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Answering Mark Steyn: Altering the Calculus of the South to North Migration
Austin Bay
austinbay.net
This morning I had a chance to elaborate on my short “Sunday answer” to Mark’s post. It’s UPDATE 3 in the long thread below, but rates it’s own space. Check the old thread for the background.
First Mark Steyn’s note to me:
Well, since you asked, Austin…
First, it’s true that the Central and Eastern European nations are markedly more America-friendly than the western ones. However, their long-term prognosis is not significantly different: they face the same deathbed demographics - right now, the only European country breeding at replacement rate is Muslim Albania.
Declining population isn’t necessarily a problem - my own New Hampshire town, for example, survived a 130-year population decline from 1820 to 1950, caused by the opening up of the west, the collapse of the sheep industry and the big mill towns down south. But New Hampshire’s entire social structure wasn’t founded on a welfarist model dependent on continuous population growth to sustain state benefits. For the states of Eastern Europe, one of the consequences of joining the EU, adopting the Euro and ratifying the European Constitution is that they’re also assuming collective responsibility for the cost of the unsustainable welfare burdens of Greece, France, etc.
There are two ways you could deal with this - either reform of the welfare states or massive immigration higher than America at its pre-World War One immigration peak. No European politicians have the courage to address the former (openly), so they’ve signed on to the latter (silently). In the end, the idea of using the Third World as your surrogate mother isn’t a long-term solution either: in 2020, a skilled educated Indian, Chilean, Chinaman, Singaporean will be able to write his own emigration ticket anywhere on the planet. Is it likely he’ll want to choose a part of the world where the basic tax rate will be 60%?
That means Europe will be almost wholly dependent on the Muslim world for immigration - and one of the features of super-tolerant anything-goes post-Christian Europe is that it radicalises hitherto moderate Muslims. Look at the number of Islamist terrorists who are creatures of the Euro-Canadian welfare systems - Richard Reid the shoe bomber, Zac Moussaoui, Ahmed Ressam, even Mohammed Atta’s political character was formed in large part by his time in Germany. A senior Dutch cabinet minister told me in 2003 that what really scared him was that young Dutch Muslims were more Islamist and less assimilated than the grandparents who’d arrived in the early Seventies.
There are two likely longterm outcomes of all this:
a) Europe will simply become Muslim, as is already happening in secondary Scandinavian and Benelux cities;
b) New opportunist political movements will take advantage of the situation and of the silence of the centre-left EU political establishment, as is already happening in France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Germany, Denmark. Europeans will see their declining economic fortunes, increasing crime, unaffordable welfare systems, etc, within the context of their demographic transformation, and some will react in the traditional European way - ie, violence, massive destabilisation, etc. Will this work in the long run? I doubt it. Like the “Take Back Vermont” campaign of five years ago, once you’re talking about taking it back you’ve already lost it.
There may be smart politicians in individual nations - Slovakia, Lithuania - who understand this. But, given that anyone who has the right to live in one EU country has the right to live in all - ie, a Swede is entitled to live in Greece and vice-versa - it’s unlikely that they’ll avoid the destabilising effects of their neighbours.
More to the point, we’re already seeing the start of a continent-wide equivalent of the “white flight” from US cities in the Seventies: the Netherlands is now a net exporter of its own people.
So: you tell me how we get to the happy ending.
Progressive secular welfarism is a great life - but only for a generation or two. After that, it’s a death cult.
All best,
Mark
My reply:
Monday– time to expand on Sunday’s quick reply:
How do we get there? I don’t believe in happy endings, just a respite before the next struggle.
But, in the pursuit of the happy ending–first off I’ll argue that we’re getting there on the battlefield. We’re turning combat victories into political victories in Afghanistan and the Middle East. I see very significant Polish and British participation in this effort (FWIW, I spent the better part of a month working for a British major-general– the Brits are a professional’s professional combat force). Italian participation shouldn’t be underestimated.
I don’t underestimate the French and German peoples’ capacities for change, either, especially when challenged at home. Yes, I know about Dutch emigration. I also read about a building Dutch anti-Muslim backlash– there are two trains running, neither look good. That’s why I think what will happen in Holland is something in between, but concentrating on a “re-birth of western values,” controlling immigration, and focusing on integration for the immigrants it allows. (In German Der Spiegel says Joschka Fischer has finally lost his teflon because of the visa scandal– a step to controlling immigration in Germany–and getting rid of the Old Reds of ‘68–see one of the early comments in this thread.)
Giving up on people is so passe’ –okay, give up on the ex-girlfriend but don’t write off the Dutch or the French. I think Pim Fortuyn was the forefront of a reassertion of western values in Holland. Yup, a gay ex-professor. But he understood what John Leo is getting at when he invokes Walter Lippmann. (Here’s the John Leo essay Glenn posted (from US News). It describes the Left’s values quandry in America.)
Last summer –a hot night in Baghdad– I sat in on a routine ops and plans briefing. As the meeting broke up a very senior general sitting at the table started talking about “the real strategic challenge of our time. The (global) south is moving north.” No, that’s not a new thought, but –though it’s late and we’re tired– it’s an interesting thought. We got into a completely non-classified discussion about causes, perceptions and consequences of this great migration. No one at that table saw this demographic movement as an invasion, but a fact of life spurred by men and women seeking better economic opportunities. Declining native European populations got a mention –as in the demand for entry level labor. Another word entered the conversation: “liberty.” Put yourself in the other man’s shoes, one officer said. You’re from El Salvador and you’re tired of being caught in the crossfire between artistocrats of the left and right. You’re a Dinka and you’re tired of being in the crossfire. You’re an Berber in Algeria and you’re tired of being in the crossfire. So you head north– the US in the Salvadoran case, in all probability Europe is the Dinka and Berber destination You cannot help but bring your own culture and experience with you. Once you arrive there is the inevitable clash of “new arrival” versus the homeboys.
Now the conversation turned to “What do we do?” especially in the case of immigrants who resist integration. The best idea: change the conditions that spark the migration– everything else is mitigation, though domestic policies that spur integration and adaptation are certainly part of the answer. Changing conditions that spark migration means extending economic opportunities and “the liberty engine” that drives creative economic success into the hellholes our Salvadoran and Dinka and Berber are departing. I’m paraphrasing, but one of the officers in the discussion said to the effect: “These people need a break back home.”
As someone who has worked developmental aid issues in Central America and East Africa, I’m extremely sympathetic with this view.
But how do you break the corrupt, autocratic grip that oppresses so many of these endemically poor societies? What is the mechanism of this great change that will shape the great migration? The senior general said to me, laconically: “It could be this war we’re in.”
I recall a discussion I had with a Syrian Arab. We were in a language school together in Germany in the early 1980s. The first two months we were together he came on hard with the Arab anger and Mulism militant act. He hated Americans and he hated “Jews” (Israelis). He bullied the other Americans at the school with this moral castigation hustle, but I flat told him to stuff it. If he hated Americans, well, I’m a Texan, get over it. That perfect wisecrack puzzled him for 24 hours and once he figured out I was playing Texas cowboy in response to his angry Arab, it amused him. This fellow was also smart and witty and both of us enjoyed making puns in German (we were both in an intermediate class, didn’t speak it well, but what German we did speak we both played with). He also liked jazz and hung around when I played piano (blues and bop, mostly). I got the facts by osmosis: he had had family jailed by Assad, but in Syria who hadn’t? His family lived in fear. Well, the brilliant Syrian and I are sitting in a German cafe one afternoon–quaint side street, great light– and he finally breaks. “How do you do it?” he asked me, meaning “How does America do it? How does America succeed in so many ways?” I told him his real question was why Syria, or for that matter, a majority of Third World countries, were in such terrible and terrifying conditions. “Yes,” that’s the deep subject. “First you have to off your autocrats,” I told him. “But we can’t do this,” he said–and his face was a work of pain. “Then, until you do, you will continue to eat dust,” I replied. “To eat dirt.”
Michael Novak didn’t make it up. There is a universal hunger for liberty. It exists in Syria, and my brilliant, frightened, pseudo-militant friend attests to that. He was a sincere Muslim– but I am certain his “Sunni militancy” act was a response to the Allawite dictatorship in Syria. It was an outlet.
Is changing the conditions that spark migration Mark’s happy ending? No. It’s a long, bitter struggle. But changing those conditions changes the calculus that leads to Mark’s Number One: “Europe will simply become Muslim.” |
