This is a hard essay to read, despite the fact that it covered some material Steyn had discussed when he gave his speech at the Claremont Institute. I can argue all day long about his tossed-off allusion to "the gay agenda," a phrase that always bothers me when I hear it, but the main thrust of his piece seems very correct to me: the West is in trouble. Europe is in trouble. And within 20 years the modern world may well consist of China, India, South America, Australia, Southern Africa, and the United States. Europe stands a very good chance of living under Sharia law by then, given the demographic changes that are afoot.

The U.S. makes babies at just the replacement rate, and most Western Democracies fall well below that minimum level. The people who appear to be producing the next generation are largely Muslims, and many of them live either in countries that reject individuality, democracy and pluralism, or in communties within European cities that do the same thing.

Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: the grand buildings will still be standing but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.

What will Europe be like at the end of this process? Who knows? On the one hand, there’s something to be said for the notion that America will find an Islamified Europe more straightforward to deal with than Monsieur Chirac, Herr Schröder, and Co. On the other hand, given Europe’s track record, getting there could be very bloody. But either way this is the real battlefield. The al Qaeda nutters can never find enough suicidal pilots to fly enough planes into enough skyscrapers to topple America. But, unlike us, the Islamists think long-term, and, given their demographic advantage in Europe and the tone of the emerging Muslim lobby groups there, much of what they’re flying planes into buildings for they’re likely to wind up with just by waiting a few more years. The skyscrapers will be theirs; why knock ’em over?

A tough read, but an important one. Please go.

UPDATE: Goldstein quotes Steyn's essay at length, in particular relating his points about our civilization's priorities to the current flap over NSA "eavesdropping."

Via Mike Marinacci, who has a new book out. If you, like I, think Marinacci should revise and reissue Mysterious California, send me a note to that effect and I'll pass it along. That's grass-roots action, Kids. There's also a rumor that he's done some research for a book on strange phenomena in the entire Southwest, which I'd personally love to read.

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