We will bury you
Callimachus writes here about Oriana Fallaci's new book, which deals in part with the question of whether a certain segment of the Arab/Moslem world is trying to overwhelm the West, both demographically and otherwise. He offers some quotes to that effect from Fallaci's writings, taken from a book review by Brendan Bernhard's in LA Weekly.
The first quote is from a 1972 interview (in her heyday, Fallaci was renowned for her pull-no-punches style of questioning) with Palestinian terrorist George Habash, who declared that the goal was to:
...wage war “against Europe and America” and to ensure that henceforth “there would be no peace for the West.” The Arabs, he informed her, would “advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet.”
At the time, Fallaci thought he was referring simply to terrorism. Only later--much later--did she understand that:
...he “also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country from its citizens … In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism.”
Cold wars, terrorism wars, demographic wars. As far as the latter goes, Bernhard (and Callimachus) offers an explicit declaration, this time from Algerian President Boumedienne way back in 1974:
One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.
You can't say the West wasn't warned. But warnings often only seem important in retrospect. It was the sort of thing few were paying attention to at the time, "typical hyperbole." Bombast. And perhaps it was, at that.
At least back then the threats were peaceful and reproductive in nature. More recently they took on a more chilling (or rather, a decidedly "hot") tone--witness this Haaretz article (via Little Green Footballs) that quotes Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran telling former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar at a meeting in 2001 that "Iran must declare war on Israel and the United States until they are completely destroyed," and that "setting Israel on fire" was the first order of the day.
Unless Khamenei is a man especially given to metaphor, it seems we must take his intent seriously. The Haaretz article concludes with the words, "Khamenei still holds the post of Iranian spiritual leader, and [is] considered to be the powerful man in the country."
There's that "spiritual leader" phrase again, one which actually deserves the much-abused designation "Orwellian." I've written about "spiritual leaders" before, here, in a post entitled "Yeah, and Goebbels was the 'spiritual leader' of the Nazis, too."
What I wrote then still applies, to Khamenei in this case:
...how are people such as Abu Bakar Bashir, a cleric who most agree is the one who inspires and guides the murderers of Jemaah Islamiyah "spiritual" (unless, of course, the spirit of evil and hatred counts)? Is it because he hides behind the role of cleric? Well, the mere title "cleric" does not a spiritual leader make. It's a perversion of the word and the concept "spiritual"...
These "spiritual" guys must never have heard of Teddy Roosevelt, who famously counseled "speak softly and carry a big stick" (a bit of trivia here: it turns out that Teddy was actually quoting a West African proverb. But I digress).
The extremely spiritual Iranian ayatollah may not speak softly, but he seems determined to obtain the biggest stick of all, and he's not all that shy about saying what he plans to do with it. Whether he will accomplish either goal remains to be seen.
This all puts me in mind of a very different leader (who was quite unspiritual, unless you count Communism as a religion): Nikita Khrushchev, whose terrifying words, spoken in 1956 to Western ambassadors at a Moscow reception, haunted my childhood, "We will bury you."
What did Khrushchev mean? Some thought he meant an ideological victory in the cold war (although that victory was not thought to be primarily demographic). Some feared a hot war such as Khamenei appears to be promising. The preponderance of evidence seems to be that Khrushchev meant the former, although there's no doubt he had a plethora of big sticks available for the latter:
The translation has been controversial by being presented as belligerent out of context. The phrase may well have been intended to suggest "we will outlast you" as a more complete version of the quote reads: "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you" - a meaning more akin to "we will attend your funeral" than "we shall cause your funeral".
Those big sticks were never used, and the long war between the USSR and the USA remained cold, although it provided kindling for large and heated brushfires in many parts of the world. And history has dictated that the seemingly final burial (in the ideological sense) went in the other direction.. But history has yet to be written on the final outcome of the threats--cold and/or hot--of those others.
[HISTORICAL SIDELIGHT: Khrushchev was frightening in my youth, but little did I know at the time what a big improvement he was over his predecessor, Stalin. Nor was I aware how relatively rational he would seem compared to the current crop of Islamic supremacists.
Khrushchev himself often appeared to be somewhat of a loose cannon and a buffoon, a reputation he may have purposely manipulated and played on; witness the famous shoe-banging incident of 1960, which didn't frighten me but certainly puzzled me at the time:
The shoe sits in front of Khrushchev, behind the shoulder of the man looking with a mixture of hope and resignation at his watch. What was the shoe incident about?
Well, according to his granddaughter Nina Khrushchev, it was an act of humorous theater in which Khrushchev purposely played the fool in order to make a point. And, who knows? She might even be correct (although I'm not sure. At any rate, I can't quite imagine the Ayatollah doing the same, although Saddam may give it a go at his trial).
Here's her version, for what it's worth :
The head of the Philippine delegation, Senator Lorenzo Sumulong, expressed his surprise at the Soviet Union's concerns over western imperialism, while it, in turn, swallowed the whole of eastern Europe. Khrushchev's rage was beyond anything he had ever shown before. He called the poor Filipino "a jerk, a stooge and a lackey of imperialism", then he put his shoe on the desk and banged it....
According to Khrushchev, there was abundant evidence that western powers had mistreated and mistrusted the Soviet Union...Dismissing him as a worthy opponent, capitalists thought of Khrushchev as a vaudeville character. Very well then, he would become one. He needed the UN stage to make an important statement: it is better to take the socialist world seriously. He wanted to be heard. But next to the noble Macmillan, smart Eisenhower, refined De Gaulle and wise Nehru, the short Nikita Khrushchev couldn't help looking a wag.
Instead of trying to act and speak according to traditional diplomacy, he broke the ritual and created his own manner. The manner, which suited his goal, was to be different from the hypocrites of the west, with their appropriate words but calculated deeds. He would do it the other way - say more than he meant. A tragi-comic act of shoe banging was intended to separate two superpowers not only in terms of their politics, but also in their diplomatic methods.]
posted by neo-neocon @ 1:18 PM
30 comments
30 Comments:
There's a film clip of the shoe-banging, I think. I seem to recall seeing it as a child, along with the commercials about "We will bury you" followed by a clip of a mushroom cloud. Certainly scared me! Thanks for the detailed walk down memory lane.
Yes, we are losing the demographic war. That is why our decline is mirroring Rome's: their birthrate fell, they had to import foreigners to be their soldiers and peons, and, eventually .....
There's really no way to reverse it. 100 years ago Teddy Roosevelt used to warn Americans that the "race" was going to become extinct, because American women weren't having the 10 kids they should be having.
Anyone saying that today is dismissed as a crackpot and so would Teddy, if more people actually read his articles and speeches from that time.
In order for this to be true - that "certain segments of the Muslim world" are using demographics as a weapon against the West - you have to assume that there's a vast conspiracy involving millions of people from many different countries and cultures. That is, you'd have to assume that someone figured out a way of organizing millions of Egyptians, Saudis, Turks, Lebanese, blah blah blah, into not only leaving their homes for a foreign land, but doing so for a political objective decades in the future, and into having children, not for any of the reasons that most people have children, but again for a political objective.
The logical conclusion of this is, of course, that children are then part of a weapon this conspiracy is using against the West. They stop being people - children - and become objects, a threat to us. And what does this lead to? Unpleasant things being done to innocent children in the name of defense against a vague and ill-defined conspiracy theory.
Of course, the whole point of this demographics-fantasy that keeps getting played out over and over again on the right is to justify discrimination and worse - well, shucks, we didn't want to have camps and worse, but those brown folks just kept having children, so we had to do something about those vermi...er, kids. They were breeding like roaches, and some people back in the 70s said something about this, so we had to do something about those roache...er, kids.
I don't know if Neo is saying that this is an intentional plan; I certainly don't think so. But I think that our declining birthrates and the increasing birthrates elsewhere is what ensures the Decline of the West.
Poster is absolutely right that this kind of perception CAN lead to genocide. But obviously, that won't work.
The world belongs to the children, whatever color they are, whatever language they speak, however bright or talented they are. And we, collectively, should be prepared to help them handle it.
Anon is being both silly and vile.
First, you don't need a conspiracy for something to happen. All you need is for some people to think more or less the same. Having a culture with shared values is a help.
That's for the silly part.
That Anon goes from there to impute racist and genocidal purposes to those who look at the demographics is vile in the extreme.
But the point of being both silly and vile is to distract from the question of....demographics.
If, say, 20% of the young men of age twenty in Europe will be Muslim in x number of years, then....something. What, exactly, is that something?
They all become hippies?
They choose to enforce Sharia by force on an ad hoc basis and not law?
They become a swing voting block whose interests politicians must put above all else?
They go back to wherever it was their ancestors came from?
What is the answer?
"There's really no way to reverse it. 100 years ago Teddy Roosevelt used to warn Americans that the "race" was going to become extinct, because American women weren't having the 10 kids they should be having. "
He may have been referring to Americans, but in his day the rhetoric was about "Mediterraneans" and "Nordics". That translated to Anglo-Saxons (and Germans etc) versus Irish and Itlaians and Slavs - all those Ellis Island people - whom today we all lump together as "Anglo". Apparently the overwhelming went the other way. Come to think of it, there was a certain amount of Arab immigration in the era - whatever happened to all of them? So maybe we will not lose the demographic war, just win it with other people's children.
So maybe we will not lose the demographic war, just win it with other people's children.
That's possible. I think that's Ymar's idea. I'd rather not have a billion people in the lower 48 however.
As I recall, TR was talking about non-white races, not Slavs, or Italians, or Jews, or whatnot. He was a big melting pot guy.
Likely results of Muslim baby boom:
- Radical transformation to keep up with demographic pressures, including xtreme nationalism, fascism, and some version of communism.
- Various wars and civil wars, that will reduce the population pressure.
- massive out-migration to other countries, including Europe and America.
- gradual change of European and American political culture reflecting the influx of Muslims and Arabs. Development of Arab voting blocs, and attendant influence on Euro and American ME policy.
- gradual change in European and American popular culture reflecting Muslim Arab invasion. Popularity of Islam. Development of Arabic food for take out. (What do they eat, anyway?)
- probable evolution of Israel into a binational state, which, if it occurs, will make the Jewish-Arab state the leader of the Arab world.
- probable erosion of the highly individualist culture of Europe and America, which will affect women's rights, gay rights, etc. etc.
How much Arab/Muslims affect us (and Europe) will depend on how many come here, how fast they come here,how much they are welcomed, and how much they are taught to appreciate our values and culture. Just a guess.
Steve. WRT your last:
How do we teach them our values?
Public school? Universities?
I used to hang with a group which was approached by a sociologist who wanted to do some research among our Presbytery. What was the strength of Christian families?
You'd have thought somebody made a rude noise in church.
That the Christian family should have any particular strength struck these Christian pastors as silly. Shameful.
Can you think of an organization or institution in this country which could get away, in the MSM and the universities and with the ACLU, with teaching immigrants to appreciate our values?
How do we teach them our values?
By deeds, not by words. If you have a positive effect on s.o., then they want to know why are you are the way you are. Then they want to be like you.
You know, just like in real life. The Internet is not real life.
Richard,
Neo's post "deals in part with the question of whether a certain segment of the Arab/Moslem world is trying to overwhelm the West".
This implies that a group of people are having children not because of the usual reasons that people have children, but rather for political purposes.
The implications are either a) a culture exists in which children are a political commodity, or b) someone has organized these people into doing this.
Which is more vile?
Yes, we are losing the demographic war. That is why our decline is mirroring Rome's: their birthrate fell, they had to import foreigners to be their soldiers and peons, and, eventually .....
Rome's problems weren't demographic in origin.
Rome's problems were that Latins, had too much family wealth and no desire to serve in the military except to get political power back in the capital.
Basically, it is exactly what happened to Britain, France, and Germany when they let a more vibrant and tougher nation (America) take the role of defending them and then cut their own defense spending and recruiting.
I don't know why you don't get the history right more often.
If you want an example of demographics winning, you should have used 500 AD Briton. Where plagues and what not, actually did decimate the Anglos and allowed the Saxon foederatti to take over culturally.
Unpleasant things being done to innocent children in the name of defense against a vague and ill-defined conspiracy theory.
You don't need to control every neutron in a nuclear reaction to sustain fission. All you need to do is to control the very first neutron that starts that reaction, which then turns it into a chain, by the laws of physics and of sub-atomic particles.
Human behavior is just as predictable. Nobody needs to tell everyone what to do, they can be counted on to act predictably in certain situations.
They were breeding like roaches, and some people back in the 70s said something about this, so we had to do something about those roache...er, kids.
I make the serious note that Republicans aren't in favor of abortions in general and that it wasn't the Republicans that were politically motivated by discrimination and ambition to kill the Dubai deal because it was them "Ayrabs". The Democrats hold the distinction on the demographics immorality and segregation all by themselves. Even if you don't mention appartheid in the South with Democrats like KKK Robert Byrd in control.
What is the answer?
The answer is to use the oldest trick in the book. Projection. Anon says we will segregate, terminate, and put the vermin in camps. But Roosevelt wasn't a Republican when he put the Japs in concentration camps, and suspended their Constitutional rights.
Republicans have nothing to be ashamed about concerning demographics. Anon, however, does.
So maybe we will not lose the demographic war, just win it with other people's children.
Well, Jim, the demographics are far more favorable to Americans than to Europe. Which is the point. Americans are used to fighting a demographics war and winning. Europe is not. They are used to losing their demographics. First to America, and now to a reverse deportation of Muslims.
We are the strong horse, Europe is the weak horse. Even if recent news of riots, assassinations, gang rapes, torture-kidnapings, and various other "Kosher" things hadn't been seen going on in Europe.
The people concerned with demographics and also concerned with America, are a minority in a minority. They are also very pessimistic. Which is in contrast to people who worry about demographics and concentrate on Europe, then we are only cautiously pessimistic.
The people who knew about the demographics game were very small just 2 years ago. Now people are reading and learning more.
Deeds are actions. They are not beliefs. Getting someone to believe in the right thing is 3/4ths of the battle. Hence, I can stop anyone from doing anything, if I can convince him it would be wrong to do it.
There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.
Did Neo link to this before? Because if she didn't, then it is an amazing similarity between the rhetoric.
2. The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies.
Words can be lethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomats and perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as part of their professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy are childish, in comparison with the level of incitement and total absolute deliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region we are talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world believe that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation or, even better, a Jewish plot.
You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Said al-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were already inside Baghdad. Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. But to stand, day after day, and to make such preposterous statements, known to everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your own milieu, can only happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became a popular icon as a court jester, but this did not stop some allegedly respectable newspapers from giving him equal time. It also does not prevent the Western press from giving credence, every day, even now, to similar liars.
After all, if you want to be an anti-Semite, there are subtle ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that the holocaust never happened, and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never existed. But millions of Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the case. When these same leaders make other statements, the Western media report them as if they could be true.
It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm and dispatch suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of western TV cameras, talking to a world audience, which even partly believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader making opposite statements in Arabic to his people and in English to the rest of the world. Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures of mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who lie, distort and want to destroy everything.
Little children are raised on deep hatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western World does not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to soap operas and game shows. I recommend to you, even though most of you do not understand Arabic, to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You will not believe your own eyes.
Link
The way I see it. Some people have a hard time believing that any kind of systematic illusion can be maintained in the world that we live in. Regardless of the reality, they cannot accept it. That is why they do not accept that there can be a culture that uses their children as political weapons, suicide bombers, and propaganda ploys.
When a mother cries jihad and joy over the martyr of her son after recieving news that her son blew up 50 other people's sons, then how much denial producing vileness do you have to have in your heart to say that such a culture does not use their children as weapons in politics and war?
Who is more vile, those who deny evil and faciitate it or the evil doers?
It is still a question no one has answered, it is a question no one can answer.
Rome's problems weren't demographic in origin.
Rome's problems were that Latins, had too much family wealth and no desire to serve in the military except to get political power back in the capital.
Basically, it is exactly what happened to Britain, France, and Germany when they let a more vibrant and tougher nation (America) take the role of defending them and then cut their own defense spending and recruiting.
I don't know why you don't get the history right more often.
Everyone who has ever studied Rome knows that the decline of Rome coincided with a sharp drop in births. Most theories for decline are ideological. Gibbon, e. g., blamed the decline on effeminacy (cf. Gay marriage) and Christianity. Also, Gibbon, and others that followed him, because they wrote during the big Enlightenment debates about luxury, thought that also had an influence. But the opposite of luxury, which is individualistic, is civic duty, which is self-sacrificing. Military service is one aspect of this, and so is having and raising children. They go together.
But I don't believe ideas determine history. I think fundamental circumstances have more to do with it. And the fundamental circumstance for Rome, and even for France, Germany and the rest of Europe is demographic stagnation.
The only reason America keeps going is because we essentially import the population we aren't having ourselves. And that, in turn, is going to change us, same as the barbarians changed Rome.
I thought Rome fell because they had lead pipes. It's hard to run an empire if everyone is retarded.
In order for this to be true - that "certain segments of the Muslim world" are using demographics as a weapon against the West - you have to assume that there's a vast conspiracy involving millions of people from many different countries and cultures. That is, you'd have to assume that someone figured out a way of organizing millions of Egyptians, Saudis, Turks, Lebanese, blah blah blah, into not only leaving their homes for a foreign land, but doing so for a political objective decades in the future, and into having children, not for any of the reasons that most people have children, but again for a political objective.
Hello? They all belong to the same religion. They are like-minded people. They have imams who preach the same ideas over and over again. One of those ideas is that Islam must conquer the infidel, whether it be by force, persuasion, or demographics.
That we've only just cottoned on to this doesn't mean that they haven't been planning this--in some form or other--for centuries.
It doesn't need to be a conspiracy: it just needs to be a wide-spread religion with a goal. And that's what Islam is. The Right didn't invent it--it's been around for 1400 years.
The lead pipe argument is ultimately another declining birth rates argument, although the retardation argument enters the picture also.
There's no question that the traditional Romans became less vital and less fecund and were gradually pushed out by non-Romans who were hungrier, had more drive, had larger families, and were, in a word, more "virtuous." I can believe that our armed forces remain a bastion of traditional virtue, but they are a tiny minority, and as for our society as a whole? No way.
That we've only just cottoned on to this doesn't mean that they haven't been planning this--in some form or other--for centuries.
Phrasing it like that just sounds a little off.
But, let's just assume for the sake of the argument that it's true. What can one do about it? I don't think you can do anything.
But I don't believe ideas determine history. I think fundamental circumstances have more to do with it. And the fundamental circumstance for Rome, and even for France, Germany and the rest of Europe is demographic stagnation.
The only reason America keeps going is because we essentially import the population we aren't having ourselves. And that, in turn, is going to change us, same as the barbarians changed Rome.
The problem with your argument here, is that if ideas don't determine history, then the fundamental circumstances of American immigration would already have changed us. Demographics is nothing but the number of one kind of people in comparison to the numbers of another kind of people, in the same geographic space over different time periods. Immigration is part of it.
By your line of reasoning, America should not be continuing to "keep going on". Why is American demographics any less historically efficacious than Roman demographics?
As for the Roman question. The barbarians didn't have all the virtues of Roman gravitas. That's why the barbarian Emperors could not keep a corrupt system going. The virtues required to maintain a civilization was not present in the civilized nor the barbarian segments of the population.
But, let's just assume for the sake of the argument that it's true. What can one do about it? I don't think you can do anything.
This historical inevitability model of yours is based upon deterministic principles that lack free will. In most cases, human virtue doesn't matter because human virtue is about the free exercise of human decisions. In your model, the very deterministic qualities of your historic trends preclude any need for virtues. Because it isn't human qualities and decisions that make history, but inevitable consequences and situations.
The fact that you place some importance on human virtues and human qualities, invalidates your original thesis that history is moved by in-deterministic forces.
Here we have two models. The deterministic fundamental circumstances that you call "European demographics" and the decline of native virtues and strengths.
And then we have America, with the same demographics in the same fundamental circumstances, but with a different conclusion. Since we use ideas to convert and modify fundamental circumstances like demographics, we counter the historic inevitabilities outlined herein through human virtue; i.e. human free will.oh
The fact that you place some importance on human virtues and human qualities, invalidates your original thesis that history is moved by in-deterministic forces
No, I don't think you understand what I am trying to say.
What I am saying is that, from history, societies face certain challenges. Some of these are out of their control -- like drought. Others are marginally in their control -- like energy crises. Those are the irreducible deterministic forces that have to be confronted.
Up until very recently in historical time birth rates were uncontrollable, absent high rates of abortion or infanticide, both of which have, in fact, been resorted to in times of hardship but which are generally frowned on historically.
The great experiment of the 20th Century with regard to the western world is, now you have complete control over your birth rates, what now. And what has happened is that people, exercising their free will, have chosen to have smaller families, no families at all, and that in turn has weakened the marriage-sex-babies relationship thus making it possible for people to satisfy their sexual needs (another determinist impulse) without marriage or children, thus making children a luxury one might either have or not have, instead of being something that you were more or less "fated" to have.
That is what creates the demographic stagnation: it is the result of millions of individual choices, but the end state is also a "deterministic" fact that has to be confronted.
In the case of Rome, I don't know why the rates went down: lead pipes, fashionable homosexuality, decline in public mores, over-fondness for wide-screen TV's and the Internet, who knows. But it did, and gave them with a demographic challenge that likewise needed to be confronted.
At the same time, if epidemics strike -- and your Anglo-Saxon analogy was apt -- and populations go down, what happens to economies? They contract and feudalize. So, to keep things going, you have to import bodies. And that is what Europe and America have chosen to do.
What happens when populations grow? Structures change, new economies emerge. Population growth spurred the development of the "industrial revolution" throughout Europe and America.
Non-Euro-American countries have, rather recently, obtained the ability to also control their populations so it is clear than many NON-Western countries also want to, and can, control their populations.
The one population subset that hasn't yet controlled their birth rates is the Muslim world, but I am sure they will. The question is what happens to all of those millions of excess Muslims? They are going to go to Europe or the US and affect our culture, for good or ill.
Now what can we do about this, if anything? Well, we could put up fences. The problem there is that we have already seen that without an influx of bodies our economy will suffer.
Well, then, we could try to solve that part of the problem by telling everyone to have bigger families. But that will cause individual household economies to suffer. And people don't want to do that, either.
A lot of political discussions depends on isolating or locating one special lever of change that will enable us to accomplish some goal. What lever do we flip to get Americans to prefer self-reliance, self-sacrifice, large families, and virtue? I don't think there is such a lever. I don't think you can make something that cosmic just happen. Mysteriously, through some means, it does happen. But I don't know how. That's not quite the same as being deterministic.
America was in the immigration business before birth control was discovered. Hence, we were already dealing with this problem before the problem came up.
The solution back then as it is now, is to raise the incentive for having children and to reduce the economic detriments. One of the reasons Europeans won't have children is because of the intense economic taxation and various other government monopolies. The Middle East, being based upon a tribal-feudal system, tends to have more incentive to have children because male childen can tote guns and be part of the tribal militia, while additional excess children can either be sent to Europe or married off to a European muslim who wants a wife from the "old country". Which most do, because they don't like uppity Western women.
When a family knows that producing more children can get them a "jihad kickback" from invading Europe, or a "martyr kickback" if their son blows himself up at a market, or a "dowry kickback" from marrying a daughter off to a European Arab, they will produce more children. Their children instead of being reliant on their own family's largess, go to Europe and feed off of Europe's largess. Displacing the economic detriment from the Arab family to the European socialized system.
The lower the role of government in social subsidies, the less incentive for others to invade us and the more incentive people have to create their own children.
The American economy would not suffer in the least were illegal immigration cut off. There is just no truth to that. As I mentioned before, we were in the immigration business before Europe was. When Europe stunted their own growth and let Tunisians into Spain and France, they prevented them from assimilating.
It has nothing really to do with the numbers in absolute terms, but the rate of conversion.
Concerning determinism, I'll accept the way you framed the argument. Something cannot be said to be both fated to happen and also occuring because of free will. So in the end, the end solution cannot be both concerning human decisions and not concerning human decisions. The same influence that caused people to choose one way can be modified to cause them to choose another way.America was in the immigration business before birth control was discovered. Hence, we were already dealing with this problem before the problem came up.
The solution back then as it is now, is to raise the incentive for having children and to reduce the economic detriments. One of the reasons Europeans won't have children is because of the intense economic taxation and various other government monopolies. The Middle East, being based upon a tribal-feudal system, tends to have more incentive to have children because male childen can tote guns and be part of the tribal militia, while additional excess children can either be sent to Europe or married off to a European muslim who wants a wife from the "old country". Which most do, because they don't like uppity Western women.
When a family knows that producing more children can get them a "jihad kickback" from invading Europe, or a "martyr kickback" if their son blows himself up at a market, or a "dowry kickback" from marrying a daughter off to a European Arab, they will produce more children. Their children instead of being reliant on their own family's largess, go to Europe and feed off of Europe's largess. Displacing the economic detriment from the Arab family to the European socialized system.
The lower the role of government in social subsidies, the less incentive for others to invade us and the more incentive people have to create their own children.
The American economy would not suffer in the least were illegal immigration cut off. There is just no truth to that. As I mentioned before, we were in the immigration business before Europe was. When Europe stunted their own growth and let Tunisians into Spain and France, they prevented them from assimilating.
It has nothing really to do with the numbers in absolute terms, but the rate of conversion.
Concerning determinism, I'll accept the way you framed the argument. Something cannot be said to be both fated to happen and also occuring because of free will. So in the end, the end solution cannot be both concerning human decisions and not concerning human decisions. The same influence that caused people to choose one way can be modified to cause them to choose another way.
According to a New York Times article published today, it seems that the self-proclaimed “Sunni resistant” Ali Shalal Qaissi was not after all the famous man in the photograph that has become the symbol of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: a hooded man standing on a cardboard box, shivering, with electrical wires attached to his outstretched arms…
Fans of the systematic use of torture on Ayyrab detainees and other Neocon kultists will probably jump at the chance to discredit the “mainstream media”, or even worse, pretend that there never really was such a thing as the Abu Ghraib scandal…even though we have thousands of proofs documenting the mass persecution that took place in US-administered Iraqi prisons including graphic pictures of naked Iraqi women and children surround by barking German shepherds- President Bush’s canine homage to Commander Göring.
As retired USAF lieutenant colonel Karen Kwiatkowski rightly said:
“Perhaps Lenin is another George Bush model. Lenin expected that Imperialism would be Capitalism’s highest stage, and clearly George Bush believes it. Lenin’s actions in 1918 were two-fold. He established "War Communism" at home to seize property, infuse domestic loyalty, and strengthen the federal state, along with a "Third International" to "promote world revolution according to the Russian communist model…The pattern fits. If you consider the philosophies and writings of his neo-conservative advisors, it begins to look eerily familiar. Lenin would approve”…
Anyhoo, whoever he is, the unknown Iraqi soldier on the box remains a very powerful symbol of the cruel bestiality of the Neocon Neros of Washington and TeX-Aviv: the hood is a fitting metaphor for the blindness of KKK nostalgics and other Southern Evangelical revivalists such as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Texan-In-Chief George W. Bush.
As for the wires attached to the detainee’s outstretched arms, they are the technological embodiment of a Western civilization gone awry, a once glorious culture caricatured and debased by those who now speak and act in its name: machine-men and scientific cynics who believe in “harnessing the power of new technologies” to torture, kill and maim in the name of “liberty”.
anon at 2:46, Do you have lead plumbing in your house?
orianna gets it
some commenters get it
even neo is inching toward it
faster please
Causes of the fall of Rome are summarized by Durant in “Caesar and Christ,” pp. 665-670.
We may come nearer to understanding them if we remember that the fall of Rome, like her rise, had not one cause but many, and was not an event but a process spread over 300 years. Some nations have not lasted as long as Rome fell.
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
According to Durant the type of demographics discussed by neo played a significant role in Rome’s slow wasting. He writes of the mingling of fast breeding German & Oriental immigrant-derived populations with the limited-family social trends of native Italians:
The rapidly breeding Germans could not understand the classic culture, did not accept it, did not transmit it; the rapidly breeding Orientals were mostly of a mind to destroy that culture; the Romans, possessing it, sacrificed it to the comforts of sterility. Rome was conquered not by barbarian invasion from without, but by barbarian multiplication within.
Dr. Wafa Sultan’s characterization of the current Western/Islamic conflict as a clash between civilization & barbarism comes to mind. In the last sentence substitute “Europe” for “Rome.” A Sharia-ridden Europe may be inevitable.
grackle, I just started book one of the Durant series. It is already one of the best books I have ever read. I am not a religious person, but I suspect that I enjoy it like a Christian enjoys a bible. The last paragraph of "Our Oreintal Heritage" is quite a cliff hanger isn't it.
Mike: grackle, I just started book one of the Durant series. It is already one of the best books I have ever read. I am not a religious person, but I suspect that I enjoy it like a Christian enjoys a bible. The last paragraph of "Our Oriental Heritage" is quite a cliff hanger isn't it.
The last paragraph, by which I take Mike to mean the end of ch. 31, The New Japan, is a bit long to quote but in it Durant, writing in 1934, predicts a war with Japan & names economic competition as the root cause.
Mike, I warn you, by taking up “Our Oriental Heritage” you may be compelled, as I was, to read the entire series. The books are extremely easy to read. My favorites are the first 3 books but rest assured the quality never flags throughout. Scholarly research coupled with a clear writing style puts the Durants into the upper tier of historians. I also recommend Durant’s “The Story of Philosophy.”
grackle, I meant the last line in the envoui.
"The stage was set for the three-fold drama of Plato, Ceaser and Christ." It's fricken epic.
I skipped to the end and it almost ruined the first book. Who wouldn't want to read history involving Plato and Ceaser with a dash of Jesus.
America has no issue with immigration, because we assimilate immigrants within two generations. Europe has a problem because it maintains a social and ethnic stratification that may likely doom it. They might not have enough time to recognize, react and recover.
We however have several advantages. One: We can see what is happening in Europe.
Two: Conservatives and Christians will be the largest growth demographic group in the US, because they believe in having children at nearly the rate of immigrants, and there are many of them here, as opposed to in Europe.
Three: American culture absorbs, European culture implants immigrants.
One also has to consider that English has become the new world language. That matters. I believe that there is something about the English language that promotes freedom and individual spirit. Perhaps it is partly related to the facts that English is a composite language, and easily absorbs new language and grows via common usage, where, in contrast, French is stifled by it's need for approval from l'academe, and inhibits individual creativity and democratic growth. English also has far more words in it's vocabulary than other languages, allowing far more finesse and specificity, and thus more accurate thought.
I also don't think it's an accident that the U.S., U.K., Australia, are the leaders in the war on terror.
You should read Chomsky, douglass. He also writes about the influence of linguistics.
I've tried, but he's so unbearably full of himself, and I can't take his habit of positing givens which are anything-but.
Contrary to Anon March 17 2:46, Muslim leaders do intend to use demographics against the West and have stated so publicly numerous times. Here are a few.
...from Fallaci’s book [The Force of Reason]: “In 1974 [Algerian President] Houari Boumedienne, the man who ousted Ben Bella three years after Algerian independence, spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations. And without circumlocutions he said: ‘One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.’”
Such a bald statement of purpose by a nation’s president before an international forum seems incredible. Yet even in British journalist Adam LeBor’s A Heart Turned East (1997), a work of profound, almost supine sympathy for the plight of Muslim immigrants in the West, a London-based mullah is quoted as saying, “We cannot conquer these people with tanks and troops, so we have got to overcome them by force of numbers.” In fact, such remarks are commonplace. Just this week, Mullah Krekar, a Muslim supremacist living in Oslo, informed the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that Muslims would change Norway, not the other way around. “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes,” he said. “By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim.”
http://www.laweekly.com/index.php?option=com_lawcontent&task=view&id=12921&Itemid=47#Continuation
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