Dec. 17, 2006: Islamism

Islamism: If you can't catch up to the world, drag the world back to you

Margaret Wente has been waging a one-woman Cassandra wail in the Globe and Mail. She is trying to shake the West out of its self-induced lethargy concerning the Islamic threat. While French intellectual elites are criticizing America for hubris, their Muslim youth are burning cars, a thousand at a time. The rest of the Western European "intellectuals" are in lock step with them. Every Londoner and Madrileno now looks over his shoulder and under his seat in the subway system, but to their betters, America is the real terrorist. If it weren't so tragic, it would be the fodder for an opera buffe performance.

This intellectual ennui has been aided and abetted by a rampant consumerism. Years ago, an Environics poll of young Canadians' opinions questioned: "How do you define yourelf?" The majority stated: "By what I buy." I remember shuddering at that brutallly honest answer. Yet, there was another poll, conducted a decade earlier, which was more prophetic of trouble to come. Ann Landers asked her prolific newspaper audience a loaded question. She wanted answers only from women who had children already. The question: "If you had it to do all over again, would you have had children?" Their answer stunned me. They said to the tune of 70-some per cent, "No." Now, yoke crass materialism to dislike of children and their demands, and you have the perfect storm for demographic decline. Of the West, only America has maintained replacement rates of childbirth. Europe has only one demographic that is replacing itself--big time--and that is its immigrant population, a population which has become predominately Muslim. In Spain (once the most Catholic of countries) the birthrate is 1.2. Soon little Juan is going to have no relatives, while his neighbour, little Abdul, has dozens. That revenge of the cradle will be announced around mid-century to El Cid's descendants. Like children at the beach, watching our sandcastles destroyed by the tide, they will march away muttering, "How did we let this happen?" All of Europe will asking the same question soon.

© Bud Talkinghorn