Mark Steyn wrote some long-assed piece of crap in the opinion journal today. I had to cut out large swaths of it for the sake of space, and also because I’m not clever enough to respond to eleven pages worth of the same stupid drivel. Anyway. Git r’ done Fuckers!

“Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands–probably–just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.

One obstacle to doing that is that, in the typical election campaign in your advanced industrial democracy, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the West are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society–government health care, government day care (which Canada’s thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain’s just introduced). We’ve prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith and, most basic of all, reproductive activity–”Go forth and multiply,” because if you don’t you won’t be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare.â€Â?

As Goering said, “Guns will make us strong, butter will only make us fat.� And lo, look at how fat we’ve become suckling the teat of big government largesse. Fortunately, here in America, we’ve got none of those things. I didn’t know that Republicans were that into the reproductive activity though. Everytime I try to circulate a petition demanding that the local junior high teach the “pull out and pray� method of birth control, some asshole with a big stupid “W� sticker on his bumper gets that zinged out look in his eye, and little globs of spittle form in the corners of his mouth as he barks out that I get the “heeeel off my propity, ‘fore I shoot you dirty son of bitch rat where you stand.� And I have to scuttle off on my way, but not too quickly, for the sake of my dignity.

“The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion. The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths–or, at any rate, virtues–and that’s why they’re proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.
Speaking of which, if we are at war–and half the American people and significantly higher percentages in Britain, Canada and Europe don’t accept that proposition–than what exactly is the war about?â€Â?

It’s still all about the petro-chemicals, man. But I’m like totally on drugs so take that with a grain of salt. And maybe it’s only this heightened state of perception that these hallucinogenic jelly beans have brought to me, but this sentence – “Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonismâ€Â? – is pretty far out. Like how could anything be more objectively rational than hyperrationalism, man? It’s like super rational vs your everyday, run-o-the-mill, discount, 3-for-a-dollar, brand-name generic rational. It’s like you get 64oz for only 25 cents more, you’d have to be an idiot not to take that deal. Plus like the free-refills and shit. I mean that’s like saying superglue is objectively less adhesive than licorice. Just cuz I’m doped up doesn’t mean I’m gonna buy your neon glowstick, brother.

“Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it’s not what this thing’s about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It’s not the HIV that kills you, it’s the pneumonia you get when your body’s too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose–as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there’s an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.â€Â?

I don’t get how that’s at all like AIDS, but if you want me to wear a ribbon that represents my disdain for the Islamic faith, well okay, sure. But I’m not donating any money.

“Hmm. Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you’re nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists. In other words, just as the AIDS pandemic greatly facilitated societal surrender to the gay agenda, so 9/11 is greatly facilitating our surrender to the most extreme aspects of the multicultural agenda.â€Â?

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at this point. And not just cause he’s kinda funny in the first couple of sentences with the “be nice to fruits and inuits big deal,” but because that last sentence is so absurd; raving at the moon while buck-naked except for a feather boa and a black jockstrap, while rubbing cat entrails over your chest, whacked out nuts, that I couldn’t help but laugh at it. And you probably get it. But if you don’t, I don’t think I could ever explain it.

“That, by the way, is the one point of similarity between the jihad and conventional terrorist movements like the IRA or ETA. Terror groups persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their targets: The IRA, for example, calculated correctly that the British had the capability to smash them totally but not the will. So they knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could never be defeated. The Islamists have figured similarly. The only difference is that most terrorist wars are highly localized. We now have the first truly global terrorist insurgency because the Islamists view the whole world the way the IRA view the bogs of Fermanagh: They want it, and they’ve calculated that our entire civilization lacks the will to see them off.â€Â?

Hmm, what’re you cooking up there in that crazy kitchen of yours Mark Steyn? Smells a bit like genocide.

We spend a lot of time at The New Criterion attacking the elites, and we’re right to do so. The commanding heights of the culture have behaved disgracefully for the last several decades. But if it were just a problem with the elites, it wouldn’t be that serious: The mob could rise up and hang ‘em from lampposts–a scenario that’s not unlikely in certain Continental countries. But the problem now goes way beyond the ruling establishment. The annexation by government of most of the key responsibilities of life–child-raising, taking care of your elderly parents–has profoundly changed the relationship between the citizen and the state. At some point–I would say socialized health care is a good marker–you cross a line, and it’s very hard then to persuade a citizenry enjoying that much government largesse to cross back. In National Review recently, I took issue with that line Gerald Ford always uses to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” Actually, you run into trouble long before that point: A government big enough to give you everything you want still isn’t big enough to get you to give anything back. That’s what the French and German political classes are discovering.

Dude, you really are plagiarizing Goering at this point for Christ’s sake, with all this babble about the elites and blah blah blah. Seriously. Stop it. You’re writing in the Wall Street Journal now, not whatever the fuck New Criterion is. And I don’t want to implicitly praise WSJ, but I guess I did think they had some standard of decency.

“There is no “population bomb.” There never was. Birthrates are declining all over the world–eventually every couple on the planet may decide to opt for the Western yuppie model of one designer baby at the age of 39. But demographics is a game of last man standing. The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge advantage. Even in 1968 Paul Ehrlich and his ilk should have understood that their so-called population explosion was really a massive population adjustment. Of the increase in global population between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9% of it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26%. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30% of the world’s population to just over 20%, the Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%.

And yet the world is utterly altered. Just to recap those bald statistics: In 1970, the developed world had twice as big a share of the global population as the Muslim world: 30% to 15%. By 2000, they were the same: each had about 20%.

And by 2020?�

I fear to even imagine it.

“So the world’s people are a lot more Islamic than they were back then and a lot less “Western.” Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims (officially)–or the equivalents of the populations of four European Union countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and Estonia). Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the West: In the U.K., more Muslims than Christians attend religious services each week.

Can these trends continue for another 30 years without having consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.”

Tell us Mark Steyn, how do we avoid the self-extinction of our race? Tell us what must be done.

“What will London–or Paris, or Amsterdam–be like in the mid-’30s? If European politicians make no serious attempt this decade to wean the populace off their unsustainable 35-hour weeks, retirement at 60, etc., then to keep the present level of pensions and health benefits the EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035. As things stand, Muslims are already the primary source of population growth in English cities. Can a society become increasingly Islamic in its demographic character without becoming increasingly Islamic in its political character?”

Oh. Is that all? Cutting welfare. Well, if that’s what we gotta do to save the white race from extinction, I guess the pro-business Republicans at the Wall Street Journal have been right all along. But seriously, somehow, I. did. not. see. that. coming.

“This ought to be the left’s issue. I’m a conservative–I’m not entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses like a slut: I’m with Mullah Omar on that one. Why then, if your big thing is feminism or abortion or gay marriage, are you so certain that the cult of tolerance will prevail once the biggest demographic in your society is cheerfully intolerant? Who, after all, are going to be the first victims of the West’s collapsed birthrates? Even if one were to take the optimistic view that Europe will be able to resist the creeping imposition of Sharia currently engulfing Nigeria, it remains the case that the Muslim world is not notable for setting much store by “a woman’s right to choose,” in any sense.â€Â?

Oh. So cutting welfare will also save feminism and gay marriage from the Islamic menace? This is too good to be true! Please, tell me it’ll end racism and poverty next!

I watched that big abortion rally in Washington in 2004, where Ashley Judd and Gloria Steinem were cheered by women waving “Keep your Bush off my bush” placards, and I thought it was the equivalent of a White Russian tea party in 1917. By prioritizing a “woman’s right to choose,” Western women are delivering their societies into the hands of fellows far more patriarchal than a 1950s sitcom dad. If any of those women marching for their “reproductive rights” still have babies, they might like to ponder demographic realities: A little girl born today will be unlikely, at the age of 40, to be free to prance around demonstrations in Eurabian Paris or Amsterdam chanting “Hands off my bush!”

Hmm. That’s disappointing. But, for the sake of saving feminism, I guess we better get onto forgetting all that “right to chooseâ€Â? noise. Because if any prospective daughter of mine is brought into this world, it will not be a world where she can’t prance around the streets of Paris chanting “hands off my bush!â€Â? If America means anything, it means our daughters have the right to prance around Paris making such chants. I pay my taxes.

“Mr. Longman’s point is well taken. The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, “Racism!” To fret about what proportion of the population is “white” is grotesque and inappropriate. But it’s not about race, it’s about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn’t matter whether 70% of them are “white” or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn’t, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%.â€Â?

You know, I remember the good old days when Italians were considered as swarthy as any Eastern European with papist and socialist tendencies and union trouble-making, and all that. Sacco and Vanzetti, right? Now here they are, one of the last bulwarks of liberal democracy itself. Brings a tear to the eye, no? I don’t mean that in a sentimental way.