Apatalypse Now [Mark Steyn]
Pat Buchanan was digging demography long before I got into it, and he returns to the theme in his latest column, cheerfully entitled (apres Eliot) "The Way Our World Ends":
In 1950, whites were 28 percent of world population and Africans 9 percent, a ratio of three-to-one. In 2060, the ratio will remain the same. But the colors will be reversed. People of African ancestry will be 25 percent of the world's population. People of European descent will have fallen to 9.8 percent.
More arresting is that the white population is shrinking not only in relative but in real terms. Two hundred million white people, one in every six on earth — a number equal to the entire population of France, Britain, Holland and Germany — will vanish by 2060.
The Caucasian race is going the way of the Mohicans...
By 2050, a fourth of all the people of Eastern Europe will have vanished. Ukraine will lose one-third of its population. Russia, 150 million at the breakup of the Soviet Union, 142 million today, will be down to 108 million. Such losses dwarf what Hitler and Stalin together did to these countries...
Pakistan will add 84 million to reach almost 300 million, the U.S. population today. Afghanistan's population will triple from 27 million to 79 million. Iraq's will go from 29 million to 62 million. The destinies of these nations will be beyond the capacity of an aging, dwindling, dying West to dictate.
Ah, if only the Ukrainians grew a bit more body hair and clung photogenically to a bit of melting ice, maybe they could be put on the endangered species list. As it is, the polar bear will outlast western civilization.
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Re: Last of the Caucasians [Mark Steyn]
Woah, steady on, Jonah. I didn't say I was on board with the entire Buchananite thesis. Pat sees the world racially, I see it culturally. Derb thinks this distinction is a dodge and a lot of hooey, but he can address that himself. Nevertheless, I distinguish between an Indian and a Pakistani: Buchanan doesn't. Likewise, I think he insufficiently distinguishes between, say, a Belgian and an Englishman. And, aside from all that, the term "Caucasian" includes Arabs. As I say in the hot new intro to the paperback of America Alone (released this very day in Canada), one place that's brimming with Caucasians is the Caucasus, and they're all Muslim and one big headache for Moscow.
Re the "moral" difference between Hitler, Stalin and demographic suicide: You're right, of course. But forget murder, mass slaughter, genocide. In the 14th century, the Black Death reduced the Continent's population by a third; in the 21st, the numbers will fall by a larger proportion – as you say, by choice. That may not be morally equivalent to the Fuhrer et al but it's remarkable nonetheless.
Finally, your closing sentence:
Controlling your destiny (assuming you have the political will to do so) is more possible today than it was when comparatively tiny British isles dictated not only their own destiny but the destiny of much of the globe.
That's largely self-refuting: Do you see a lot of "will" in the husk of western Europe or even an America which, if not yet wholly Obamafied, is very tentative about asserting its interests around the world? And, on the larger point, the "comparatively tiny British Isles" were the first people on earth to conquer infant mortality, so two centuries ago they had excess manpower, and they exported it, settling America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Just as today "comparatively tiny" Yemen has excess manpower and exports it.
Does this make a difference? Well, even today, if you look at the GDP per capita of nations over ten million, the Top Four are an anglophone sweep: America, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom.
I'm not as glum as Buchanan, but something's going on here; it puts, at the very minimum, a question-mark over the future; and, alas, one-and-a-half parties in our two-party system are committed to policies that exacerbate these trends.
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