Desperately Broody
It’s long, and reads sort of like the last year’s worth of columns were just him fleshing out some ideas for this one. It’s also horrendously depressing, and should make every woman of childbearing age want to lie back and think of Western Civilization.
Update (1.5):
January 4th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
With the ” When do they auction him off for charity?” comment and “..” lie back and think of Western Civilization.” … someone had their Wheaties today! ;)
January 4th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
….I forgot. I’m a fan of Queen Victoria too.
January 4th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
A Fatal Meme
Mark Steyn worried about demographics and mentions the European crisis on a regular basis. Well today he has an extensive article on the subject on OpinionJournal, actually a reprint from the New Criterion. The basic observation is that westerners are…
January 4th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
“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.”
But by (stupidly) attacking now, they are galvanizing the west to react against them, rather than letting it slide into the sunset. (Of course the “intellectual elite” – including the media – will never get it, and will perhaps only ever achieve enlightenment as their heads roll across the floor, but the rest of us – the ordinary people – are waking up).
That is the thing I have noticed with Mark Steyn: his thinking is very linear. Current trends are just extrapolated, without understanding that there are usually two or more players in the game that react and counter-react. The type of thinking required here is more common in the economic analysis of markets, for example.
Not that Mark isn’t good, but he ends up being too pessimistic because of this limitation in his thinking. Personally, I think even France will be OK, after all.
January 4th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Almost, Phib. I had my McVities today. ;)
And I do agree about Mark Steyn’s shortcomings, sort of. I mean, things do tend to be more layered, but basically the mould is there. I mean, think about it. They attacked big time, in the heart of Establishment, killing friends and family of the Establishment (whom I mean to be the people in the west he’s talking about), and just four years later that Establishment doesn’t care anymore, and thinks any galvanization is just an over-reaction. There’s a good section on this in today’s Best of the Web, btw. So now we’re at the point that he talks about, except as well these guys can’t control their more enthusiastic young crazies and yet still things go their way.
But I think what Mark’s missing, and this is because he’s of a certain age, that all the people in the West he’s talking about are all baby boomers, and everyone behind baby boomers are going to run things a lot differently when the baby boomers have been gracious enough to drop dead. But because everyone in the West runs on democracy, and the baby boom that produced the boomers was so boomy, we basically have to wait that long to get anything accomplished.
January 4th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Yes, good point. It is clear that the post-boomers are rather more level-headed. In that sense Bush-II is more a President for the younger generation, whereas Kerry would have been just a continuation of sad boomer politics.
January 4th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Very sad. Very very sad. Oh god It’s just so pathetic.
I’m not sure how old you are, so I hope I’m not wishing for your demise.
January 4th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
I’m not quite ready for the Soylent Green factories, yet.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Oh that’s a relief. I would feel bad if all this time I was hoping you’d obligingly drop dead.
January 5th, 2006 at 1:11 am
It was around this time four years ago that a book was published on this topic, which quickly zoomed to the top of the bestseller list (thanks in part to Matt Drudge). I was concerned about it at the time, that the book was too extreme, and would be blasted as such. As it turns out, it was praised by many critics, and has made it into the encyclopedia. I am glad to now see that other columnists (even neoconservatives) are taking the same positions.
January 5th, 2006 at 10:57 am
Uh huh. Well the statistics are there, and they’re serious, so it’s hardly surprising that more than one person would write about them. It’s not something you can interpret, like the cyclical nature of global warming in an industrialized age.