In the wake of my column on Dutch emigration some suggested that it could be a unique case, not necessarily applicable to other European nations. Well, Iain Murray picks up on a very similar trend, in Britain.

UPDATE: And French emigration too:

The simple fact is that, in the past few years, young people have been leaving France in unprecedented numbers. More worrying still is that although depopulation was a worry in the French countryside in the Sixties, it now has become a specifically urban phenomenon. Nor is it confined to Paris: Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux and Marseille can all report an exodus of young people towards les pays Anglo-Saxons (the United States and the UK). This fact was acknowledged by politician Nicolas Sarkozy when he made his flying visit to London last month to visit the French community there - at 400,000 people this is (as the newspaper Le Parisien helpfully pointed out) equivalent to one of the largest French cities.

Well, not exactly, but David Frum has found the time to review Mark Steyn’s book and the result is worth your time for Frum gets it exactly right: Steyn has delivered a wake-up call rather than an obituary for a lost continent. Frum very clearly understands the book’s basic flaw:

Demographic trends have a surprising way of reversing themselves with amazing rapidity. Nobody foresaw the baby boom in 1938. And yet only eight years later, birth rates surged all through the developed world, in devastated Germany and Japan as well as in victorious Britain and America. OK, there was a big war in between. But s late as 1966, most forecasters thought the baby boom would continue indefinitely. (That's one reason that Lyndon Johnson was able to persuade the Senate that Medicare could be easily financed.) Six years later, birth rates were plunging.

I for one would not bet the mortgage money that Europe's low birth rates of today will continue for very much longer. Nor would I place much confidence in the continuance of high birth rates among European immigrant populations.

As I’ve pointed out before, there are indeed some trends reported in Europe that give credibility to this claim and in turn they embed some hope in Steyn’s gloomy message.

While we are at it, Johann Hari came up with a similar analysis a few weeks ago, but went one step further in criticizing Steyn:

When the figures fail him, Steyn falls back on urban mythology. After the 9/11 massacres, in his Daily Telegraph column he repeated as fact preposterous claims that Muslim children all over New York had warned their favourite teachers not to go to the World Trade Centre that day. Here, he says, "On the night of September 11th Muslim youths in northern England rampaged through the streets cheering Islam's glorious victory over the Great Satan. They pounded on the hoods of the cars, hammered the doors and demanded the drivers join them in the chants of 'Osama Bin Laden is a great man.'" There is no record of these events on Lexis-Nexis; Steyn has not replied to a request for the source. He says variously that "the old flag" of St George is now "unflyable" in England, and - with shades of Enoch Powell's untraceable "grinning picanninies" - claims he knows "an English lady" who wears a headscarf every time she steps outside to stop Muslims harrassing her. As somebody who lives in a Muslim area, everybody I know who lives here finds this preposterous. But this is Steyn's way with evidence: the extremely atypical is presented as universal, and the urban myth is presented as damning fact.

The anecdotal nature of the book is of course an easy target for Steyn’s critics and to some extent it has always surprised me that the book was not properly footnoted and did not include some numbers to support its basic theories. That brings us back to the assessment that America Alone more than anything is a pamphlet designed to spark debate and hopefully raise an awareness that will help avoid the dark scenario it paints. And Steyn has done that with inimitable verve:

“Statist Europe signed on to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s alleged African proverb – “it takes a village to raise a child” – only to discover they got it backward: on the Continent, the lack of children will raze the village”

Talking about multiculturalism and some of its consequences, here is a TV-interview with Munira mirza one of the authors of the hotly debated report ‘Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism’. Note the last part where the interviewer tries to steer Mirza towards the 'Clash of Civilizations' theory. In response, she makes it very clear that conflicts and confusion within the West as well as ruptures within the Muslim world are the key dynamics that are currently fueling radicalization and jihadist sentiments.

Henryk Broder, one of the few non-Anglo-Saxon writers to focus on Europe's dark future has written a book called "Hurra, Wir Kapitulieren!" ("Hurray! We're Capitulating"). Judging from the excerpts there are probably few new insights offered by Broder, but the German setting gives us some fairly unique anecdotes. This in particular struck me as, well, instructive:

Oskar Lafontaine, a one-time chairman of the Social Democratic Party and German chancellor candidate, sees "commonalities between leftist policies and the Islamic religion." In an interview with Neues Deutschland, he says: "Islam depends on community, which places it in opposition to extreme individualism, which threatens to fail in the West. The second similarity is that the devout Muslim is required to share his wealth with others. The leftist also wants to see the strong help the weak. Finally, the prohibition of interest still plays a role in Islam, much as it once did in Christianity. At a time when entire economies are plunging into crisis because their expectations of returns on investment have become totally absurd, there is a basis for a dialogue to be conducted between the left and the Islamic world."

Lafontaine called upon the West to exercise self-criticism ("We must constantly ask ourselves through which eyes the Muslims see us") and expressed sympathy for the "indignation" of Muslims. According to Lafontaine, "people in Muslim countries have experienced many indignities, one of the most recent being the Iraq war. What we are seeing here is resource imperialism."

Lafontaine's theory of "commonalities" is a very good example of how Europe's future might unfold and I find it a more realistic scenario than the demographic takeover Steyn pictures. At the same time it is equally scary, maybe even scarier if you contemplate that it is Europe’s progressive camp that is now more than willing to subordinate freedom and western values in order to fish in a pond of huge electoral potential.

Some may consider Lafontaine to be on the fringe, but his Linkspartei (‘Left Party’) did extremely well in the last German federal election. As the traditional Social-Democrats are increasingly moving to the center as Merkel’s coalition partners, there is room on the left and Lafontaine’s party will no doubt move into this fresh and attractive space. That by the way is not dissimilar to the Dutch situation where Labour was pounded in the recent election, forced to join a coalition with the Christian-Democrats and the Socialist Party is cleverly picking up the traditional left and new-left voters. They too will have discovered the benefits of finding ‘commonalities’.

Some constructive criticism for Mark Steyn's America Alone, from Christopher Hitchens in City Journal. No excerpts, read the whole thing.

This year was - without a doubt - the year of the books about Europe and Islam. Berlinski, Bawer, Buruma, Phillips, they have all become must-reads in order to get a better understanding of what ails the old continent. Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Institution has brought these writers together to illustrate how their common topic is now channelling the west's penchant for scapegoating America. Eberstadt argues that:

In sum, given the information now assembling about just what is going on in Europe, about how accomodationist European politicians already are, and about how much more they are being called upon to do to appease restive Muslims both Islamist and otherwise, a new, unorthodox answer to the puzzle of anti-Americanism suggests itself. Perhaps these days, on the Continent, the widespread, all-explaining urge to lay everything at the door of the U.S. has little to do with America proper. Perhaps it does not have much to do either with the post-Cold War unipolar world. Perhaps it is not even really about Iraq.

No, perhaps the anti-Americanism of today is best understood instead as a way of being furious in public with somebody for the insecurities and anxieties wrought by Islamist terrorism in this world, including in increasingly Muslim Europe -- an option made even more attractive by the safe bet that Americans, unlike some other people, are unlikely to respond to this rhetoric, let alone to editorial cartoons, by burning cars, slitting throats, or issuing death threats in places like Paris and Amsterdam and Regensburg and London.

It is a bit of a roundabout way to explain anti-Americanism i think, but the piece has so many worthwhile passages that I would still recommend it. Especially since it also looks at the US and how the West in general in characterized by "the refusal to acknowledge painful realities, thoughts, or feelings".

It may get lost among all the media excitement over the Baker-Hamilton report, but it seems to me that another fruitful area for writing reports has emerged in Afghanistan. And I use the plural deliberately as one such report can look at the future of the nation and the West’s strategy towards fixing it, the other one can deal with the failure of NATO countries to share the burden of an increasing workload. Or better, the burden of combat:

Britain's Foreign Office minister says reluctant NATO allies need to “get real” about the threat posed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

Kim Howells told a diplomatic audience at Canada's Foreign Affairs building in Ottawa that Britons are just as frustrated as Canadians about bearing the brunt of heavy fighting in the country's south.

German, Italian, French and Spanish forces patrol relatively quiet
sectors and have refused to allow their troops to engage in combat.
At the NATO summit two weeks ago, those countries agreed to loosen restrictions and promised to help Canadian, British, Dutch and American forces battling the Taliban, but only in emergencies.

This issue has been on the frontburner especially in the UK and Canada where frustration over selective opt-outs by ‘NATO partners’ is understandably growing.

Invoking the NATO’s Article V, its collective defense clause, after 9/11 essentially created the first real combat situation for the organization. By deploying to Afghanistan most NATO governments must have known that it hardly would be a mission focused exclusively on rebuilding and maintaining peace. It was a unique venture in that the peace still had to be established before it could be maintained, but no political leader was willing to wager some political capital on that unpopular notion. This approach solidified the evidence that leaders from Canada and key European nations failed in not only recognizing and articulating the dangers of the post 9/11 world, they willfully neglected to inform their citizens of the nature of the Afghan mission.

We’re now a good five years further and while Canada is under new management and thus less ambivalent, beyond Blair’s Britain and a half-baked Dutch effort there is very limited appetite for beefing up NATO’s efforts. Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Paris and Madrid are not the best places in Europe to invoke the spirit of common defense and joint operations.

I’ve often been asked when my Euro-disparagement first emerged and in response I pinpoint the embarrassing failure of almost all European nations to end the well organized civil war and mass-murder in the former Yugoslavia. Symbolic efforts, peacekeepers and observers paved the way for an ethnic bloodbath that only the United States seemed capable of handling in the end. Kosovo was kept whole by a version of NATO that at the time had a determined nation in the driver’s seat. And by all accounts, the risk profile for the Balkans was a much easier one to digest compared to a mountainscape littered with faith based suicide bombers.

So as Washington’s hands are tied, European leaders in places like Paris and Madrid are deeply mistaken to believe that somehow Kandahar and Kabul can emerge from the rubble, in much the way that Sarajevo and Priština did. Few will understand the urgency, and even fewer will want to put precious political capital on the line to turn the Afghan mission, and NATO’s long-term future, into a success. Needless to say, the outcome of such inaction is worrisome to say the least.

Final word: while admirable we also have to see if British and Canadian efforts can endure mounting domestic criticism and political turbulence.

UPDATE: Some useful comments from Fareed Zakaria on the need to succeed in Afghanistan:

As Iraq has descended into chaos over the last three years, Washington policymakers have often pointed to Afghanistan as the success story in the war on terror. Even those who worry about the situation on the ground agree that the United States and its NATO allies have the right strategy in place; they just think we've devoted too few resources to the problem. In fact, Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a version of Iraq, where the central government has collapsed, disorder is rife and a Qaeda-backed insurgency controls large swathes of the country. In addition, the policies that the United States has in place are at best inadequate. We have tried to handle Afghanistan with an Afghan strategy. But it is now clear that the only way to stabilize the country is to have a Pakistan strategy.

As always, these solutions are multilayered.

After reading the Dutch emigration update, a reader wonders:

" ... the overarching question, however, remains unasked and therefore unanswered. Why? In my lengthy experience in the Netherlands and with the Dutch, I can honestly state that I have never met a more family-orientated culture or a more nationalistic (this is not intended to be a negative in any way) society. Families are close in The Netherlands, closer than they have probably ever been in the United States. I have seen friends suffer great distress when a family member moves beyond walking distance, a local bus ride or a short drive. There is something in the Netherlands that has revived that wanderlust in the Dutch that I had thought (until very recently) died along with Stuyvesant. I would be very interested to know what it is.

I don't think Dutch wanderlust ever died, it has been reignited. And there is not just one reason for that, although the deteriorating quality of life which encomapsses everything for immgirants to crime to environment is probably the most important one. The key accelerator is - much like the 17th century - globalization and wealth.

The Dutch economy has by necessity always been focused on trade and cross-border services. The vast growth of opportunities in an open Europe and a booming Asia - a familiar arena for the Dutch - have made overseas settlement much easier. And, as opposed to Stuyvesant's age, this is no longer the privilege of the upper class. The Dutch with their strong work ethic and broad language skills are a natural fit for the international job market. And, wealth has trickled down the classes too, buying property overseas or just taking the gamble by packing up and go is no longer that disruptive, at least from a financial perspective. The strong family ties and the generous welfare arrangments back home serve as a tangible insurance policy on which any adventurer can always fall back. I have seen many take advantage of it when the going overseas got a little too tough.

Here's an interesting podcast over at PJM by the Sanity Squad, discussing Europe and the latest from Iraq. There is quite a bit that needs to be added to the discussion I think, but for now suffice it to say that there are limits to explain the continent's future from a perspective of 'demographic dogmatism'. There is for instance also a trend reported by Dutch statistics that immigrants over time adapt to European birth rates as economic pressures force women to start working – after all we’re debating burqa bans not because Muslim women are all confined to their homes.

What I do believe is that Europeans will disengage and adapt rather than fight. Most of my family and friends are right-of-center in ideology, but they don’t hesitate to vote for parties on the left as a way of preserving the status quo. Many did so in last week’s Dutch general election. Peace and stability above all.

The Peters-model of radical ethnic cleansing is more likely in Eastern Europe where the population has a materially different economic and social history, but also less immigrants – at least at the moment – to contend with. Again, this also brings home the point to start making the clear distinction between the three tiers of Europe (Old/EU, New/Eastern and Russia) and bring in economics as one of the key drivers for social and cultural change.

The debate gets more complicated, but it is getting better too.

As we increasingly hear that demographics are determining the future of Europe and that droves are leaving the old continent, The Netherlands is always brought up in particular as an example of this phenomenon. Somehow, I’ve always felt that these statements were embellished by various commentators and thankfully the CBS (Dutch Bureau for Statistics) released a sort of interim report last month. And yes, this may indeed be the last year in quite some time to come that the Dutch are adding a net surplus to their population. And with the lowest number of babies born in twenty years, a marginal one of only 13,000 new Dutchies (on a population of 16.3 million) for the first 9 months of this year.

According to this CBS news release, emigration from The Netherlands is expected to be 130,000 for 2006, a record number and an increase of about 12% on the previous year. But half of that number is not Dutch in the first place. That group consists of Turkish immigrants returning home and refugees and asylum seekers who have not managed to obtain the status to legally reside in The Netherlands.

Even so, a large number of Dutch people are leaving and the question now is where are they off too? Well, it may be surprising but the top three of destinations is still European, and a few notable pillars of old continent decay at that. Germany, Belgium and the UK are taking in some 18,000 Dutch emigrants, with Spain and France – often equally described as futureless – taking a respectable 6th and 7th slot on the emigration destination top ten. Canada came in 5th and the USA 10th, and since they’re not listed I suspect that Australia and New Zealand probably come in somewhere in between.

There are a number of reasons for this ‘old continent popularity’. Germany and Belgium offer lower real estate prices, in Spain the weather is nicer while the job market in the UK offers a bit more excitement and earnings potential. On top of that, intra-European moves guarantee you the ability to stay close to home, a prospect that is especially interesting for the retirees who constitute some 10% of all the emigrants.

So, not exactly the massive and desperate journey across the ocean in search for a better life, but a more pragmatic approach to relocating. Still, if you net out those that stay in Europe and take account of immigrant-returnees, we see a remarkable trend to go elsewhere. And if it persists the Dutch population will start to decrease in the years to come.

Related Posts
More on the Dutch Exodus
Euro Exodus, Now The Farmers
Euro Exodus, Part II
Euro Exodus

Contrast this:

Out of the dining room and into the stores; the traditional day of feasting has turned into a day of early holiday shopping for some.

A spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation says some retailers are trying to find a way to take advantage of the fact that "once dinner is over, many families are looking for some kind of entertainment."

With this:

But while consuming mass quantities was once a big deal -- a splurge -- now we're all used to having plenty of food. Now the real splurge consists in getting everyone to take time from their busy schedules to all get together. It's a feast of no-other-priorities! I like it. I think that Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday, because it's all about getting the family together.

And while I am writing this Irene just quotes me a number from the newspaper which says that 36% of children below the age of six have a TV in their room. And, during last week's power outage some parents actually purchased a generator so that the kids could watch TV. Imagine that they would be forced to spend social time with the rest of their family. Or, perish the thought, creatively adapt to the situation by finding some new and alternative ways of entertainment which is what our kids did.

Yes, I know I have argued for the ability of free markets to forge great societies. But eventually we will have to pay some sort of price for offering up the family and the fun of human interaction on the altar of excessive consumerism and passive entertainment.

You know, the Dutch are going to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and some of them, no doubt, would have liked to have gone to the U.S., but the U.S. doesn't really have a legal immigration program. So, if you need to get out in a hurry, it's no good going to the U.S. embassy.

This and many other worthwhile comments come from Mark Steyn who is interviewed over at RWN by John Hawkins. As I have noted here before, Steyn sometimes embellishes his demographic numbers in order to get his point across, so they should be taken with a grain of salt. Yet, his basic message about the bleak future for the West and for Europe in particular stands.

NOTE: The latest demographic tally from The Netherlands can be found here.

Glenn Reynolds provides a few interesting links today. It seems Europe-in-decline watch is turning into a nice little industry all by itself and there is lots to be found here on this site. Two qualifications though: (a) there are regional differences within Europe, so the 'decline-template' should be used carefully and (b) whatever comes to Europe will reach North America's shores, eventually.

I have been a longtime fan of Camille Paglia, in particular because she is a non-conventional thinker and able to destruct both the left and the right with her razor sharp wit. The interview with her yesterday in Salon - in which she covers a variety of current topics - is a must-read.

While clearly identifying Iraq as a mess and Bush as "out of his depth" this onetime Democrat has no qualms about reducing her party to absolute rubble. More importantly, she understands the challenges of our future better than most of her contemporaries, note the following:

But my generation of baby-boom Democrats hasn't done much deep thinking about international issues except in terms of postmodernist fragmentation or fuzzy, smiley-face multiculturalism. We desperately need better candidates.

As for looking to the future here are Paglia's key indicators of impending doom:

I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking. How are we ever going to get wise leadership or sophisticated diplomacy from people who have such a distorted, clichéd view about everything that's wrong with the United States?

And my favorite:

The more liberal parents are, the less contact their children have with religious ideas. That will surely disable our future American leaders from being able to understand the religious commitment of Islamic fundamentalists. Liberal journalists often seem incredulous about how anyone would seek death for religious principles. But that was the entire history of early Christianity, when the saints willingly sought martyrdom. We're heading into that world again.

Paglia is not calling for a religious revival, but for a measure of historical and religious awareness. Looking around me I am astounded to note how incredibly shallow historical knowledge is these days, especially among the 'well-educated' middle classes, the group supposedly forming the backbone of our society. It is one of the key reasons why western societies are so divided over rogue nations going nuclear and Muslim zealots blowing themselves up on commuter trains: most of us simply can’t recognize the phenomenon, much less conceive of any action to protect ourselves against it.

Even as a secular person, I would still strongly advocate to regain some of the moral bearings that religion has given us and at the same time try and raise a new generation with some basic historical awareness. The fact that I grew up in a house stacked with historical works and a father who had seen – and taken me – to war cemetery after war cemetery in Europe did at least leave me in a position where I could write the stuff that I write here on this site.

And Paglia is therefore on the mark in arguing that the absence of any clear leadership from either the right or the left in these challenging times is so troubling. So far we’ve been lucky in escaping any real disaster but we better start investing in a new generation that is bound to face situations where luck is no longer a sufficient enough tool to ward of our destruction.

Have a good weekend. Next week it will be Theo Van Gogh week over here.

Don't miss Michelle Malkin's video interview with Mark Steyn. Again, demographics, Europe and US-European relationships feature prominently.

UPDATE: And for Steyn aficionados, here is another interview with him at Human Events. Yes, he is promoting a book.

Timothy Garton Ash weighs in on the Armenian Genocide bill which passed in France last week, and pleased he is not:

No one can legislate historical truth. In so far as historical truth can be established at all, it must be found by unfettered historical research, with historians arguing over the evidence and the facts, testing and disputing each other's claims without fear of prosecution or persecution.

In the tense ideological politics of our time, this proposed bill is a step in exactly the wrong direction. How can we credibly criticise Turkey, Egypt or other states for curbing free speech, through the legislated protection of historical, national or religious shibboleths, if we are doing ever more of it ourselves?

It is a clear message to those that argue that criticizing religion, culture and denying tragic events of the past tend to inflame, offend and polarize. They argue that we need certain laws to control our ‘malign’ impulses that trigger the need to say or write things that are beyond conventional truths or that are not ‘socially acceptable’. That approach not only neutralizes debate, it rejects mechanisms such as research, analysis, rationality, and whatever other tools we have at our disposal to find some sort of balance or agreement on what is right or wrong. Garton Ash is right that we lose our credibility if we pass laws that chip away at the basic freedoms that our societies have been built on. What is more, we will lose ourselves.

The notion of Europe’s demographic bust is questioned once more. France's policies to avoid one are apparently paying off through some clever social engineering:

But the propensity of women here to have more babies has little to do with notions of French romance or the population's formerly strong religious ties to the Roman Catholic Church.

France heavily subsidizes children and families from pregnancy to young adulthood with liberal maternity leaves and part-time work laws for women. The government also covers some child-care costs of toddlers up to 3 years old and offers free child-care centers from age 3 to kindergarten, in addition to tax breaks and discounts on transportation, cultural events and shopping.

Very few countries so far have been able to get childcare, inextricably linked to birthrates, right. A prime example are the Dutch where women have been urged by relentless government campaigning to join the workforce, but where any solid childcare plans to support these policies have been sorely lacking. It is not that different here in Canada where the current conservative government has been trying to encourage moms or dads to stay at home, but the monetary reward for that so far has been paltry to say the least. And that is where the essence of encouraging birth rates and extended childcare is: to what extent can the state interfere and fund it all?

For the statist French that has been a relatively easy question to answer and that is why they are getting results. Now the issue is whether all these babies will eventually find a job in France’s moribund economy.

In November’s edition of Prospect Eric Kaufmann puts forward the idea that Europe may follow America in terms of demographics and in turn become a more conservative and religious entity, leaving its liberal-secular peak behind in the past. So, instead of the popular immigration and economics induced demise, he suggests this alternative:

Even so, religiosity—as belief rather than attendance—significantly predicts a more conservative ideological orientation. Though we are unlikely to see the rise of evangelical Christian politics in Europe, we may find a long-term drift towards more conservative social values. Europeans will become more "traditional" on moral issues like abortion, family values, religious education and gay marriage. Inter-faith co-operation between Christians and Muslims on these issues is quite possible since ecumenical structures are already in place in most countries to facilitate it. The ease with which conservative Protestants and traditionalist Catholics and Jews have co-operated in the US may be taken as evidence. Much will depend on how these ideological synergies are channelled by parties and electoral systems in different countries, but by the mid-21st century, the peak of secular European politics will be long past. As in America, politicians will need to stay on the right side of religious sentiment to ensure they are not outflanked by their opponents.

It’s an interesting theory and you should read the whole article to appreciate the complexity of projecting demographic and social trends. Stanley Kurtz at The Corner is on the mark in arguing that Kaufmann‘s prediction may not be all that reliable, but that we equally can not afford to take any other scenario for granted all that easily.

I’ve long argued that pessimism of the ‘Sharia 2050’ nature relies on overly simplistic assumptions. However promoting such scenarios can help today in trying to alter tomorrow’s outcomes. Kaufmann has just given us a few more tools to predict and influence that future.

A very worthwhile podcast interview by Ed Driscoll with Mark Steyn on TCS.

French writer and high-school philosophy teacher Robert Redeker is the latest in the list of Europeans whose life is no longer safe as a result of exercising their right to free speech. The list is getting longer and is almost exclusively European. And as this Time piece reveals, those on it can not automatically assume that their rights are wholeheartedly supported by the authorities who often want to hedge their own ambivalent position.

Here is an instructive interview with German-Syrian political scientist Bassam Tibi who has actively studied and campaigned for better methods of Muslim integration in Europe. Read the whole interview, but the most salient bit is this when Tibi was asked if an Islam conference organized by Germany’s Interior minister had yielded any results:

No, because the biggest taboo is that there even is a conflict at all. Everyone denies that. Instead people talk about misunderstandings and how these should be resolved. But a conflict of values is not a misunderstanding. Islamic orthodoxy and the German constitution are not compatible. And that is why the Islam conference failed.

And being in Germany, Tibi was able to delve into the historic vaults and demonstrate how you can de-program some totalitarian minds:

I am thinking in particular about the re-education programs which were carried out in Germany after the Third Reich. Social studies teachers and political science faculties were given the task of turning young people into democrats. That worked then. Why shouldn't we have a similar model for Muslims? In youth clubs, or during Islamic instruction in schools. Of course it takes a long time, 50 years say, but we have to start.

A pretty robust approach if you asked me, and one with a proven track record. Now brace yourself for the comprehensive debate over such a curriculum’s content and, even worse, its mandatory implementation. In that respect Europe has changed from the late forties and early fifties, and, not for the better.

Since I do not want to sound overly alarmist and let one incident define a broad social trend, I initially stayed away from the attacks on ambulances in The Netherlands. Yet there was simply too much to ignore and last night another incident occurred, in my old hometown of all places:

Two police officers in Vlaardingen were slightly injured last night after they offered assistance to two ambulance workers after they were threatened. In the downtown area of the city they were set upon when trying to help someone who had lost consciousness.

The reason for the threatening behaviour wasn’t clear. The windows of the ambulance were kicked in after which the police was called in. When it arrived some 250 men turned against the police.

Crime numbers however it seems are down, no doubt providing some good ammunition for the governing parties during the election campaign. It is probably harder to come up with indicators that measure the moral rot that enables some to attack first aid crews, as well as police when they arrive on the scene.

Michelle Malkin writes about how the Bratz culture is corrupting our young girls and how we need to find better role models. Couldn't agree more. But she ends with a remarkable mea culpa:

Not that it's so easy. I confess I broke down and let my 6-year-old daughter have a Bratz lunchbox. Now she wants to be a Bratz doll for Halloween, an idea that warrants only one word (a word not said often enough): "No."

And sure enough, what did the Dorsmans do a few months back after being pressured by a six and four year old? They made a Bratz birthday cake for the four year old. It was a Baby Bratz one, but still. Bad, bad, bad.

Not sure if this falls into the category of 'better late than never', but it does indicate a willingness to take a clear stance and relegate cultural relativism to the sidelines:

The president of the European Commission expressed disappointment that European leaders failed to defend Pope Benedict XVI over his recent remarks about Islam, in comments published Sunday.

Jose Manuel Barroso said that while Europe must take the threat of Islamic extremists "very seriously," it must not confuse tolerance with "a form of political correctness" that puts others' values above its own.

"I was disappointed that there weren't more European leaders who said, 'Of course the pope has the right to express his point of view,'" Barroso told Germany's Welt am Sonntag weekly. "We must defend our values."

Barroso also urged Europeans to encourage moderate Islamic leaders to take a stronger stance against the extremists.

"The problem is not the comments of the pope, but the reaction of the extremists," Barroso said.

Encouraging.

And there is another good debate about Europe and its challenged future on the Blow Week in Review, this week featuring Mark Steyn, Glenn Reynolds and Austin Bay.

But the recoil of many Dutch people from Hirsi Ali suggests that the tolerance about which Holland preens is a compound of intellectual sloth and moral timidity. She was more trouble than the Dutch evidently think free speech is worth.

[ ...]

But Europe, she thinks, is invertebrate. After two generations without war, Europeans "have no idea what an enemy is." And they think, she says, that leadership is an antiquated notion because they believe that caring governments can socialize everyone to behave well, thereby erasing personal accountability and responsibility.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali coins a new term for the old continent while having lunch with George Will. A riveting read.

Yes, Pope Benedict XVI fits into that long line of polemicists who have in- or unintentionally run afoul of the Muslim world as Der Spiegel argues here. Rushdie, Hirsi Ali and of course Theo van Gogh come to mind. But if we use that analogy than almost immediately it becomes evident that the Pope’s comments have most likely not been that inadvertent after all. At least I believe that this pontiff is far too clever and experienced to have miscalculated the impact of his comments, he was after all the ideological force behind his media savvy predecessor, John Paul II.

The question now of course is if the free wrold needs to rally behind what Christopher Hitchens calls a “moribund church” or the force of secular reason in dealing with radical Islam. The Pope has put his option the table, but I fear that there will not be that many takers. On the other hand we know that reason and secularism are, despite their compelling nature, not exactly providing the morally strong cohesion that we need going forward. And therein we find the hard problem: the West remains far more divided than its current opponents who despite their own internal divisions have embraced something that we seemed to have lost a long time ago. Like him or not, our German pontiff is probably one of the few to have articulated that particular weakness.

Andrew Sullivan is back from his sojourn, part of which he spent in Amsterdam. I was looking forward to some interesting observations, but alas, even our Sully is stuck in the same old rut when it comes to defining things Dutch:

It was nonetheless eye-opening to visit a free country, compared with the U.S. Observing people actually allowed to relax over a joint and a cappuccino in a coffee-house, or buy some soul-expanding mushrooms at small, regulated stores as common as Starbucks was a reminder that not every society is terrified of pleasure or freedom or happiness.

It depends on how you define freedom, but compared to the US and Canada, the Dutch are probably overregulated and overtaxed to an extraordinary degree, so let's keep things in perspective. Yes, this is probably a function of being one of the world’s most densely populated nations, but also because of a predominant culture that in the post-war years came to believe deeply in relieving the individual from as much responsibility as possible, the nanny state in full swing. Yet, that overarching and impersonal state at the same time retreated to let individuals flourish completely unhindered in their own domain. Sounds paradoxical, but there is no other way to explain it I think: we take care of you and you can essentially do whatever you like. The breeding ground of hedonist man.

Note that I am not opposed to drug legalization, on the contrary, but the Dutch model has somehow created sizeable groups of people that are devoid of any moral or normative compass. Consider the latest, from today’s news:

The CNV Companies Union raised the alarm about the aggression with which ambulance staff and paramedics are confronted. Last month one paramedic was assaulted in Amsterdam. This happened after he decided to treat a woman who had become unwell, something that was not fully appreciated by bystanders.

"The aggression is often the result of wrong expectations the public has about the work of ambulance employees", according to Jaap Jongejan of the union. He thinks it is time for a campaign to raise the awareness among the public about what ambulances and paramedics do.

Note how Jongejan finds the solution in launching an “awareness campaign”, that great tool with which the welfare state seeks to educate its citizenry. It’s beyond belief to learn that a new phenomenon of randomly assaulting emergency staff is the topic, but there’s probably no telling what you reap if you engage in unfettered social experimentation. And there’s more:

This spring the department of Social Affairs announced that 60% of ambulance staff has been subjected to violence. According to the latest numbers a figure that has increased significantly since.

Now, there is probably no direct no correlation between smoking pot and attacking paramedics. Still, the increasing absence of basic moral and responsible behavior I believe can probably only be found in the toxic realm of an unbound citizenry and a state that has totally misread its role in a modern society. However free the Dutch are, the excesses of that freedom now beg for the state to enforce at least some normative behavior among its citizens, and that I am afraid will take more than just a simple awareness campaign.

Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club has written an excellent essay for PJ Media on why reason needs to be subsidiary to faith when fighting a war. It echoes many of my favorite themes and directly addresses the issue as to why the West is so poorly positioned to face the jihadist threat.

While everyone is pre-occupied today with the forced conversion of the two released Fox journalists, it may be worthwhile to point to the increasing rate of voluntary conversions. From Time Magazine there is this absolutely must-read piece about westerners converting to Islam. It’s a topic I have touched on before and the phenomenon may not be as mind-boggling as it initially sounds. Affluent western societies have created a class of people looking for answers that somehow can not be found in freedom and individuality and, as it happens, there is a creed that does provide some of these answers:

But one common refrain is that in an increasingly secular world in which society's rules get looser by the day, Islam provides a detailed moral map covering everything from friendships to protecting the environment. And for Western youths, taking up Islam can also serve as an outlet for rebellion. A majority of converts, especially in Western Europe, are in their late teens or 20s. "Islam is a kind of refuge for those who are downtrodden and disenfranchised because it has become the religion of the oppressed," says Farhad Khosrokhavar, a Paris professor and the author of several books on Muslim extremism. "Previously--say, 20 years ago--they may have chosen communism or gone to leftist ideologies. Now Islam is the religion of those who fight against imperialism, who are treated unjustly by the arrogant Western societies and so on."

While I am open to jokes about this, the “moral map” argument is one that can not be dismissed that easily, especially in Europe which is far more secular and disoriented than the US and Canada. The outcome of a conflict between two competing ideological strains is often determined by the strength and coherence of each and I suspect that a religion that has submerged the individual in favor of a powerful group dogma will stand a good chance of having the upper hand when confronted with loosely organized self-serving individuals.

Sorry to resume blogging on such a pessimistic note. Communism could be defeated by demonstrating the benefits of wealth and freedom, but the grassroots of our new enemy isn’t particularly interested in either.

Not only did the Hirsi Ali affair bring down the Dutch government, it was a phenomenal example of what has gone wrong in western societies, particularly in Europe, over the past few decades. AEI’s Christopher DeMuth uses it as a case study to underline six common problems which that are accelerating the steady moral decay of the western world. They are, according to DeMuth, the following: (1) ” terrorism’s global reach and use of technology, (2) the social and political failures in the Middle East, (3) mass migration caused by wealth disparities, (4) failure of democracies, (5) the extreme division of labor and, one of my absolute favorites, (6) the fallout created by excessive wealth and self-gratification:

Sixth, life in the wealthy liberal societies has become exceptionally pleasant and gratifying. We like it that way, and many of us have come to resent any impositions on our repose and peace of mind. A striking characteristic of Western society, especially its elites, is that violence and the use of force have come to be abhorred per se--regardless of whether it is of the offensive, destructive sort or of the defensive, self-preserving sort.

Exactly.

And how it pollutes a new generation: Birthday registries for kids.

Today, four years ago.

Over at GayPatriot. Key excerpts:

One crucial difference between the US and Europe is this: in the US, the question of whether “Christianism” represents a threat to American secular democracy has long been the subject of brutally frank and passionate public debate; in most of Europe, by contrast, an equally honest, no-holds-barred debate about the threat of European Islam remains unimaginable. And Europe is paying the price for it.

And:

Many leftists, including some gay “leaders,” actually admire Islam for the same reason they once admired Soviet Communism – because it’s the only big-time ideology that won’t knuckle under to American capitalism, which, in their eyes, is the world’s great evil.

Read the whole thing.

For some obscure reason I always find myself going through the morning of 9/11 step by step, minute by minute, hijacked plane by hijacked plane. Even now there are days when I try to relive it and bring some order into that chaotic morning. If you go and see United 93 – which I did yesterday – you will go through exactly the same, an almost real-time experience of reliving of what happened that morning. And order you need to create as the movie reveals the chaos and confusion that governed the various flight control centers, something brought home poignantly by the fact that a number of the actors are in fact the actual people that manned these centers on 9/11.

Walking out of the theater there wasn’t the feeling that there was anything new or revolutionary, no; all the facts were very clear and transparent before and after watching the film. The advance question was what director Ron Greengrass would make of it all, and it is fair to say he delivered, even in the parts where speculation was required to fill in some of the factual blanks. While everyone is hyped over the contrast between the praying hijacker and some passengers reciting the Lord’s Prayer, I was taken aback by one other peculiar confrontation. It’s the moment where one of the flight attendants hurries back to the center of the plane to help a severely injured passenger – knifed by one of the terrorists – and flashes the Red Cross emergency kit in front of a terrorist with a look on her face saying, “Please”. The hijacker relents and allows her to treat the dying man, but it was probably the one area where Greengrass’ creative license was used a little too generously.

Yet, it did a number of important things. It highlighted that the hijackers struggled with a degree of uncertainty, it pinpointed the religious aspect with the obvious Red Cross crusader connotation, but above all it allowed the viewer to distill a measure of hope that things might work out well – something that defies logic and yet you’re tempted by it. It gives you something to cling to during the final minutes: there is hope; maybe the airliner will land safely after all. That expectation is fueled by the presence of a pilot with one-engine experience among the passengers who bravely declares that with radio help from the ground he could possibly land flight 93. You’re drawn into the possibility that the passenger revolt might actually work.

So my re-piecing and re-ordering of events may after all be a subconscious attempt to find that redeeming shard of information that will somehow transform 9/11 into something more palatable, something that can neutralize the fear and uncertainty created on that day. Yet, I know better but the omnipresence of the question “Is it too soon?” over the past week indicates that many actually think that the shrill reality of that day can not be revisited again. It points to a feeling that America is still busy looking for facts that can sanitize the horrendous attacks into something that won’t be as haunting, something that won’t repeat itself.

And therein of course do we find United 93’s ultimate strength. The savage and dreadful way in which the plane falls into the hijackers' hands, the ultimate futility of the resistance and the definitive crash into that field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, throws the bare facts once more in front of America and the world at large. There are no redeeming points, there was no hope on that day and any group that is capable of hijacking and crashing four commercial airliners within a few hours is no doubt poised for more in the future. But that knowledge remains something that many would like to blot out conveniently, something which we have also witnessed in Europe following its first encounters with jihadist terror. The justifiable and positive instinct to move on has a nasty fellow traveler called the willingness to forget.

So, there can’t be enough United 93-type films. The test will be in how they evolve over time. Not only will more facts see the light of day, but our attitudes and perceptions will develop to a level where again the events of that morning are reworked and reinterpreted. As long as we keep doing that there is hope that we can face and fight that very real and lethal terrorist threat. But, if we give in to sanitizing history and creating false expectations we are lost. Greengrass' film provides a sliver of hope that we will not give in and have the ability to fight, but the story of 9/11 needs to be retold relentlessly before I can really begin to believe that.

NOTE: There is a huge round-up of blogger reviews over at Hot Air.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I did review one other Greengrass film earlier: Bloody Sunday. That by the way was not exactly a balanced and overly factual piece of work, but it proves the point that filmed entertainment has indeed an unusual capability to rewrite history.

Indeed, an alarming number of Western Europeans don't seem to grasp that freedom and prosperity aren't the default condition of the human species - and that when these things come under threat, a sanguine passivity isn't the best repsonse.

Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept, page 133

Take the entirety of human history and you will note that the rare combination of freedom and prosperity is an aberration. It's great to have it, but we'll have to fight to preserve it.

In all my writings about Theo van Gogh never did I pay any real attention to the famous brother of his great-grandfather, Vincent. It wasn't immediately relevant to the story - apart from Theo's rants about royalties the Dutch state owed his family - and therefore I left it out almost all of the time.

There is a Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the last time I visited it was in 1990, the year that marked the 100th anniversary of Vincent's tragic suicide. Of all the paintings on display the one that left the deepest impression and continues to do so, was Wheatfield with Crows painted not long before Vincent van Gogh's death in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. This work is often interpreted as representative of the painter's dark side which manifested itself through depressions and ultimately his suicide at age 37. For that he picked a wheatfield where he shot himself.

Of course, when you look at the work it isn't overly difficult to extrapolate its significance to Europe today. Dark clouds are gathering over the shining wheatfield and the crows further add to the sense of gloom. In such an ominous situation it is not easy to find an easy and quick way out and Vincent van Gogh appropriately included three paths, representing three different directions. If I were to translate these to Europe today it would probably mean: muddle through, take decisive action or give up. As obvious as the choice may seem, it is incredibly hard to make a positive one as Vincent van Gogh himself discovered.

Claire Berlinski talks to FrontPage Magazine and while she is given given to some hyperbole - but that sells these days - her general argument about Europe and its dim future is accurate.

In the interview there is a link to Mark Steyn who has reviewed the recent spate of books on Europe's decline. Favorite quote:

However, if, like Clive Davis, you find Bawer and Berlinski too shrill, try Charles Murray's new book, In Our Hands. This is a fairly technical economic plan to replace the U.S. welfare system, but, in the course of it, he observes that in the rush to the waterfall the European canoe is well ahead of America's. Murray stops crunching the numbers and makes the point that, even if it were affordable, the European social democratic state would still be fatal. "Give people plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor," he writes. "When life becomes an extended picnic, with nothing of importance to do, ideas of greatness become an irritant." If Bawer's book is a wake-up call, Murray reminds us that western Europe long ago threw away the alarm clock and decided to sleep in.

Sure, it's not the end of the west, but to me it is another depressing example of how today's social mores are corrupting children's lives. Read For girls, is 12 the new 15?

The terminolgoy keeps getting better. The latest buzzword finds its origins in the epicenter of Western decline, France.

European demographics have been the theme over the past week and general interest in it has always been driven by projections of Europe’s collapsing birthrate and the often cited Muslim baby-boom. And while some have poured cold water on these notions before, they have remained fairly persistent absence any numbers to debunk them. Yet, evidence from the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) does indeed appear to support the claim that the birthrates of second-generation immigrants adjust towards that of the native population:

Non-western immigrant women are getting less babies. The number of children produced by the second generation of immigrants is almost equal to that of native Dutch women.

[ … ]

Especially the number of births given by Moroccan women has decreased sharply over the past decade. The first generation Moroccan women who were born between 1945 and 1949 got an average of 5.4 children. For women of the first generation who were born twenty years later that number has been halved.

The age at which the second generation of immigrant women becomes a mother has also moved closer to that of the native inhabitants. For them the average age in 2004 was 30 years, Antillian and Aruban women are even somewhat older when they get their first child.

Furthermore, immigrant women are increasingly childless, report the researchers. Turkish, Moroccan, Surinam and Antillian women are more often without children at age 35 than local women.

This is not an insignificant finding and does indeed put the “Sharia 2050” theory, always more of an argumentative estimate, into question. It also underlines that immigrants do integrate as their reproductive behaviour can not be seen in isolation from their social and economic circumstances.

It doesn’t mean we can abandon some of our deeper concerns over Europe and its future, they stand, but we do have to better understand the numbers that underlie these alarmist assumptions.

The European birth deficits are compensated for almost exclusively by immigrants who in turn have more babies than the average European family, according to EU Business. It's not an entirely surprising conclusion, but it's nice to have some firm numbers in place supporting it.

Related Posts
More Euro-Demographics
The Patriarchy Returns
Europe's Next Generation
Baby Bonus

A number of you sent me a link to this article on baby euthanasia in The Netherlands. Although I do not believe that Dutch attitudes to this practice can be automatically qualified as “the kind of activities that got some German doctors hanged after Nuremberg”, I do underwrite the "slippery slope" theory:

A committee set up to regulate the practice will begin operating in the next few weeks, effectively making Holland, where adult euthanasia is legal, the first country in the world to allow “baby euthanasia” as well.

The development has angered opponents of euthanasia who warn of a “slippery slope” leading to abuses by doctors and parents, who will be making decisions for individuals incapable of expressing a will.

Here is one case:

When Frank and Anita’s daughter Chanou was born with an extremely rare, incurable illness in August 2000, they knew that her life would be short and battled against the odds to make it happy.

They struggled around the clock against their baby’s pain. “We tried all sorts of things,” said Anita, a 37-year-old local government worker. “She cried all the time. Every time I touched her it hurt.”

Chanou was suffering from a metabolic disorder that had resulted in abnormal bone development. Doctors gave her no more than 30 months to live. “We felt terrible watching her suffer,” said Anita at their home near Amsterdam. “We felt we were letting her down.”

Frank and Anita began to believe that their daughter would be better off dead. “She kept throwing up milk that was fed through a tube in her nose,” said Anita. “She seemed to be saying, ‘Mummy, I don’t want to live any more. Let me go’.”

Eventually, doctors agreed to help the baby die at seven months. The feeding was stopped. Chanou was given morphine. “We were with her at that last moment,” said Anita. “She was exhausted. She took a very deep last breath. It was so peaceful. It made me feel at peace inside to know that she wasn’t suffering any more.”

The core of the issue is that any law to regulate euthanasia banks on the moral integrity of parents and doctors and their willingness to co-operate with law enforcement officers to the extent the law requires them to do so. As we know, moral values are increasingly becoming subsidiary to convenience and the warped belief of entitlement that has pervaded our western society. Therefore, without discounting the pain and suffering in Chanou's case, I despair at the thought of how a generation from now Dutch euthanasia laws can effectively be used to manage the cost of healthcare and create the picture perfect family.

NOTE: This is again not an example of Dutch tolerance or liberalism, no, the enactment of the practice once more underlines the Dutch need to pragmatically regulate anything that moves. The outcome of which can often be worse than the problem it sought to regulate in the first place.

Francis Fukuyama has taken a closer look at Europe’s struggle with radical Islam and considers the various options the continent has to proactively engage the problems it is facing. And Fukuyama gets it, offering a strategy that is very similar to the Peaktalk-approach:

Governments need to clamp down on extremists and jihadists in ways that do not risk further alienating minority communities; their aim must be to integrate moderate Muslims better while avoiding a right-wing populist backlash.

The toughest part however is to come up with a solid integration model as sending every Muslim back to his native grounds with an incentive payment to do so from the European taxpayer is simply not a viable option. Fukuyama notes that time is indeed running out for Europe and his suggestion of offering a positive Americanized version of integration would most likely offer the best road to success:

The problem that most Europeans face today is that they don't have a vision of the kinds of positive cultural values their societies stand for and should promote, other than endless tolerance and moral relativism. What each European society needs is to invent an open form of national identity similar to the American creed, an identity that is accessible to newcomers regardless of ethnicity or religion.

But in that we can already discern the difficulties: the absence of any positive cultural values and the inability to define a set at a point in time when Europe’s nation states are increasingly drifting towards abandoning their national values in favor of a bland Euro-label, designed in Brussels.

It once more highlights the need to let each European nation define its core cultural values, something which by itself will be a serious and lenghty process of soul searching. The long post-war journey build on secularism and relativism has bred a generation that is terribly ill-equipped to define these positive cultural values, let alone come up with a message that could attract or even integrate others. And should there be sufficient appetite to engage in such a fundamental debate, any positive outcome will be subject to the left and right sides of political spectrum finding some sort of consensus. This is a particularly tall order and even if it’s filled it will take time, something which according to Fukuyama, is in short supply.

On the other side of the integration divide however there is less ambiguity or cultural confusion, on the contrary. Call them positive, call them negative, the group that you seek to integrate has a very consistent set of values. Who can honestly blame it for so far being unwilling or unable to accept the loosely defined moral framework that seems to be sinking the European ship?

Cathy Seipp - who also runs the excellent Cathy’s World blog - had an interesting column up in the LA Times yesterday built around the notion that:

“ … one of the great paradoxes of our time is that two groups most endangered by political Islam, gays and women, somehow still find ways to defend it”

While a somewhat sweeping generalization, it goes to the heart of the Fortuynist argument that the groups that benefited most from the liberalization of our society in the 1960s and 70s, probably are least aware of what they stand to lose if radical Muslims and their western appeasers are allowed to embrace and implement a new social agenda.

Seipp’s claims sparked a sharp rebuff from Gabriel Rotello on the Huffington Post where he countered by compiling a list of notable gays and women who have taken on the excesses of radicalism in our midst. That of course is a fairly superficial way of addressing the issue as anyone can come up with a list that contains Sullivan, Bawer, Manji, Hirsi Ali and the late Fortuyn. But it doesn’t address the core of the issue and therefore Rotello largely misses the point.

The fact that the focus is on these few brave individuals that speak up and who now in some cases have to live under police protection proves Seipp’s point: it is the left at large that has been silent. Where is that mass movement, where are the rallies, those concerted efforts that characterized women’s and gay movements from the 1960s onwards? And it is not just gays or women: there is a string of left-wing causes which always managed to find a joint umbrella under which it protested the free west’s accomplishments, think of the “women against nukes” or the various “animal rights” groups. I grew up in a country that was in the vanguard of this leftist revolution and which as a result spawned a political and media establishment that was firmly rooted in the values of this post-war social and cultural revolution.

And therein lays the exact problem. The journey from young and dynamic social renewal to becoming entrenched and institutionalized interests does not really allow for ideological deviation. On the contrary, and any alignment against the politically correct establishment is punished by expulsion which is precisely what someone like Pim Fortuyn experienced. “The bullet” as one of Fortuyn’s assistants remarked shortly after his death; “came from the left”. And although I am hardly an expert on the dynamics of gay or women’s rights movements, I have read enough of Andrew Sullivan and Tammy Bruce to know that their views are not terribly popular among the established constituencies that helped propel these writers to prominence.

The mainstream left of recent is confused and struggling to find a response and a revamped agenda to the challenges of the new century where capitalism is triumphant and jihadism the next mortal threat. The absence of a clear new agenda combined with a desperate attachment to the old one hardly makes for a compelling call to take to the streets and protest ‘en masse’ for basic rights such as drawing a simple cartoon.

And so it is today. Last Friday’s demonstration in support of free speech at the Danish Embassy yielded only a few hundred participants, among them two rather famous men who have long ago been ejected by the left. It underlines that today’s progressives – those who look forward – remain small in numbers. The North American and European majority consists of people who are either part of the confused and silent left or sufficiently lethargic and disinterested to stay home while their rights and future are steadily frittered away. Not a great slate to defend the free world with, but then the mass protest movements of the left started out small too. Let’s see if the left remains silent or if somehow their own dissidents can force them into some critical thinking and finally some action.

I've been meaning to link to CompassPoint's interview with Bruce Bawer, but I never got around to actually doing it. Today Glenn today reminds of the interview again as well as Bawer's new book. Read the whole interview, Bawer nails the subject matter superbly.

From cartoons to nukes, Andrew Sullivan connects.

Amid the avalanche of cartoon-related news and analysis there was a piece from Victor Davis Hanson that in my mind stood out as one of the best of the week and the Danish cartoons weren’t even the main theme of this superb column. It was about war and its inevitability, and how the West has unlearned to wage it:

Modern life in Western countries has also become so privileged and protected that it is hard to convince affluent suburbanites that shooting and bombing your way to power remains a norm in much of the world. Wealthy moderns too often imagine that issues of governance, religion, and tribal affiliation are solved through talk shows, lawsuits, or “60 Minutes” reports. Mostly, though, these conflicts abroad continue to be settled through violence.

It is hard to keep Americans focused on necessary sacrifices amidst the glare of contemporary leisure distractions and pleasures. It is difficult to ask taxpayers to forego some of their social entitlements to increase national investment in defense. It is painful to lose Western youth in awful landscapes such as Mogadishu or the Sunni Triangle for the abstraction of “freedom.”

If it is hard to keep America focused, imagine how a message about increasing armed commitments overseas goes down in the average Canadian and European household.

The generation that lived through the great depression and that fought the Second World War has mostly passed away; their children are retiring and have very little appetite to man the barricades to argue the need for a pro-active and well-funded military. Their children in turn have grown up in the Cold War era which stood for prosperity, stability and peace through deterrence. And when the Soviet empire disappeared from the map and even the threat of war evaporated, all that was left was promoting liberal democracy and infinite consumption. As it happens, this will be the generation to make the calls this time around and as opposed to their grandparents, they haven't exactly been tested by a severe economic depression and the need to fight for survival.

I happen to know all about it as I am one of them. We got it for free, for nothing and we got an awful lot. And we are still getting it. A lot of wealth. And it's very hard to part with that.

NOTE: The debate about going to Afghanistan was not just a political battle. In an excellent and timely example of VDH's argument, now the Dutch military unions are questioning how an overseas deployment is going to impact their private lives:

Dutch military unions predicted on Wednesday many soldiers will opt out of the latest deployment to the southern province of Uruzgan in Afghanistan.

The AFMP and ACOM unions blamed the high number of overseas missions and moderate pay for the expected reluctance among troops to sign up for the Afghan mission.

Limited enthusiasm among the troops for the last mission cannot be attributed to the potential risks in Uruzgan, the unions said.

"For some this is the seventh, eight time they are being deployed overseas," AFMP chairman Wim van den Brug said. "That is a heavy burden on one's private life."

And this is a "peace-keeping" mission. I wonder what the military unions will advise their members if it is time for a real war.

" The West has to be able to define itself, show its strength, also when it comes to cultural and intellectual matters and be able to show that there are limits to what is acceptable to us. At the same time we can entertain a strong relationship with Islamic countries. Such an approach will contain the influence of Islam and it will strengthen the power and influence of Islamic nations that strive to separate church and state. It will curtail political adventurism in both western and Islamic countries "

[Pim Fortuyn, Against the Islamization of our Culture, 1997]

In order to live up to Fortuyn’s vision – music to the ears of the those propagating America’s mission to bring democracy to the Middle East – it will be necessary for the West to not only live up to it, but to do it together and with one voice. Let's see if there is an inclination among western nations to stand up, and speak up about its culture and traditions with one voice.

Here is the European Union:

Plans for a European press charter committing the media to "prudence" when reporting on Islam and other religions, were unveiled yesterday.

Franco Frattini, the European Union commissioner for justice, freedom and security, revealed the idea for a code of conduct in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. Mr Frattini, a former Italian foreign minister, said the EU faced the "very real problem" of trying to reconcile "two fundamental freedoms, the freedom of expression and the freedom of religion".

Hmm. Not quite the self-definition Fortuyn had in mind I think. Let’s see what Canada’s new Conservative government had to say about it:

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay issued a statement Wednesday noting that the drawings, which appeared in some European publications, have caused offence in Canada and abroad. "However, we condemn the violent protests that have occurred in some parts of the world, and find the attacks on foreign diplomatic missions particularly deplorable."

MacKay added that while freedom of expression is a legally enshrined principle in Canada, "it must be exercised responsibly."

Better, but note that in MacKay’s statement “freedom of expression” is subsidiary to “exercising it responsibly" and not the other way around. That most probably does not qualify as “defining yourself” and making clear what is ultimately acceptable. Well, that leaves us the President of the United States who also weighed in yesterday, sitting next to Jordan’s King Abdullah:

I first want to make it very clear to people around the world that ours is a nation that believes in tolerance and understanding. In America we welcome people of all faiths. One of the great attributes of our country is that you're free to worship however you choose in the United States of America.

Secondly, we believe in a free press. We also recognize that with freedom comes responsibilities. With freedom comes the responsibility to be thoughtful about others. Finally, I have made it clear to His Majesty and he made it clear to me that we reject violence as a way to express discontent with what may be printed in a free press. I call upon the governments around the world to stop the violence, to be respectful, to protect property, protect the lives of innocent diplomats who are serving their countries overseas.

Better still, but I can’t escape the conclusion that the focus is again primarily on tolerance and responsibility, “we believe in a free press” can hardly be qualified as a strong and self-defining statement. Sure it’s good and clear, but it doesn’t nearly go as far as it should, it almost opens the door to “we believe in a free press, but if the circumstances so warrant …”

What about, "Freedom of the press is a core and inalienable, non-negotiable right of every American citizen and we - together with other democracies - will strive to ensure that every human being on this planet can freely enjoy the right to speak his or her mind, however offensive that sometimes may be to some others"

Does anyone wonder what Fortuyn would have said, knowing that he was able to deliver a very accurate definition of the problem and a guide to solving it almost ten years ago?

In an interview in Der Spiegel. It's a type of read-the-whole-thing interview but three things stand out very clearly.

Firstly is Hirsi Ali's reference to Death of a Princess (which actually involved a beheading and not a stoning) back in 1980. The point? We've been here before:

Once again, the West pursued the principle of turning first one cheek, then the other. In fact, it's already a tradition. In 1980, privately owned British broadcaster ITV aired a documentary about the stoning of a Saudi Arabian princess who had allegedly committed adultery. The government in Riyadh intervened and the British government issued an apology.

[ ... ]

We are constantly apologizing, and we don't notice how much abuse we're taking. Meanwhile, the other side doesn't give an inch

Comments: It may be hard to believe for some but it actually was the Thatcher government that issued this apology. It seems that a few decades later the dynamics of 'conflict resolution' have not changed materially. The perceived injustice is directly taken to the highest level of authority, the government, to lodge a complaint about the behaviour of a particular privately owned entity. It shows how different perceptions and traditions make any potentially satisfactory solution so hard to achieve, but also that by acting on them western governments have set such a terrible precedent. The appeasement routine in not an orphan, it comes from a family of time-tested traditions.

And then she comments on the sequel to Submission:

The conditions couldn't be more difficult. We're forced to produce the film under complete anonymity. Everyone involved in the film, from actors to technicians, will be unrecognizable. But we are determined to complete the project. The director didn't really like van Gogh, but he believes that, for the sake of free speech, shooting the sequel is critical. I'm optimistic that we'll be able to premier the film this year.

Comments: Does it need any? I am amazed the sequel gets made at all.

And then my favorite quote, about the feelings of the cartoonists:

They probably feel numb. On the one hand, a voice in their heads is encouraging them not to sell out their freedom of speech. At the same time, they're experiencing the shocking sensation of what it's like to lose your own personal freedom. One mustn't forget that they're part of the postwar generation, and that all they've experienced is peace and prosperity. And now they suddenly have to fight for their own human rights once again.

Comments: I have highlighted the last part, as it not only applies to the cartoonists. It echoes a familiar theme here at Peaktalk and that is the overall inability of a majority of the general public in the West (yes, Europe and North America) to appreciate the magnitude of what is happening right now and where it might eventually take us.

To use the Dutch example, mortgage rate deductibility is seen as equally - if not more - important as terrorist threats, curbing freedom of speech and related matters that can fundamentally change the 'peace and prosperity' that Hirsi Ali so accurately addresses. The absence of a realization among a majority of westerners to stand up and fight for free societies, peace and global security - after 9/11, after Kim’s nuclear adventures, after Van Gogh, after 7/7, after Iran’s nuclear progress - is reflected in the inability of politicians to steer their societies purposefully in the right direction. No better recent example comes to mind than the inaction and inability, not to mention the divisions, that characterized the French government’s response to the lengthy riots that took place last fall.

And when leaders demonstrated purpose and zeal (Bush and Blair in Iraq) they did it in a sufficiently clumsy manner to open up the doors of criticism to an extent that any repeat of forcefully standing up for western values and security will be incredibly difficult. Any appeal for broad-based action against Iran will fall on deaf ears. WMDs? We have heard that one before.

Linking the cartoons to nuclear arms is not overstating or embellishing things. It’s a simple matter of connecting the dots and realizing that some of the embassies that are now on fire are located in countries that are very close to accessing some real weapons of mass destruction. Yet, very few politicians have made that explicit; they have relied on past practices of conflict resolution for too long. And then Hirsi Ali may well be right, even if the issue was well articulated, would anyone really care?

Macleans is proposing that Canada raise the voting age to 21 because, as I understand it, so few people between 18 and 21 vote. So preventing those who actually do is clearly a pressing issue. Or something. J. Kelly Nestruck deconstructs this argument quite ably, so I won't dwell on the proposal itself.

What interests me is that it's coming up at all. The authors propose two conflicting reasons for such a proposal. First they state that young people are innately too immature to vote:

But there's a growing body of evidence to suggest that's a wrong-headed approach. Scientific, sociological and demographic evidence indicates that young people are, in essence, too immature and too detached from functioning society to be entrusted with the vote. What if the move to lower the age from 21 to 18 was wrong in the first place and ought to be reversed?

By 'scientific' they must mean biological, but quote no evidence. I spent last weekend with my stepfather, who left school at 13 in 1940 to support his family. I loved telling him that there's 'scientific' evidence that teenagers are not even mature enough to vote, let alone hold down a job and shoulder adult responsibilities.

But just a few sentences later, our intrepid authors come up with another reason:

But kids today aren't what they were in 1970 -- not the stakeholders in the political process, nor the models of civic engagement their boomer parents once aspired to be..."The traditional adulthood of duty and self-sacrifice is becoming more and more a thing of the past," James Côté, a sociologist at the University of Western Ontario, explains. In 1970, adolescence ended abruptly after the age of 19; now it languishes well into one's 20s or 30s.

So it's purely cultural? That I can buy. Basically 18 year olds don't vote because voting is like, pretty hard.

My own opinion is that young people don't vote because no one really expects them to. When I was growing up, political engagement was mandatory. Our house subscribed to several papers, and we were expected to read them and have an opinion to express at the dinner table. And woe betide us if our opinions were unformed. As I turned 18, I was firmly expected to vote at the earliest possible opportunity. Federally, this meant the referendum on the Charlottetown Accord.

I realize we were anomalous. Society doesn't really expect very much from teenagers these days, even older ones.

But then, the history of western society over the last 50 years has been the gradual reduction of personal responsibility. We hardly even expect very much from adults any more. Having absolved adults from taking responsibility for the important aspects of their lives, is it any wonder that voter turnout is decreasing?

In the meantime, we marvel at situations where we actually do have to step it up. From another article in the same Macleans issue, this one on school reform:

"Sometimes it's a little scary," [principal Jane ] Klaray says. "You're treated as an adult. You're given a great deal of responsibility. The expectations are very high and you're judged on the results."

In a country where school principals marvel at being treated as adults, it should not be very surprising that teenagers expect to be treated like children.

From a concerned American, who hasn't given up all hope when it comes to salvaging the old continent. Read Victor Davis Hanson.

The practice of linking to Mark Steyn columns on Peaktalk was discontinued a while ago, not because Steyn’s writing deteriorated but rather the opposite, most of what he penned was excellent and everybody was linking to it anyway. Still, his latest essay-length piece on why we will witness the end of the west before the end of this century is an absolute must-read. It weaves all the familiar themes – radical Islam, terror, demographics, welfare state, religion, multiculturalism, defeatism – nicely together into one article, and the title It’s the Demography Stupid doesn’t do it any justice, I think.

When I was in New York for the Pajamas Media launch many bloggers there queried me on Europe, making the assumption that recent jihadist violence was steadily waking up the old continent. Maybe I argued, but I explained that the driving force during elections is neither the threat of terrorism nor the impact of the continent’s demographic bust, no, Europeans worry about other, more urgent needs. And Steyn concurs:

If you look at European election results--most recently in Germany--it's hard not to conclude that, while voters are unhappy with their political establishments, they're unhappy mainly because they resent being asked to reconsider their government benefits and, no matter how unaffordable they may be a generation down the road, they have no intention of seriously reconsidering them.

The Scottish executive recently backed down from a proposal to raise the retirement age of Scottish public workers. It's presently 60, which is nice but unaffordable. But the reaction of the average Scots worker is that that's somebody else's problem. The average German worker now puts in 22% fewer hours per year than his American counterpart, and no politician who wishes to remain electorally viable will propose closing the gap in any meaningful way.

It’s what Steyn calls worrying about the wrong things. But then it takes a rare combination of guts and vision to, as a politician, ask voters to focus on the real threats.

UPDATE: Stephen Green has written an open letter to Old Europe.

Salman Rushdie sums up the challenges that multicultural societies face:

If we are to build a plural society on the foundation of what unites us, we must face up to what divides. But the questions of core freedoms and primary loyalties can’t be ducked. No society, no matter how tolerant, can expect to thrive if its citizens don’t prize what their citizenship means — if, when asked what they stand for as Frenchmen, as Indians, as Britons, they cannot give clear replies.

I am not sure if Rushdie still stands on the left as Michael Barone argues. The debate about multiculturalism is steadily moving beyond that perennial left-right divide, and especially in light of Rushdie's comments it should also move beyond racial and religious boundaries. It's becoming an issue for those that believe that free western democracies should - regardless of their diversity - provide enough of a unifying cultural and moral code to ensure their long-term survival. We should be relieved that the fatwa he has been subject to hasn't silenced Rushdie. He's worth listening to.

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