David's World

August 22, 2006

So long, free world.

The clash of civilizations may happen, but it won't change the outcome. The free world has already lost the battle - at least according to Mark Steyn, who has been publishing a few opinion pieces worth reading.

Population in the western world diminishes day by day, Steyn says. Women are emancipated (a good thing - dr), people enjoy their lives and go on vacation to far-away places (a good thing - dr), couples get to know each other before committing (a good thing - dr). All of this translates to an average of one child per couple in free societies, both in the West and in high-tech Australasia.

Meanwhile, Mohammed and Ali procreate happily. The evolution of religions and ways-of-life will take its toll. In Steyn's words, it's "breeding obvious": "The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it."

Of course, this doesn't have to be a terrible thing. The sharia in place - commit adultery, get stoned (if you're a woman). Finally, morals in an Allah-fearing society. This may sound single-minded and naive, but for those who need a study, they can get one from Freedom House, whose 2005 ranking resulting from a survey of personal liberty and democracy, only three of the 46 Muslim majority nations in the world were considered free, according to Steyn. And it's not just the radical Islam that could be considered detrimental to freedom. Is the Christian Right in the U.S. working on building a freer America, a freer world? Borrowing from comedian Doug Stanhope, have you ever seen a headline that read: "Atheist militants detonate bomb in city café" -?

Historically, short periods of freedom have mostly been ended by a new dark age. We might consider ourselves lucky to live in the right place, at the right time.

Mark Steyn is usually wrong about most things. I wouldn't get too exceited about his ill-informed and short-sighted opinions about the "clash of civilizations".

Here's another take on Mark Steyn:
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/08/so-wrong-that-it-re-defines-wrongness.html