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Back to the Forum 2006
Archives Recently a friend sent me an article he had found on the internet. It was a bit of a tirade by a person named Mark Steyn. The title was "The Century Ahead." In that article he offers his opinion of the real reason the West is in danger of extinction. He seems to think it's the demography. This was a great deal more than an essay. When I copied it into my word processor so I could read it offline, it took up 12 pages. Reading this thing was more difficult than I had imagined. Steyn did not stay on one point very long. In fact he did not stay in one place long enough to make a point. Three comparative images came to mind when I was trying to read this. First I had the idea of a very fast pinball slamming around a machine, popping off of cushions and slamming into various scoring objects. That was not quite it and then I had the idea of driving a golf ball in a tile bathroom. You don't know how to duck because you don't know where it will come from next. My final image was the one I stayed with. I had the idea of a burp gun. For the young folks, a burp gun is a crazy device developed by our military in WWII. There was a need for large numbers of weapons and very little time and manpower to make them so they came up with this device. It was a 45 caliber machine gun that had a short barrel with no rifling. They were cheap and easy to manufacture. They did have one shortcoming due to the lack of rifling. They were not accurate at all. In fact, it has been said the safest place to be when a burp gun is fired is right in front of it. It shoots every way but straight. It makes a lot of noise and throws a lot of stuff, but it does not hit the mark. That is what I concluded about this article. Steyn threw a lot of stuff, but he was off the mark. He seemed to have two premises in this piece. His major premiss seemed to be the Western world will be extinct by the end of this century. That's cool. I cannot say I disagree with that. I have been warning of the decline of the West for several years. His timing also seems reasonable. He says it will occur within this century and mostly within his lifetime. That could well be true. I'm not quite as pessimistic as that, but I cannot in good faith disagree. I'm just not sure about the when. I think he misses with what seems to be his minor premise, conclusion, or cause of this disaster. He believes the cause of our extinction is our declining birthrate, our failure to procreate. While I like the idea of indiscriminate diddling as well as any man, I cannot really agree with his conclusion. Making more babies will not save us. If I thought it would, I would cheerfully do my part, so to speak. He goes through a lot of bang, bang almost points to make
his case. He sees that Europe is being overrun by foreigners
(read Muslims) and that weakens the Western democracies. He sees
radical Islamism as the big threat and the enemy of democracy.
He notices that our culture, especially in Europe, is degenerating.
He thinks multiculturalism is a farce and a sign of Western degeneration.
That's not cool and it's not to the point. It comes out of his
misconceptions about what multiculteralism is and is not. It
is not about all peoples being equal. It's about respect and
nothing more. After all of his arguments, Steyn fails to conceal the hidden incorrect premise in his logic. That is the implied notion that productivity gains are dependent upon increased manpower. That is BS of the most odoriferous type. It confuses reproduction with productivity. If it were true, most men would still be pushing wheelbarrows and coolies would be more useful than machines. Even China no longer thinks that way. Productivity gains depend mainly on creativity, mind power not penis power. Mind power is where we are really failing. We have no new technology. All of our so-called solutions are based in old technology. In another area, we are failing in personal ethics. Personal excellence comes out of an attitude of personal ethics. Too many of our workers do not have that attitude. Our politicians have taught them a something-for-nothing attitude and they adhere to it. We are, in fact lazy. We are at the end of a cycle. That is really why we will lose out. Every civilization in man's history has gone through a predictable cycle. Briefly, it begins with a strong person or group of people and an idea with a vision. Elitism, power, community, and democracy are ideas with a vision. In any case, people are rallied to the cause and they build some kind of machine that will develop into a civilization. Sometimes they must go to war to achieve the power they need. Eventually they begin to build a stable civilization. At some point along the way, the direction stops being about the idea and becomes about rewards. That is the beginning of the end of the cycle. What happens is, the people lose the will to sustain the system and it begins to degenerate. That is where the Western world is now. We simply lack the will to continue. Will radical Islam be the winner? I really doubt it. Radical Islam may win out over a lazy democracy which is what we are in the West. It would never win over a vigorous democracy, but we have yet to prove we can recover that vigor. It has nothing to do with population. It has to do with ideas, creativity, and will. Where will new ideas, creativity, and will come from? In his entire article Steyn only mentions China once. He seems
to consider it unimportant. He is mistaken about that. Islam,
radical or otherwise, will not succeed there. It will be absorbed
and adapted to Confucianism like Christianity and everything
else has been absorbed and adapted. When the West fails, radical
Islam will also fail, because it depends on conflict for survival.
What will not fail is China. She has the mind power, she has
the vision, and she and the will. When the West fails, the next
great civilization will arise in China and radical Islam will
die out.
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