| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| Is Europe Dying? |
| 2005-06-08 |
| I just love posting articles on how Europe is going to fade away, slowly... must be a serious masochistic streak in me... or is it just post-modern self-hatred? Anyway, I don't see a spiritual renewal coming to us anytime soon. RIP. Long, needs to be p.49-ed. By George Weigel Foreign Policy Research Institute | June 7, 2005 America's "Europe problem" and Europe's "America problem" have been staple topics of transatlantic debate for the past several years. Political leaders, media commentators, and businessmen usually discuss those problems in terms of policy differences: differences over prosecuting the war on terrorism, differences over the role of the United Nations in world affairs, differences over the Kyoto Protocol on the global environment, differences over Iraq. The policy differences are real. Attempts to understand them in political, strategic, and economic terms alone will ultimately fail, however, because such explanations do not reach deeply enough into the human texture of contemporary Europe. To put the matter directly: Europe, and especially western Europe, is in the midst of a crisis of civilizational morale. The most dramatic manifestation of that crisis is not to be found in Europe's fondness for governmental bureaucracy or its devotion to fiscally shaky health care schemes and pension plans, in Europe's lagging economic productivity or in the appeasement mentality that some European leaders display toward Islamist terrorism. No, the most dramatic manifestation of Europe's crisis of civilizational morale is the brute fact that Europe is depopulating itself. Europe's below-replacement-level birthrates have created situations that would have been unimaginable when the 1940s and early 1950s. By the middle of this century, if present fertility patterns continue, 60 percent of the Italian people will have no personal experience of a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, or a cousin;[1] Germany will lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany; and Spain's population will decline by almost one-quarter. Europe is depopulating itself at a rate unseen since the Black Death of the fourteenth century.[2] And one result of that is a Europe that is increasingly "senescent" (as British historian Niall Ferguson has put it).[3] |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #17 Europe isn't the only place that is 'dying'. Japan has the lowest birthrate on the planet, and all developed Asian nations like Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have births that are below replacement level, as do Anglo-Saxon descendent nations like New Zealand, Canada and Australia (although those are still growing due to immigration). |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2005-06-08 23:36 |
| #16 Darn, just ran outta seats. Leave your number with the receptionist and go for a walk. We'll call you. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2005-06-08 21:27 |
| #15 Hey look a god hater! You are number 1388 at Rantburg. Take a seat your number will be called. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-08 20:01 |
| #14 I'd vote for atheist. The paganism was fun dress-up stuff for the dramatically minded, connecting with their German Volk roots, nothing anybody serious took seriously. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-06-08 18:42 |
| #13 Add them all up and still come way short of the 120,000,000 victims of communism. Throw in another 10,000,000 for Naziism (which can be viewed as either atheist or pagan). |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-06-08 18:36 |
| #12 Well, the Spanish conquistadores seemed fairly proficient at genocide, without any help from the doctrine of 'atheistic humanism'. Ditto the Arab muslims in India, the Turks in Armenia, etc. The fact that people who believe in worn-out fairy stories involving miracle-working supernatural entities still presume to offer advice to the rest of us is a joke of truly cosmic proportions. |
| Posted by: Man U Suck 2005-06-08 18:27 |
| #11 :-) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-06-08 13:52 |
| #10 Is Eunuchs Dying? Yes. Next Question? |
| Posted by: RedMeanie 2005-06-08 13:25 |
| #9 Europe lives ... as long as they still make Leicas. They still do, don't they? |
| Posted by: Snomotle Snomong7242 2005-06-08 13:05 |
| #8 Don't steal my lines, hey! |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2005-06-08 11:44 |
| #7 it's resting |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-06-08 11:37 |
| #6 Europe is not dying. Next question |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2005-06-08 11:28 |
| #5 In the US, there is a popular distinction made between "morality" and "ethics". Americans are generally distrustful of "morality", because it is thought of as religious inspired law--varying tremendously between different religions. So when a politician preaches "morality", it sounds like he is being sectarian. Once again, the rules of "morality" are believed to be written in heaven, and up to the interpretation of whatever shaman is believed. "Ethics", however, is following the laws written by and for humans. As evidenced by the preamble to the Constitution, it is *not* a document written in heaven or revealed by prophecy. It is "of the people, by the people, and for the people." It is there in black and white, a document of reason with limited interpretation nationwide. And it can be changed. Americans respect a politician who is "ethical", who obeys the written law, and just as importantly, who promulgates "ethics" in the laws he endorses and the things he stands for. So what of "morality" and reproduction? First of all, statistically, when a people achieve a certain plateau standard of living, in *whatever* society, their birthrate drops off to about 2.1 per family. That is natural and occurs all of the time. Government cannot substantially *increase* this birthrate, but they can strongly *decrease* it, based on social policy. One of the worst things a government can do in such a case sounds very "moral", that is, demanding "responsibility" at all levels of procreation. Over time, government creates so many *rules* that must be followed to "properly" raise a child, that a child becomes a major burden. They insist that first of all, parents be "of age" before they reproduce; that they use "protection", to prevent "unwanted" pregnancy; that they not reproduce until married; that a father is "responsible" for the raising of his children; that a child must be raised with many amenities, far beyond survival needs, or even essential needs, that is, many luxuries; that parents keep responsibility for their children until their children turn 18 years old. Each of these individually sound reasonable, until you realize that each one on its own can reduce the birthrate another .1 children per family. In total, anywhere from .5 to .8 fewer children because of government "morality." |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-06-08 10:39 |
| #4 New sickman of Europe is ummmmmmm Europe. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-08 10:17 |
| #3 Sooner or later, but rather sooner, the dual burdens of socialism and liberal borders will just plain wear you down. Nationalism then becomes the haven - does Germany pre-WWII ring a bell? They have spent so much time post-war appeasing and compromising and deifying the great satan America that their political leadership has crumbled into weak feta cheese! |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2005-06-08 10:14 |
| #2 He's dead, Jim. |
| Posted by: Bones 2005-06-08 09:16 |
| #1 Two posts in one day that refer to humanism, which I thought was dead and buried years ago. If you reject religion then you reject morality. All issues then become pragmatic issues (refer to JSM and Utilitarianism). Humanism was just a weasel way of rejecting God while hanging on to morality. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-06-08 08:47 |