothetical parents).

[Mike Jezek]

Demographics are destiny. He who has the most kids inherits the nation. Europeans had better wake up, cut off all non-Eu immigration and start having babies. Otherwise their culture is extinct. It's simple math.

[Stuart]

The stuff about the welfare system (purely a result of America taking over European defence because Europeans are too stupid to do it for themselves you understand) causing Europeans to turn into "girly men" and reduce birth rates is almost self parody. I'm sure most North Americans feel the same sickening embarrassment when they read Daniel Pipes' or Mark Steyn's articles as I do (being British) when I read something written by Robert Kilroy-Silk or David Irving. I only wish these illiterate clowns could be sent to some far off island where they could debate the world's problems in isolation and leave the rest of us to it.

[Marek Möhling]

Let's try to redeem bad prose and mixed metaphors by adding some numbers. Sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn tells that in 2005 migrants and foreigners, 19% of the German population, cared for 35% of all births. Should these children have as many offspring as their parents, they'll provide 65% of all births in 2025. Hurray: he rightly predicts the end of xenophobia in Germany, the number of xenophobic ethnic Germans dwindling away.

And it gets better yet: provided that 60% of these 65% mentioned above will get a Hauptschule graduation certificate (good for nothing nowadays) or not even that, as it happened with their parents, those snotty elements of society making their life miserable by not giving them due respect, thus inciting, nay, causing violent reactions, will become an minority without influence. The rest of the snotty will emigrate, as 52% of all those Germans aged 18-30 fancy the idea, according to recent polls.

It's funny that professor Heinsohn is a member of the University of Bremen's Raphael Lemkin Institute for Xenophobia and Genocide Research. Berlin judges Kirsten Heisig and Günter Räcke have something to tell about migrant youth's conditio humana that eerily relates. But hey, that's only the violence on the streets. It's much better in school. Besides, locals know how to handle their nasty stuff themselves, thus disburdening the police. Moreover, to calm ethnic tensions, steps are taken by local civic militia to make their quarters judenfrei. Heck, why should only Neo-Nazis be entitled to own national befreite Zonen?

To appease the spam tackling typepad gods some raw urls:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Heinsohn
wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptschule
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_befreite_Zone

[Don]

I'm trying to think of a 'collapsed culture' below the equator. I'm thinking two places: Peru or Easter Island?

[Jones]

"I should note that Mark Steyn is Canadian"

Ugh, please don't remind me. I'm surprised he still has the passport, he so clearly despises the dominant culture here. Surely he should have moved South for good and be happily palling around with the likes of Rick Santorum and Ann Coulter by now?

But I'm sure he'll have the last laugh when I'm wearing that burqa!

[Ligia]

I am proud of being living in an already collapsed culture , colapsed since more than 500 years. So if you all want a consultant from below the equator, just call me ;-)

[Volker]

Hahaha, Great!

Is he shown on Comedy Central?

[Don]

Europeans aren't fairy-men. That is a vile canard.

No, Europeans are girlie-men!