Mark Steyn asserts that Europe is pretty much a lost cause for the following three reasons:
Demographic decline, financially unsustainable social-democratic states, and loss of civilizational will.*
And America, along with Canada and Australia, is not exempt from the future he predicts.
Not designed to brighten your day. But there is very little of what he says that I do not agree with.
I do take issue with his forlorn hope expressed here, but agree with his final conclusion.
I do think that unless you have real serious culture confidence
you should not have mass Muslim immigration. I say that with
regret because I would like to believe that all societies can bring
people there and create Americans, create Canadians, create
Englishmen, create Dutchmen.
But I do think that at some point we have to grasp the nettle of
mass immigration, which is always a sign of societal weakness
*Although er rejects Mr Steyn's analysis, I recall that it was er himself who quite poignantly wrote about the astonishing phenomenon of an entire civilization walking off a cliff based solely on the question, "Well, who's to say?"
2 comments:
I suppose it's possible that mass immigration into North America (the L.S. Island era) was "a sign of societal weakness." But the only argument I have ever noticed along this line was that Jefferson wanted an America of "yeoman farmers," and accordingly opposed the importation of a European urban "canaille" [cana nile?] (sc the wretched refuse of their teaming shores).
But Jeffersonian America was doom'd by the industrial revolution, wasn't it? Immigration to speed up industrialization only accelerated the new need for an urban or bourgeois gentleman -- a terrifying idea which I suppose Molière accordingly treated only as a contemptible joke. Plato's gentelmen were landed gentlemen: their social base was not in the city to which they repair'd for philosophizationing and cultural whatnot - a self-contradictory gentleman class.
But the urban Adel or gentry doesn't have to fawn on the purveyors of "culture." The Old Testament is presumably sufficient.
P.S. The western civ can insist that we ruin our institutions -- drive them off a cliff etc -- only by selective application of "Who's to say?" The meaning of the Bible, Dante, the Institutes, Hegel, Marx, or any other doctrine is intelligible to an ego only by a saying: an understanding is construed, and doesn't occur as a matter of course. Dante's Divine Comedy doesn't 'say' anything if it is consider'd merely as a book on a shelf and not study'd by someone with a 'saying.' So also the American Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Socrates asks his questions always to someone. Marvellous that no sophist thought to answer "For me, the meaning of the just [or of courage, etc] is indeterminate because my opinion would be irreducibly my opinion. Which is relativism. Which proves that truth is impossible. Accordingly, your regime or republic founded in speech can't rationally govern in the least because the regime would only be imposing their own relative, time-bound, historical-historicist understanding of matters rather than the true objective understanding of matters."
This sophistry is well answer'd by any ego sum with a willingness to let his own understanding stand. I suppose Oliver Cromwell might have reply'd, "Well, then, since you [the long parliament] will contribute only indeterminacy to the discussion of 'What is to be done?' my government will proceed with MY understanding of Christian doctrine." Lenin didn't propose that because the meaning of dialectical materialism was in some matters open to debate therefore the Communist Party must hand Russia and the Ukraine and the rest of the Tsar's empire over to neo-Muslims. The meaning of Islam and the Quran and Hadiths etc are open to debate on some matters, but somehow the obedient will-to-power of Islamic groups doesn't conclude that Islam is indeterminate and the world (Danya, judgment of yah) should be given over to the great and little Satans.
Meanwhile the who's to decide leadership indicates utter confidence in their own deciding and saying that Christian doctrine is unjust, Benedict 16 odious, Genesis 1 absolutely is comprehensible only in accord with public school evolution curriculum, etc. And they extend this utter confidence to neo-Islam - the true meaning of true Islam is pacifist socialist democracy and human rights.
Such a long long detour, involving such feverish diligence and incessant toil, only in order to bring the West c. 1945 to agree by 2011 that it can have no future because "who's to say what that future should be?" ... Christianity is now only social justice and "spirituality," and since "social justice" is potentially a political programme the social justice element has almost entirely been enticed to silence. It is as though designing a demolition plan for Rheims cathedral and proceeding with the demolition actually involves far more intelligence, artistic genius and effort than building the cathedral in the first place.
Ruins, Ruins, that claim to be right,
In America's last night.
Did They smile, their work to see?
Did They who made 1776 make thee?
And so on.
er
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