Mark Steyn - Lights Out

Nonetheless, if Clive Davis thinks this is anti-Euro rotten fruit-pelting, that’s more of a reflection on the complacency of the Continent’s own commentariat. The difference between “anti-Americanism” and “anti-Europeanism” is obvious. In, say, 2025, America will be much as it is today – big, powerful, albeit (to sophisticated Continentals) absurdly vulgar and provincial. But in 20 years’ time Europe will be an economically moribund demographic basket case: 17 Continental nations have what’s known as “lowest-low” fertility – below 1.3 live births per woman – from which no population has ever recovered.

All those heavyweight scholars who immortalized between hard covers my cheap Eurinal-of-history aside did so because it was so self-evidently risible. Well, it looks a lot less so in 2006 than it did in 2002. The trap the French political class is caught in is summed up by the twin pincers of the fall and spring riot seasons. The fall 2005 rioters were “youths” (ie, Muslims from the suburbs), supposedly alienated by lack of economic opportunity. The spring 2006 rioters are “youths” (ie, pampered Sorbonne deadbeats), protesting a new law that would enable employers to terminate the contracts of employees under the age of 26 in their first jobs, after two years.

To which the response of most North Americans is: you mean, you can’t right now? No, you can’t. If you hire a 20-year-old and take a dislike to his work three months in, tough: chances are you’re stuck with him till mid-century. In France’s immobilized economy, it’s all but impossible to get fired. Which is why it’s all but impossible to get hired. Especially if you belong to that first category of “youths” from the Muslim ghettoes, where unemployment is around 40 to 50 per cent. The second group of “youths” – the Sorbonne set – protesting the proposed new, more flexible labour law ought to be able to understand that it’s both necessary to the nation and, indeed, in their own self-interest: they are after all the nation’s elite. Yet they’re like lemmings striking over the right to a higher cliff.

When most of us on this side of the Atlantic think of “welfare queens”, our mind’s eye conjures some teenage crack whore with three kids by different men in a housing project. But France illustrates how absolute welfare corrupts absolutely. These Sorbonne welfare queens are Marie Antoinettes: Unemployment rates for immigrants? Let ’em eat cake, as long as our pampered existence is undisturbed.

The only question about Europe is whether it’s going to be (a) catastrophically bad or (b) apocalyptically bad, as in head for the hills, here come the Four Horsemen: Death (the self-extinction of European races too self-absorbed to breed), Famine (the withering of unaffordable social programs), War (civil strife as the disaffected decide to move beyond mere Citroën-torching), and Conquest (the inevitable victory of the Muslim successor population already in place). I’d say option (b) looks the better bet for a few if not all Continental nations (united they’ll fall, but divided, a handful might stand a chance).

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 US 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.

And, if even Murray’s too much, go back to the granddaddy of them all – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . Recounting the Muslim march on France 1,300 years ago, Gibbon writes:

The decline of the French monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race. They ascended the throne without power, and sunk into the grave without a name…. The vineyards of Gascony and the city of Bordeaux were possessed by the sovereign of Damascus and Samarcand; and the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.

Hmm.

According to Khurrum Awan, Muneeza Skeikh, Naseem Mithoowani, Ali Ahmed and Daniel Simard, the authors of Maclean’s Magazine: A Case Study Of Media-Propagated Islamophobia , the above is “Islamophobic” because of the following assertions:

1. Intolerance and homophobia against gays has grown in the Netherlands due to Muslims.

2. There will be a Muslim “conquest” in Europe as a result of the local Muslim population already in place

3. Due to the growing number of Muslims in Europe there will be a Muslim conquest of Europe and France. This conquest will be similar to that of the “Muslim march” on France 1300 years ago.

THE ISLAMOPHOBE RESPONDS:

Well, let’s just take that first point, as Numbers 2 and 3 can only be known in the fullness of time. In the introduction to the paperback edition of America Alone , I returned to the subject of ‘homophobia’ in the Netherlands:

Gay-bashing is on the rise in the most famously ‘tolerant’ cities in Europe. Chris Crain, editor of the gay newspaper The Washington Blade, was beaten up by a gang of Muslim youth while visiting Amsterdam in 2005. As Der Spiegel reported, ‘With the number of homophobic attacks rising in the Dutch metropolis, Amsterdam officials are commissioning a study to determine why Moroccan men are targeting the city’s gays.’

Gee, whiz. That’s a toughie. Wonder what the reason could be. But don’t worry, the brains trust at the University of Amsterdam is on top of things:

Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder. Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity.

Bingo! Telling young Moroccan men they’re closeted gays seems certain to lessen tensions in the city! While you’re at it, a lot of those Turks seem a bit light on their loafers, don’t you think?

One can debate the speed of transformation, but that that transformation is underway is indisputable.

The second half of the Super Bowl began right after midday prayers. The fans in Khomeini Stadium had performed their ablutions by rote, awkwardly prostrating themselves, heels splayed, foreheads not even touching the ground…

AT THE SPEED history’s moving right now, you gotta get your futuristic novels in fast, and Robert Ferrigno’s is the first in the potentially extensive genre of Islamotopian fiction. In Prayers For The Assassin , the fun starts on the inside cover: a map of the Islamic Republic of America in the year 2040. The nation extends over most of the north and west of the Lower 48. Chicago, Detroit and the East Coast cities are ruined and abandoned, Mount Rushmore is rubble, and Seattle is the new capital. Catholics remain as a subordinate class to their Muslim rulers. The evangelicals – the “peckerwoods” – are hunkered down in a breakaway state called “the Bible Belt” (the old Confederacy), where they still have the Second Amendment and the original Coca-Cola formula: up north, they have to make do with Jihad Cola, which sucks big time. South Florida is an “independent unaligned” area, the Mormon Territories have held out, and the Nevada Free State remains a den of gambling, alcohol and fornication. And in the most intriguing detail on the map, there’s a dotted line heading through Washington State to British Columbia marked “Rakkim’s route to Canada” – the new underground railroad along which he smuggles Jews, gays and other problematic identity groups to freedom across the 49th parallel. I can suspend almost all disbelief at the drop of a hat, but the notion of our already semi-dhimmified Dominion as a beacon of liberty is certainly among the harder conceits to swallow.