The obvious ways to help Europe that never occurred to Steyn

[This blog entry was drafted a few months ago but never got posted.]

Here’s a conservative writer who takes Mark Steyn’s apocalyptic message seriously while rejecting Styn’s thoughtless and self-indulgent defeatism. Matthew Stubbs writing at Real Clear Politics points out that birthrates in many Muslim countries are also below replacement level and says that even under the worst scenario, Muslims over the next 50 years will not become more than 20 percent of the European population, though he doesn’t make clear his basis for saying this. The main threat he says is not the deterministic population numbers that Steyn focuses on but increased terror and violence, leading to a European-wide civil war between Europeans and Muslims, which the Muslims would lose. To avoid such a civil war, he says, the Europeans can take a few simple steps:

limit Muslim immigration, export radicals who preach violence, and cut off the Saudi petrodollars financing extremism. These actions alone won’t solve the Continent’s fertility-based worker shortage problem (although this might), but should at least prevent Islamists from taking advantage.

Why has it never occurred Steyn in his many articles on Europe and Islam to make simple and obvious suggestions such as these? My view, based on Steyn’s comments that I’ve discussed at this site, is that he hasn’t made them because he doesn’t want Europe to survive. It’s just too much darn fun standing on the side gleefully or indifferently predicting Europe’s irreversible doom, and getting lauded by conservatives as a great and courageous conservative for doing so.

James S. writes:

“The main threat he says is not the deterministic population numbers that Steyn focuses on but increased terror and violence, leading to a European-wide civil war between Europeans and Muslims, which the Muslims would lose. To avoid such a civil war, he says, the Europeans can take a few simple steps.”

Why avoid the civil war if the Muslims would lose? I understand why the *Muslims* would like to avoid such a war, but if they really do seek the end of Western civilization and won’t leave voluntarily then a civil war to settle the matter seems proper. And preferable assuming Europe wins. Why wait?

LA replies:

I think he meant it would be better to solve the Islam problem without a ruinous, continent-wide civil war than with it. Yet Stubbs’s own solution, while a move in the right direction, is quite inadequate: “limit Muslim immigration [what—not stop it but just reduce it?], export radicals who preach violence [just export the handful who actually call for violence?], and cut off the Saudi petrodollars financing extremism. These actions alone won’t solve the Continent’s fertility-based worker shortage problem [yes, and they won’t solve its Islam problem either]”.

My own view of course is that the survival and recovery of Europe depends on the long-term reduction of the Muslim population to a fraction of what it is now. But given the deep passivity of the Europeans and their evident lack of any will to live, it may well be that only such events that are horrendous enough to trigger a civil war would also be bad enough to stir the Europeans to defend themselves and start removing the Muslims.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 08, 2006 07:43 AM | Send