I don't know if you guys have read this piece by Mark Steyn in the WSJ, but it really, truly is a must-read.
It's called It's the demography, stupid, subtitled The real reason the West is in danger of extinction.

Steyn starts off saying:

Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.

The simple explanation is:

When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026. ...
There is no "population bomb." There never was. Birthrates are declining all over the world--eventually every couple on the planet may decide to opt for the Western yuppie model of one designer baby at the age of 39. But demographics is a game of last man standing. The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge advantage.

The Muslim populations in Europe have a high birth-rate, and so will be in the majority in many European countries in our lifetimes. Of course, this isn't to say this is a bad thing. As Steyn continues:

What will Europe be like at the end of this process? Who knows? On the one hand, there's something to be said for the notion that America will find an Islamified Europe more straightforward to deal with than M. Chirac, Herr Schroeder & Co. On the other hand, given Europe's track record, getting there could be very bloody. But either way this is the real battlefield. The al Qaeda nutters can never find enough suicidal pilots to fly enough planes into enough skyscrapers to topple America. But unlike us, the Islamists think long-term, and, given their demographic advantage in Europe and the tone of the emerging Muslim lobby groups there, much of what they're flying planes into buildings for they're likely to wind up with just by waiting a few more years. The skyscrapers will be theirs; why knock 'em over?

I personally do think the Western world gives its citizens more liberty and prosperity than other cultures, and therefore is worth preserving, at least to some degree. The debate in some countries is not whether gay people should be allowed to marry each other, the debate is whether gay people should be (a) hung by a rope; or (b) thrown from the top of a building. James Lileks has an excellent reaction to Steyn's piece here, and I like these paragraphs the most:

I know, I know: I am a hopeless reactionary. I believe in judging a culture on the liberties and prosperity it affords to its people. I believe that the West is an anomaly in human history, and that it is a rare thing to have what we have: information without boundaries, freedom unimagined by those who have gone before, women’s equality instead of the black Hefty-trash-bag dress, respect for gays instead of death-by-stone-walls, and all the other remarkable accomplishments like space probes and plumbing and overnight delivery of Omaha Steaks (track the UPS code in your browser, if you wish.) But it didn’t just happen. As Felix Under said to Oscar Madison: you have to make gravy. It doesn’t just come.

So maybe the virtues outweigh the flaws. Maybe the enemies of Today, so fastened on the utopia of Tomorrow, ought to stop insisting that Yesterday is naught but a long black smear we must disown and disparage. But that would require them to understand what Yesterday was really like, and that sort of retrospection eludes many.

As they say, Read the Whole Thing!

And let me know what you think...

C
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 1/11/2006 02:54:00 PM