Comments on: Bonkers conspiracies

By: lex

lex — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:37:09 +0000

Randy, It’s been a long time since I’ve read my child anything from A A Milne so I’ve no idea who or what a Bat Y’eor is. The article that triggered this discussion seems loopy, and not really worth your or my time. In any case I’m not so defensive or alienated that I feel a need to view discussions of complex phenomena like the EU’s demographic debacle as a game between two teams trying to put a ball through the “goalposts.” The excerpts reprinted on CT from that article are ridiculous, but the issue that triggered the article is deadly serious. Your analysis is interesting and may be correct—let’s hope it comes to pass and that Europeans learn from Americans that a vibrant culture depends hugely on assimilating creative, hardworking, talented, energetic people from all over the world. I wish that the US would learn from Europe about striking a reasonable work-family balance. But the muslim reduction in family size you posit doesn’t strike me as likely to happen in the next thirty years or so. Wouldn’t that require a much higher rate of assimilation and economic success than is likely in one genreration? For ex., 20c Irish Catholics in the US have attained great economic success, which allowed them to move beyond the lace curtains and into the country clubs and boardrooms, thereby exposing them to great social/cultural pressure from WASP elites to have smaller families and a liberal social outlook. This process though took about sixty years, if you look at the experience of Irish Catholic Americans in NYC Bos Chi Philly and Detroit. (From Honey Fitz to Teddy K is a good example of the pattern.) But there’s a deeper problem with your thesis: in advanced consumer economies a shrinking population overall usually means shrinking economic opportunities, especially for relatively uneducated immigrants in an economy characterized by labor rigidities and relatively few small business opportunities. Hard to get a stake in an adopted land, have some confidence in your future there and achieve real assimilation if you can’t get a foot on the low rungs of the union ladder and if there are fewer chances to attract capital, start a small business and grow it and expand hiring than your counterparts in say, New Jersey or Michigan have available to them. The consequence of a failure to assimilate high volumes of immigrants in slow-growth economies is most likely increased political polarization: EU political elites will find electoral gold in appeals either to racist whites or (much more likely) to growing minorities of resentful, poorly-educated young European muslims. Which means that we can expect EU elites to tilt more toward the jihadists in the middle east and seek ways to triangulate between the US and what’s left of the pan-arabists and the mullahs. If the US and EU nations increasingly go their separate ways on the middle east, then NATO will cease to have meaning, and the US will increasingly look to bilateral relationships with crucial frontline Asian or Eurasian states that are either non-western or non-democratic or both. Especially so as more and more Americans of non-European descent (like F. Zakariah and B. Obama) move into positions of power in Congress, the executive branch and the foreign-policy hierarchy in coming decades. So in this sense anyway, the increasing muslim population of Europe will in the early part of this century be a main cause of the death of “the West” as a coherent strategic/political entity. If “the West” still has any meaning today, that is….

By: lex

lex — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 07:46:42 +0000

dsquared and the Sage of Bristol have been rather quiet here, as have the other guessing wonders like lemuel. That's odd in Chris Bertram's case: he wasn't so reticent on this subject last autumn. Here's his razor-sharp intellect slashing through the knots of the US -EU demographic conundrum on Crooked Timber (highlights are mine): having children is pretty much elective in both zones and the individual cost-benefit calcultation is probably more favourable to having children in Europe than the US. So I’d predict, if I were just coming at things a priori , a lower birthrate in America than in Europe. Obviously that’s not what’s happening. So why not? And who is having the kids? After all, the dynamic America/sclerotic Europe claims are usually made by looking at the aggregate statistics. But if middle-class, educated Europeans and middle-class, educated Americans are behaving similarly to one another, but the “excess” children in the US are all being born to impoverished single parents in trailer parks, the aggregate figures may be less favourable to the US. So how do the figures actually break down, by income group, immigrant/non-immigrant, and so on? I’ve no idea what the answer is, and my googling skills haven’t helped here: but maybe someone else does. Posted on September 29, 2003 Chris needs help with more than his googling. A pity that his "excess" of babies are all born in "trailer parks"-- which, apparently, lack the abortion pits that these subhuman breeders require. A googling sneering hack and a smirking chauvinist, sure, but you're not really a philosophy professor, are you, "Chris"?

By: Randy McDonald

Randy McDonald — Sat, 25 Sep 2004 23:31:16 +0000

http://www.livejournal.com/users/rfmcdpei/357867.html

By: Randy McDonald

Randy McDonald — Sat, 25 Sep 2004 23:29:03 +0000

Lexx: Eurabia, defined as a Europe in which muslim immigrants, most of them young and under- or unassimilated, make up 25% or more of the voting age population, is the most likely scenario for an aging, indeed dying, post-christian and postmodern Europe. This isn’t going to happen. Why do you think that Muslims are more resistant to secularization than Catholics, who at least had a centralized institutional body where Muslims have multiple fragmented and overlapping networks of associations? Now, in your reply to Chris Bertram, you say: Try a little harder, Chris. All that the McDonald article asserts is that muslim immigrant birthrates will decline over time as well, which of course will only worsen the EU’s demographic debacle that is the central point. But the central point of Eurabia is not Europe’s demographic aging and impending moderate shrinkage, but rather the growth of an Arab influence that’s both able to subvert European institutions and fundamentally illegitimate. You’re shifting the goalposts. I wrote about Bat Ye’or at < http://www.livejournal.com/users/rfmcdpei/357867.html>. My opinions of her haven’t changed.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 08:32:28 +0000

The single most important factor in the drop of birthrate phenomenon, IMO, is wide social safety net, especially for the old age. Not necessary anymore to have a large number of children who will take care of you when you’re old. The second most important factor is emancipation of women. Your “pro-family” policy should be this: to rollback the safety net and to undercut women’s independence.

By: lex

lex — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 23:19:30 +0000

Do it again, Abb1. It gets funnier each time. dsquared, …best guess for what exactly “Lex” means by “family friendly” or “pro-family”. Since it’s coupled with “US-Style capitalism” it can’t mean French-style subsidies to stay-at-home mothers, Swedish paternity leave or anything that restricts working hours. Nice try—better than Chris’s, anyway. Of course the US could benefit from a more family-friendly work environment, beginning with extending the ridiculously short maternity leave policies (not to mention hospital stays for new mothers). And of course the French are doing the right and necessary thing with their subsidies—and France is in much better shape than Italy or the nordic countries—but these good and necessary measures are nowhere near sufficient to restore France’s admirable health care system to fiscal health, or to forestall the French pension system’s collapse. To achieve those, France also needs a higher level of economic growth to increase state revenues, which is one reason that French socialists like Mitterrand and Jospin have been such strong proponents of deregulation and scaling back statist interference in the economy. While of course there can be conflicts between, so to speak, labor market flexibility and employer family policy flexibility, both of these approaches are necessary. The goal is higher economic growth AND a better environment for raising kids. And in many ways these two complement each other: Population growth is a big stimulus for domestic consumer demand, an area of European economic performance that’s (not surprisingly) been extremely poor of late. I’m guessing that “Lex” means that Europeans aren’t having babies because we don’t hate gays enough. Any other guesses? Did you learn your straw man and sneering techniques from Chris? You can do better than that, can’t you? As I wrote in the post that Chris deleted, a large and growing number of today’s Europeans, and lesser percentages of Americans, find the raising and bearing of children to be an intolerable imposition on their personal freedom. Given the disastrously (esp for working-class families) high divorce rates across Europe and the US, gay marriage would be a welcome improvement. Any pair of sane adults who are willing to make sacrifices and persevere in providing a child with love and a decent home should be given the chance to do so.

By: lemuel pitkin

lemuel pitkin — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:58:40 +0000

Re family-friendly, I read in the FT recently that Scandinavia, and Sweden in particular, ahs the highest birthrates in Europe, well above the replacement rate, which seems closely conencted with their super-geerous system of subsidies and services for parents. Family-friendly =/= pro-capitalist, in other words, as if anyone but lex needed to be told.

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:39:40 +0000

Oh, no. Every time you get an error it actually saves it. Sorry.

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:37:06 +0000

In other words, the alternative to Eurabia is for aging and post-Christian Europe to become significantly more pro-capitalist and pro-family, or favorably inclined toward bearing and raising children. I think he’s hinting that we Eurabians have to start raising children instead of eating them. That’s tough – those little babies are so yummy – especially Judeo-Christian ones – ummm-mmm-good. Nah, inviting evil Muslims and tilting toward middle eastern jihadists is definitely a better option.

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:34:38 +0000

In other words, the alternative to Eurabia is for aging and post-Christian Europe to become significantly more pro-capitalist and pro-family, or favorably inclined toward bearing and raising children. I think he’s hinting that we Eurabians have to start raising children instead of eating them. That’s tough – those little babies are so yummy – especially Judeo-Christian ones – ummm-mmm-good. Nah, inviting evil Muslims and tilting toward middle eastern jihadists is definitely a better option.

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:33:44 +0000

In other words, the alternative to Eurabia is for aging and post-Christian Europe to become significantly more pro-capitalist and pro-family, or favorably inclined toward bearing and raising children. I think he’s hinting that we Eurabians have to start raising children instead of eating them. That’s tough – those little babies are so yummy – especially Judeo-Christian ones – ummm-mmm-good. Nah, inviting evil Muslims and tilting toward middle eastern jihadists is definitely a better option.

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:31:29 +0000

In other words, the alternative to Eurabia is for aging and post-Christian Europe to become significantly more pro-capitalist and pro-family, or favorably inclined toward bearing and raising children. I think he’s hinting that we Eurabians have to start raising children instead of eating them. That’s tough – those little babies are so yummy – especially Judeo-Christian ones – ummm-mmm-good. Nah, inviting evil Muslims and tilting toward middle eastern jihadists is definitely a better option.

By: yabonn

yabonn — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 20:33:02 +0000

Any other guesses? Manly manliness, plain common sense, and erected penises have deserted an europe under the influence of the feminizing nanny state, while the us is still populated with real, glorious, throbbing, romans. It’s all because of the pomo relativists, y’know, but they will be sorry soon.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 19:59:35 +0000

There might be a small book token prize for the reader who can come up with the best guess for what exactly “Lex” means by “family friendly” or “pro-family”. Since it’s coupled with “US-Style capitalism” it can’t mean French-style subsidies to stay-at-home mothers, Swedish paternity leave or anything that restricts working hours. I’m guessing that “Lex” means that Europeans aren’t having babies because we don’t hate gays enough. Any other guesses?

By: lex

lex — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 15:53:04 +0000

[I’ve deleted this entire comment, since it descends from the robust antagonism of the earlier ones to personal abuse about my attitudes to children. I have two of my own, by the way. CB]