Mark Steyn, cowbirds, demographics

No one wants to face facts when they're scary or harsh.  Far more fun to "eat, drink and be merry" until the last possible moment.  Yes, certainly.

Unfortunately that course of action ensures the feared (and never discussed) outcome is far more likely to occur.

If that outcome is something simple like paying a bill or having a needed operation, avoidance might not be fatal.  But what if the scary fact involves death of your civilization?  Because that outcome is so...fatal...one might think a handful of that culture's members might want to shake off the paralysis and try to act like adults--as in, doing something to try to avoid it.

Just got through reading a few pages of Mark Steyn's "America Alone" (subtitled "The end of the world as we know it").  Steyn looks at how Muslims are interacting with Brits and Europeans.  He presents a few of the violent and totally unprovoked attacks by Muslims on non-Muslims in Europe, and extrapolates.  Finally he looks at birth rates for Muslims and everyone else, and sees that in just 30 years virtually all of Europe will be majority Muslim. 

Example: The fertility rate for native Italian women is 1.1 child per woman.  For Muslims it's between 3.5 and 6, depending on country and survey.

The difference between these numbers doesn't sound like much, but consider that if a population grows 4% a year, it will double in 17 years.   By contrast, a level of 1.1 is below the replacement level.

But birthrates are only part of the problem:  Muslims immigrants are flooding into virtually every European country, because they immediately start drawing generous social welfare benefits, sometimes including free housing.

And that's only the tip of the problem:  In some European countries merely asking the question "Should we keep immigration from Somalia as high as it is now?" is enough to get you charged by the government with one of the many variants of "hate speech."  Politically-correct politicians at all levels are hell-bent on keeping the influx as high as possible, and no one seems to know why.

One popular theory is that in Europe pols are overwhelmingly liberal, and many seem to be afflicted with a fatal case of white guilt, but the literal cause doesn't matter a great deal except to historians.

If you read European analysts you've seen that almost every nation over there has at least a couple of cities with sections that are almost exclusively Muslim immigrants.  In many cases police won't enter these areas for fear of starting a riot.

Leftists and liberals: Do you think that can't or won't happen here?  If so, would you be so kind as to state your reasons for that conclusion?  Because it sure ain't "Because Muslims in the U.S. are just so much more into freedom and democracy and interfaith outreach and coexistence and..."

Spare us.  That argument is basically wishful thinking.

The day after Christmas I met four of my nieces and nephews for a late lunch.  All of them are late 20's, incredibly smart, college grads, good career starts.  I found myself wondering what loss of freedom--whether of speech or worship or just the choice of what they could eat or drink or see at the movies--could make them angry enough to take up arms to stop an invasion.

Sadly, the answer seemed to be:  nothing.  They've been so cunningly conditioned by their schools (and most private ones are no better) to believe that all ideas, all religions and all cultures are equal and that anyone who denies this is raacist and a hater.  They're adamant on this point.

Not wanting to ruin a pleasant lunch I didn't press them on the logic of that position.  Female genital mutilation?  Making women wear the burqa?  Banning alcohol?  Banning music?  Even banning people from watching the World Cup?  "Oh, none of those things is representative of real Islam."  (One wonders where they got that conclusion.  MSNBC?  Jon Stewart?  Obama?)

And of course bringing up any of those topics would kill the pleasant conversation in a hurry.

Plus, for the first 20 years the loss of freedoms will be so incremental as to be barely noticeable:  Cab drivers in Minnesota refusing to carry passengers with dogs or liquor, for example.  "Who cares?"  "Tempest in a teapot."  "A local problem, doesn't affect us a bit."

You see how the reasoning goes.  Some of us would be quick to peg that as rationalizing.  But to leftists, all such concerns are merely the fevered nightmares of conservatives or Jesus-freaks or similar.

Ever heard of a cowbird?  It's about the size of a crow and has a very unique nesting behavior:  They don't build nests.  Ever.  Instead the cowbird finds a nest painstakingly built by another bird species, waits til both members of the mating pair that built that nest are away, then slips in and lays its egg.

Then it rolls one of the eggs laid by the pair that built the nest out of the nest.  When the mating pair return they don't notice anything amiss.

When the eggs hatch, the cowbird chick--larger and more aggressive than the others--competes with them for food.  As if that isn't enough, nature photogs have tons of footage of cowbird chicks actually throwing the chicks of the nesting pair out of the nest.

It's a brilliant strategy--at least from the cowbird's standpoint.

If you think that's an absurd analogy I'd be glad to elaborate.  But for now, have a happy new year.