The rise of Western Liberalism is not often contemplated by those who most enjoy its benefits. Few in the West are inclined to compare the presently favorable circumstances of their lives to those who have come before. They blithely assume that the freedoms and rights shared today by “civilized society” will continue on into perpetuity. Reasoning that no people would choose to deviate from that course once set on it, they are smug in their assumption that their world cannot be transformed from within. The reality of the situation is unfortunately much bleaker.

In his new book, America Alone, Mark Steyn lays out the shocking facts on the future of the West. In short, there isn’t one. More accurately, whatever emerges from the rubble will be unrecognizable by modern Liberals. The citizens of the developed world have inexplicably given up. They don’t want to play anymore, and the world will be left for someone else to deal with.

A stable population requires 2.1 births per woman. The United States has a rate of 2.11. Canada’s is 1.5. Europe, as a whole, has a rate of 1.38, with Spain leading the way to the grave with a fertility rate of 1.1, half replacement level. That means that every generation – approximately 35 years – the population of Spain will halve.

Obviously, societies that do not produce enough children will have to import labor from somewhere else. In short, they have to outsource their future. What’s wrong with that, many ask? Nothing need necessarily be wrong with it. Yet, in practice, if those that are imported do not share the values that make up the foundation of Western Liberalism, then it’s little more than willful self-destruction – suicide by contraception.

There is no single cause to explain this behavior. Over generations, an increasingly prominent school of thought has emerged that is inherently self destructive. This school of thought holds that we are to blame for all the troubles of the world, whatever the crisis of the time happens to be. Whether it’s the “population boom” of the 70’s – my how wrong that turned out to be – the diminishing resources of the world, global cooling, global warming, and on and on. With every generation this indoctrination of self-loathing has further permeated Western society, growing in influence to the point that reproduction is no longer seen as desirable, but instead as part of the problem. If you’ve ever had someone tell you that they don’t want to have children because it would be “cruel”, you know what I mean. And I’ll take any odds that person is a leftist.

At the same time, the West’s aging population has grown increasingly dependent upon its children. Government entitlement programs are making the demands for new labor, to support those on the public dole, ever more pressing. When none is to be found, it must be imported. These immigrants naturally come from those places that are producing the most human capital. But who are they? According to the CIA World Factbook, five of the top ten countries by fertility rate have populations that are 90% Muslim or more. That includes Niger, Mali, Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen. The populations of Muslim countries are growing by leaps and bounds, what better place for them to expand to then an increasingly abandoned Europe? In 2005, Mohammed was the fifth most popular boys name given to newborns in the UK.

So what, the multiculturalists insist. There’s nothing wrong with being Muslim. On that they are right, there is nothing necessarily wrong with an individual of the Islamic faith any more so than an individual believer in Christianity or Buddhism, but what is the track record of government by Islamic societies? Can these soon-to-be Europeans be counted on to accept the tenets of Western Liberalism? After all, there’s no golden rule of existence that declares that Europe will stay free and embrace Western Liberal values for all time whether we fight to keep it that way or not. If they don’t accept these values, they will replace them with something else. A list of the world’s least free countries reads like a who’s who of Islamic society. Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Oman, Qatar…etc. etc. But we are not allowed, the multiculturalists insist, to question whether or not these new generations of Europeans will accept the traditions which have made the West so free.

It seems to me a prudent question to ask just who it is we are handing the reigns to and whether or not they accept our values and the best traditions of free society, but multiculturalists are incapable of posing this question. They are paralyzed by their own ideological dissonance. On the one hand they face an ideology that threatens their freedoms, and on the other they must follow their core belief that all cultures are equal, leaving them incapable of even considering newcomers as potentially threatening. But Western Liberalism has not been anointed the one true system of the Earth. It can be defeated. Quite easily, apparently, as modern liberals – conditioned to accept all cultures – largely welcome with open arms even those who mean their destruction.

In one of his many speeches following the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden listed the 1492 expulsion of Muslim conquerers from Spain as one of the many supposed Western grievances he uses to justify jihad. Islam has a very long memory. Spain, apparently, does not. Thanks to Spain’s incredible disappearing populace, Osama bin Laden’s successor will one day be able to cross that particular complaint off the list; Spain will be Muslim once again.

Europe is nearly beyond the point of no return. It will either have to accept its gradual Islamic conversion or suffer the destruction of its economies under the unsustainable stresses of bulging government entitlements. Neither is particularly comforting for those concerned about the future of Western civilization.

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