Posted by
Eutychus on Monday, October 16, 2006 1:53:41 PM
In a post to her blog yesterday,
Michelle Malkin references a recent survey of Muslims in Indonesia finding that "only" 10% are for violent jihad. With a population of 220 million, 85% of them Muslim, this "mere" 10% equates to 19 million crazy jihadists. Remember, it only took 9 such people with boxcutters to pull off 9/11.
Malkin then follows with a brief review of Mark Steyn's "must-read" book --
As Mark Steyn emphasizes in his superb new book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, it's the demographics, stupid. While the West hyperventilated about overpopulation, the Muslim world got busy. In 1970, Steyn points out, developed nations had twice as big a share of the global population as the Muslim world: 30 percent to 15 percent. By 2000, they were on par with about 20 percent. And things ain't looking up, fertility-rate-wise, for the non-Muslim population. Coupled with the decline of the modern social-democratic state and what he calls "civilizational exhaustion," those numbers spell trouble.
Steyn:
You don't have to subscribe to the view that every Muslim is a jihadist nutcake eager to hijack a 747 and head for the nearest tall building to acknolwedge that at the very minimum these population trends put a large question mark over the future.
Linda Frum interviewed Steyn for the National Post and this q and a says it all for me (my daughter is six, too):
LF: Your book is very gloomy. After I read it, I glanced over at my three-year-old daughter and was filled with fear for her future.
MS: Well, I'm in this for the three year-olds. My youngest child is six now, but my little girl and your little girl, when they're our age, they will find a large number of places in what we think of as the free world, the developed world, far less congenial than we would. I mean, you and I would think nothing of hopping on a plane, going to London, Paris or Berlin. Those are going to be very uncomfortable places for a young, middle-aged Western woman circa 2020, 2030, and it's precisely because we've taken for granted this very unusual period in history. We take it for granted that it's a permanent state of affairs. It isn't. It requires incredible vigilance and incredible effort to preserve it.
And, as Steyn writes in his book, it starts with a simple decision:
Americans and other Westerners who want their families to enjoy the blessings of life in a free society should understand that the life we've led since 1945 in the Western world is very rare in human history. Our children are unlikely to enjoy anything so placid, and may well spend their adult years in an ugly and savage world unless we decide that who and what we are is worth defending.