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BY ED VITAGLIANO | AFA Journal News Editor
Anyone
know where we can find some Etruscans? You know, members of the
Etruscan civilization that existed in ancient Italy, predating even
Rome?
Well, there aren’t
any. The Etruscans were absorbed by the Roman civilization and ceased
to exist as a distinct people.
Ominously, if a growing
number of experts and cultural observers are right, it’s entirely
possible that the same question may be asked 100 years from now
— only about Italians or Spaniards or Russians.
As writer Mark Steyn
glumly put it in The New Criterion, "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."
A birth dearth
What could possibly cause such a cataclysm? Another world war?
A nuclear confrontation? The devastation of a plague, similar to
that caused by the Black Death in the 14th century?
Nothing quite so dramatic,
say the experts. Rather, Europe is slowly dying simply by refusing
to have enough children to replace the people who die each year.
Catholic scholar George
Weigel, a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and
author of The Cube and The Cathedral, says Europe is "committing
demographic suicide, systematically depopulating itself."
For any population to
remain stable, it must maintain a birthrate of 2.1 births per woman.
That rate provides a replacement for both mother and father, while
the .1 covers infant and child mortality. When the birthrate falls
below that number, a population goes into decline — unless
it invites in large numbers of immigrants.
"The ‘birth
dearth’ is what demographers call plummeting birth rates in
most of the industrialized world," says culture critic Chuck
Colson. "Throughout Western Europe and East Asia, the birth
rate is well below 2.1 births per woman. …"
Sociologist Ben Wattenberg,
author of Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will
Shape Our Future, puts this birth dearth in historical perspective.
"Never in the last 650 years, since the time of the Black Plague,
have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for
so long, in so many places."
According to U.N. figures
and other projections, Patrick Buchanan states in The Death of
the West that by 2050 Europe (from Iceland to Russia) will see
its population drop from 728 million (in 2000) to 600 million —
and perhaps 556 million. And if current trends continue, by the
end of the century Europe’s population will stand at 207 million.
Collapse of family
values
Why has this happened? As it turns out, a variety of factors
and trends have combined to create, as it were, the "perfect
storm."
World magazine’s
Gene Edward Veith sums it up this way: "Why the population
decline? The worldwide collapse of what are, literally, family values.
Thanks to contraceptive technology, sex has become separated from
childbearing. With women pursuing careers of their own and men getting
sex without the responsibility of marriage, why bother with children?
For many women and men, pregnancy has become an unpleasant side
effect, something to prevent with contraceptives or easily treated
with a trip to the abortion clinic."
Abortion comes in for
particular blame in Veith’s view. "The dirty little secret
of the population implosion, one seldom mentioned by demographers,
is that the world is aborting its future generations," he says.
Pro-family groups in
the U.S., for example, rightly bemoan the abortion rate here, where
Veith says one-third to one-fifth of all pregnancies end in abortion.
Some European nations are far worse, however. "In Russia, the
average woman may have as many as four abortions in her lifetime,"
he says. "There are two abortions for every live birth. That
is to say, Russians kill two-thirds of their children before they
are born."
All this is symptomatic
of a pervasive hedonism that permeates the West, "a complete
philosophy of pleasure," according to Allan Carlson, president
of The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society.
"Everywhere in
the European Community and Anglo-America, real attention focuses
on the consumption of food (alternately rich and fat-free), frequent
sex, and raucous fun," Carlson says. "Relatively few are
pestered these days by children. Fertile young adults rely on mechanical
devices and chemical agents to thwart the designs of nature. In
places as culturally different as Spain, Italy, Denmark and Germany,
the sexual experimentation starts early, but hardly anyone brings
forth a child."
Despite efforts on the
part of some European nations to increase the desire of adults to
have children — such as tax breaks or cash incentives —
some experts think the pursuit of personal fulfiment will triumph.
Joseph Chamie, director
of the U.N. Population Division, says, "No demographers believe
birth rates will rebound. How much will it take to convince a woman
to have four children? People are concerned about their appearances,
their education, their careers."
What’s ironic,
however, is that this pursuit of personal pleasure and personal
wealth may result in economic ruin.
"When it comes
to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to
hard numbers," Steyn argues. "If only a million babies
are born in 2006, it’s hard to have two million adults enter
the workforce in 2026. …"
Veith lists but a few
of the ramifications of population decline. "Citizens are not
just consumers but producers," he says. "Having fewer
people can wreak havoc on an economy, creating both a labor shortage
and a shortage of buyers. A government with a shrinking population
faces a smaller military and fewer taxpayers. Dwindling populations
have always signaled cultural decline, with less creativity, energy,
and vitality on every level of society."
Abandoning Christianity
These explanations do not go far enough to suit culture critic
and columnist Don Feder, who sees Europe’s abandonment of its
Christian heritage as the true root cause of its population problems.
"It’s no coincidence
that central to the new Europe … is a refusal to acknowledge
the continent’s origins," says Feder, who is Jewish. "The
proposed constitution for the European Union (a document of over
70,000 words) contains not a single reference to Christianity. Thus
more than a millennium of European history is effectively erased."
The abandonment of Christianity
in most European countries has been well-documented. For example,
author and journalist James P. Gannon says that in five key European
countries — France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy
— over the last 30 years regular church attendance has fallen
from roughly 40% of the population to about 20%." As Weigel
says, Western Europe has become a "post-Christian society."
Feder believes there
is a clear link between a lack of faith and the loss of that sense
of duty to the future that leads people to conceive and bear children.
"Having lost their faith and embraced an ethic of radical autonomy,"
he says, "Europeans stopped going to church, stopped taking
the Bible seriously, stopped believing in the future and stopped
having children."
Maria Burani, president
of the Parliamentary Commission for the Family and Infancy in Rome,
told Citizen magazine that faith is a foundation for the
kind of lifestyle that parenting requires. "If you don’t
have inside your head great religious and ethical principles,"
she insists, "you’re just not going to want to go and
have these kids because it’s a sacrifice."
Beyond that, of course,
is the fact that religious principles also restrain the often selfish
behavior that grows out of the "radical autonomy" that
permeates Europe. "Among the consequences of Europe’s
abandonment of its religious roots and the moral code that derives
therefrom is a plunge in its birth rates to below the replacement
level," says Gannon. "Abortion, birth control, acceptance
of gay marriage and casual sex are driving the trend."
Islamification of
Europe
However, the prognosis for Europe gets even worse because many
of the nations there have chosen a risky path for making up for
their population shortfalls: immigration.
Because North Africa
and the Middle East represent a relatively convenient source of
cheap labor, millions of Muslim immigrants have been flooding the
continent for a half century.
"Western Europe
has gone from a Muslim population of 250,000, 50 years ago, to 20
million today," says Feder.
Unlike Westerners, however,
Muslims typically have large families. According to Robert S. Leiken,
director of the Immigration and National Security Program at the
Nixon Center, higher Muslim birthrates combined with Muslim immigration
have led the U.S. National Intelligence Council to project that
Europe’s Muslim population will double by 2025.
As a result, Colson
says flatly, "[d]emo-graphics may bring about what the Moors
and Ottoman Empire couldn’t: a Muslim Europe."
But so what? Isn’t
such hand-wringing about Muslim immigrants nothing more than utter
bigotry?
Hardly, say concerned
Westerners. The Islamification of Europe would bring incredible
cultural changes to Europe. "In 50 to 100 years, the Europe
of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, the Europe of Rembrandt and Bach,
the Europe of Churchill and Karol Wojtyla will exist only in textbooks
and museums," Feder says. "Or, perhaps the remnants of
Christian Europe will be subjected to the fate of Afghanistan’s
Buddhist statues, demolished by the Taliban regime."
Political changes would
also be inevitable, Steyn insists. "Can a society become increasingly
Islamic in its demographic character without becoming increasingly
Islamic in its political character?"
It is a rhetorical question,
of course, and Steyn predicts that by 2050 many European nations
will be forced to apply Sharia — Muslim law — to
Muslim communities. He notes the results of a 2004 poll that found
that over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Muslim law — while
living in the United Kingdom.
At first, most European
governments would probably resist the demands of an increasingly
assertive Muslim population. But in response, it would not be surprising
to see an escalation of what has already begun to transpire: terrorist
bombings in London and Madrid; the 2002 assassination of conservative
Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, who campaigned on a platform of limiting
Muslim immigration; the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004
for allegedly insulting Islam; rioting by Muslim youths throughout
France in 2005; and rioting this year in response to political cartoons
that were deemed offensive to Muslim sensibilities.
Steyn thinks Europe
will see more such unrest — and soon. "It seems more likely
that within the next couple of European election cycles, the internal
contradictions of the [European Union] will manifest themselves
in the usual way," he says, "and that by 2010 we’ll
be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on
American network news every night."
In any case, Carlson
says, "the Great Party [of Western hedonism] will not last
much longer. There is an iron law in history: the future belongs
to the fertile. Just as the clan-centered, child-rich barbarian
tribes of the Germans swept away the sensuous and sterile Western
Roman Empire, so shall new barbarians arise."
Scripture teaches that
God rules over the nations, and the future of Europe looks increasingly
like that of Israel when its prophets warned of impending chastisement
and judgment. Are we on the brink of God’s chastisement of
Europe, even after a century of wars and other atrocities failed
to bring the continent back to Christianity?
How ironic it would
be that a European culture that demanded unlimited personal freedom
might wind up living under the repressive heel of Muslim totalitarianism.
Or that a culture that rejected its Christian heritage might, instead,
be subjected to Islamic fundamentalism.
Cultures have disappeared
before. Just ask the Etruscans. If you can find one.
SWEDISH
UTOPIA?
By Stephen Crampton • Chief
Counsel, AFA Center for Law and Policy
I recently had occasion
to discuss religion and politics (dangerous ground, I know) with
a Swedish mother of two visiting America. Sonya (not her real
name) is a manager at a large investment house in Sweden. Her
politics may be described as fiscally conservative and socially
liberal. In a word, fashionable.
Before we parted,
Sonya gave me a Swedish newspaper, the Nordstjernan (www.nordstjernan.com).
It was half in Swedish and half in English, and I eagerly read
it. If you are like me, you have always heard what a laid back,
peaceful utopia Sweden is, with low crime and little stress. It
is the poster child of the Left, held up as a model of what a
live-and-let-live, anything-goes society ought to be. Such is
the Swedish media massage. So I was genuinely surprised to read
the paper Sonya gave me.
One article in the
issue was aimed at readers just like me, who had bought the chamber
of commerce line about life in Sweden. The author, Ulf Nilson,
was Swedish, and his title, "Quiet No More," said much
about his reasons for writing. He had turned myth-buster. Here
are some of the startling facts he shared:
• There is
more crime in Sweden than in New York City, though they are
comparable in population.
• Drug abuse
is rampant, with the number of deaths from overdoses having
doubled in the past 10 years.
• Sweden has
one of the highest incidences of rape in the world.
• Burglaries
are so numerous that many citizens have stopped reporting them
because the police are overloaded and cannot undertake to investigate
them all anyway.
• Attacks on
money transports (like highway robbery) are so frequent that
the transporters are threatening to quit, thereby effectively
closing ATMs all over the country. Violent outdoor muggings
are becoming routine, having increased 15% last year alone.
• In Stockholm,
the police recently admitted having lied when they claimed to
have neutralized some 130 of the city’s most prominent
gangsters; in reality, their sting operation was a bust.
• Swedish courts
are plagued with perjurious police officers who routinely lie
to support fellow cops in trouble.
While I do not want
to place undue reliance on a single newspaper article, it is entirely
consistent with a Christian worldview that a nation so firmly
committed to the ways of the world would eventually find itself
wallowing in crime.
Of course, it is as
true for us in America as for those in Sweden. We have embraced
our sin, celebrated our "diversity" and indulged our
depravity. And now, having sown, we must reap. Will we awaken
from our stupor? Can we turn from the shadows and once again gaze
upon the glory of Truth? America is only a step behind Sweden
and the whole of post-Christian Europe. Absent an abrupt change
in our spiritual direction, we are in for dark days ahead. Those
who have light, however dim, must lead the way.
Excerpted from The
Swedish Media Massage on www.afa.net.
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