The Future of Europe -- And the U.S.?

In the new issue of The American Conservative (which is not on the web yet) an essay from Swarthmore political scientist James Kurth. His forecast for Europe is not optimistic. Via Beliefnet and Dad29:

Current social attitudes and demographic trends in the West suggest that there will be a continuation of low reproduction rates among Western peoples and therefore a severe decline in their populations. Conversely, there will be a continuation of high immigration of non-Western peoples into the Western nations and of higher reproduction rates among the non-Western communities in the West than among the Western people themselves. This will have major consequences not only for the military strategies of the Western nations but for their national security -- and even identity.

The most dramatic consequences are likely to occur in Europe, where most of the non-Western populations will be Muslim. These communities already perform functions essential to the economic system, and within the next decade, they are poised to become an important part of the political system. Many European countries will become two nations, and Europe as a whole will become two civilizations. The first will be a Western civilization or, more accurately, given Europeans’ rejection of many Western traditions, a post-Western civilization comprised of people of European descent. It will be secular, even pagan, rich, old, and feeble. The second will be the non-Western civilization, descended from non-European peoples. It will be religious, even Islamic, poor, young, and vigorous. ...The two civilizations will regard each other with mutual contempt. In the new civilization, there will be a growing rage, and in the old civilization, there will be a growing fear. These will be the perfect conditions for endemic Islamic terrorism, urban riots, and mob violence: an Islamist insurgency within Europe itself.

For the nations of the West, which have arrived at this historically unprecedented state, a viable strategy for the nation is no longer possible because they are no longer really nations at all.

Two pessimistic? Maybe.

Applicable to the U.S.? Not in the short run. In the long run, a real danger.

But the U.S. is still a Christian nation, notwithstanding the hostility toward Christianity of certain elites. And the massive immigration of people not acculturated to American norms is from Hispanic Christians, not Muslims.

An irony of all this is that the safety of secular people in the U.S. (and this includes not only atheists and agnostics but the nominally religious) lies in the fact that this is a Christian nation.

Christians will protect, both by being willing to fight and willing to procreate, the moderate Constitutional regime that secures the liberty of all.

Which is why the secular hostility to Christians, as well as the tendency of secular people to romanticize Muslims as victims of Western imperialism, is so short-sighted.