High Noon In The West

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The invaluable Daniel Pipes has written an article on what he sees as the three most likely possible futures for Europe:

Europe may constitute a mere 7 per cent of the world's landmass but for 500 years, 1450-1950, for good and ill, it was the global engine of change.

How it develops in the future will affect all humanity, especially daughter countries such as Australia that still retain close and important ties to the old continent. I foresee potentially one of three paths for Europe: Muslims dominating, Muslims rejected or harmonious integration.

The first scenario, Muslims dominating, is most famously articulated in Mark Steyn's America Alone. In this possible future, Europe does not wake from its current cultural and demographic stupor. Native Europeans are currently at nowhere near population replacement levels. Liberal guilt, coupled with Socialist economics and moral relativism (highlighted by a rejection of religion) has lulled the continent into a suicidal stupor from which it doesn't wake. Islam, though lacking in the inner dynamism of Western civilization retains its religious fervor coupled with a resentment of the West and a fecundity that leads it to swamping the continent.

The second scenario, Muslims rejected, posits a future in which Europe , at the 11th hour, rouses itself from its stupor and pushes back against the Muslim influx. The result is likely to be bloody and difficult, requiring not just the likely expulsion of large numbers of Muslims but a reconfiguration of dead-end European Socialist economies and a muscular reclamation of European culture.

The final scenario is favored by "most politicians, journalists, and academics, but it has little basis in fact." It basically posits a future in which the idea of either the old style conception of the "melting pot" or the current in-vogue multicultural idea takes hold and Muslims and Europeans mingle happily, happily reveling in the gorgeous mosaic Jesse Jackson likes to bleat about.

Looking around at the current social landscape of Europe it is depressingly easy to assume that the first scenario in which Muslims eventually become ascendant while shunting aside Western culture in the process, is even now taking place. Pipes however, while hardly being an optimist in this matter is a realist first and makes this final point:

Forecasting is difficult because the crisis has not yet struck. But it may not be far off. Within a decade, perhaps, the continent's evolution will become clear as the Europe-Muslim relationship takes shape.

The unprecedented nature of Europe's situation also renders a forecast exceedingly difficult. Never in history has a civilisation peaceably dissolved, nor has a people risen to reclaim its patrimony. Europe's unique circumstances make the outcome difficult to comprehend, tempting to overlook and virtually impossible to predict. With Europe, we all enter into terra incognita.

Whatever the outcome, it will have tremendous ramifications for the US, either pointing the way to our own future or acting as a cautionary tale that might cause us to develop strategies that might yet save the ideals of the West, the best of which have have yet to be equalled by any other culture.

Cross-Posted at Liberty Pundit

Horray For...France?

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It would seem the days of Jacques Chirac really are dead as current French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently has plans to send 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan, boosting the French troop presence there to close to 3,000. Even more remarkable is the fact that he is doing this while Germany, Italy and Spain are continuing to show their usual spinelessness in the face of Islamofascism.

Since coming to power in May of last year Sarkozy has continued to act in a way that has made it almost difficult to loathe the usually wretched French Republic. On a score of different fronts he's advocated policies and made statements that would make it seem that he doesn't realize that both Europe and France are in a death spiral. Last month, instead of attempting to grovel before the growing ranks of world anti-semitism he said,

"I won't shake hands with people who refuse to recognise Israel."

He's also shown solidarity with the US in opposition to Iran saying,

“Proliferation is a grave threat to international security. We
cannot sit by and do nothing while Iran develops technologies which are in violation of international law.”

And he's even taking a whack at China on environmental issues, threatening to penalize Chinese imports due to the free-ride it gets on carbon-emissions while the EU must meet strict standards, despite China being expected to soon become the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide.

The fact that the US sees Europe as an ally (no matter how unreliable) is threatened by the demographic trend-line in which Muslim immigrants are now on their way to becoming the majority while showing little allegiance to Western culture. Sarkozy, with his personal experience with the Muslim riots that spread across the country in 2005 has shown a desire to try to get a handle on the problem by proposing quotas on immigrants. The fact that he's on the right track can be seen by the comments of a Leftist member of the French commission on social and economic reform who said,

“If we will have quotas for specific nationalities and specific
professions it will lead to a racist policy."

Will Sarkozy be able to stop the boulder of French decline as it careens down the mountain to its ultimate crash landing? Well, he is far from perfect and the cracks are already starting to show. His private life reads like something out of National Enquirer. In fact, it frequently is something that you can read about in the Enquirer. He has a famously short temper that is considerably less than endearing. And he is fighting the entrenched forces of the status quo which are deeply committed to France's current death spiral. His poll numbers have dipped to around 40% approval and his party fared badly in recent municipal elections. But Sarkozy is smart and resourceful so he could well pull himself out of these doldrums.

The question then becomes whether Sarkozy will become the leading edge of a European revival or just the last man who tried? I wouldn't exactly put my money on his chances but it is encouraging to see that there's a least still a little fight left in Europe.

Cross-linked at Liberty Pundit