Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Youth Bulges, Violence, and the Fifth Village: “The Game is Over for Europe”

UPDATE: This translation contains errors. Lars Hedegaard has since made a revised translation. See our newer post, “A Continent of Losers”.


Below is a translation of an interview by Lars Hedegaard of the German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn, from the May issue of the online magazine Sappho. The article was translated from the Danish by Zonka, who deserves our thanks for undertaking such a Herculean task.

Dr. Heinsohn elaborates on a theme that Mark Steyn has made familiar: the impending demographic collapse of the West, particularly Europe, and the accompanying threat from a surplus of angry young Muslim males.

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Interview: Tabernes kontinent

While the European populations are shrinking, and the best-qualified young people are leaving, we continue to allow mass-immigration of unqualified Muslims, who will soon make our welfare society collapse. Add to this the fact that the Muslim world has built up a surplus of youths, which according to experience will lead to mass-murder, and the effect cannot be helped by foreign aid. The originator of these bleak predictions is the German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn, who believes that the game is over for Europe.

By Lars Hedegaard

Gunnar HeinsohnBREMEN: If the leaders of the American-led “Coalition of the Willing”, had known Gunnar Heinsohn’s research, they most likely never would have left their troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. They would probably quickly abandon any thought of intervention in Sudan’s Darfur province. They would tell the Palestinian 10-children-families that the West no longer will pay for their unrestricted childbirth. Western opinion-makers and politicians would also abandon their pet theory that virtually any act of violence in a belt from Northern Africa to the Philippines in addition to miscellaneous acts of terror all over the world are caused by the unsolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And worst of all seen from the prevalent political consensus in Denmark and the rest of the West: Heinsohn does not believe, even for a second, that economic aid and hunger relief in countries plagued by large youth populations can prevent wars, social unrest, terror or killings. On the contrary he is convinced that the material aid in some cases can start the killings. This is because starving people do not fight, they just suffer. However, if you give a lot of young men enough to eat and a certain education, in a society where there are too many young men so that not all can get the recognition and position that they feel entitled to, it can lead to violence.

About this the 63-year-old professor of sociology at the University of Bremen, in 2003 wrote in his sensational and quite politically incorrect book Söhne und Weltmacht: Terror im Aufstieg und Fall der Nationen [Sons and World Domination: Terror in the Rise and Fall of Nations]. The book became widely known and talked about, after the prominent German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk characterized the work as being as groundbreaking as Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Sloterdijk thought that the book could pave the way for a new realism with in the field, one that could be called “Demographic Materialism”.

Heinsohn is not concerned about the absolute size of populations, rather the share of teenagers and young men. If this share becomes too big compared to the total population, we’re facing a youth bulge. The problem starts when the individual family puts three, four, or more sons into the world. Then they start fighting for access to the positions in society that give power and prestige. Then you have a lot of boys and young men running around filled with aggression and uncontrollable hormones. Then we get the killings, until sufficiently many have been killed and their number matches society’s ability to provide positions for them.

According to Heinsohn, 80% of world history is about young men in nations with a surplus of sons, creating trouble. This trouble can take many forms — a violent increase in domestic crime, coup d’état attempts, revolutions, riots, and civil wars. Occasionally the young commit genocide to assure themselves of the positions that belonged to those they killed. Finally, there is war to conquer new territory, killing the enemy population and replacing it with one’s own.

But, as Heinsohn emphasizes again and again, the unrest and the violent acts that the youth bulge causes have nothing to do with famine or unemployment. In his book he described it in this way: The dynamic in a youth bulge — it cannot be emphasized too often — is not caused by the lack of food. A younger brother, who as a stable hand for the firstborn son can be well-fed and perhaps even fat, does not seek food, but position, one that can guarantee him recognition, influence and dignity. Not underweight, but rather potential losers or the déclassé are pushing forward. (p. 21)

Unfortunately, the Western world in recent years is facing a gigantic youth bulge in large parts of the Muslim world. This bulge is created by a Muslim population explosion. In just five generations (1900-2000) the population in the Muslim countries has grown from 150 million to 1200 million — an increase of 800%. As a comparison the population of China has grown from 400 million to 1200 million (300%). The population of India has risen from 250 million to 1000 million (400%).

Sappho has visited Gunnar Heinsohn at his office at the University of Bremen, where he was awarded a lifelong professorship, to ask him to elaborate on his sensational views.

Youth Bulge and Violence

What is the definition of a youth bulge?

“There is no ordinarily accepted definition. The Frenchman who first used the notion in 1970 said that a youth bulge existed when 30% of the men in a population were between 20 to 24. I changed it to 30% between 15 and 29. This means that if you take 100 males from a country, then 30 of them will be between 15 and 29.

“But remember that this 30% group of young men will not pose any danger if they are hungry or without education. To be dangerous they must be in good physical and mental shape.”

Heinsohn emphasises that there are lots of wars and killings in history that don’t spring from a youth bulge. The Hitler movement and the Mussolini movement in the 1920s can be explained as youth bulge experiences. The early Nazis and Fascists had an average age a bit below 30. The Bolshevik movement in the period around the 1917 Revolution can be described in the same way. But by the time Hitler started WWII many German families were down to only one son. So Hitler’s attack in 1939 wasn’t a youth bulge phenomenon. Neither was the Holocaust. The killing of the Jews wasn’t caused by the young German men wanting to take their positions, even though there are theories that claim so.

Neither do the killings started by the later Marxist-Leninist regimes — that may have killed 100 million people — have anything to do with youth bulges. The Bolshevik revolution in 1917 was driven by millions and millions of farmers’ sons without land — that was a youth bulge; however Stalin’s gulag doesn’t fall into this category.

What about Mao’s killings in China?

“Again, in the 1930s Mao’s movement was carried by a youth bulge, but when he took power in 1949, and started his great purges by killing landowners, the youth bulge was already over.”

So the predominant ideology of the West, namely that we can fight war and violence by fighting hunger and create jobs in the third world, is wrong?

“Every year five German peace-research institutes publish an annual report, and every year it has the following conclusion: If we win the struggle against hunger, we have defeated war. On the contrary — the youth bulge research shows that if you’re successful in eliminating immediate material poverty and hunger in a country with a youth bulge, violence starts to escalate.

“In Europe we have just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Rome Treaty, and in all the newspapers we could read that this treaty ended war in Europe. This is absolutely wrong. If the Germans after 1945 had procreated as they did between 1900 and 1914, then we would have had a German nation with almost 500 million citizens, and we would have had about 80 million German men between 15 and 29. In reality we have 7 million. And then we can ask ourselves if these 80 million would have been as peaceful as the present 7 million, or if they instead would have been bombing Breslau or Danzig.”

Demographic Capitulation
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“This brings me to something that I call ‘Demographic Capitulation’. It has a very simple definition: Take all the men aged 40-44 and compare them to the boys aged 0-4. Demographic capitulation is when you have 100 males aged 40-44 compared to less than 80 0-4 boys. In Germany the number is 100/50, in the Gaza-strip it is 100/464. I have compared some numbers for you, and these show that Denmark is on the verge of Demographic Capitulation. Your numbers are 100/80.”

Heinsohn’s statistical overview shows that if Denmark had procreated at the same rate as in the Gaza Strip (from 240,000 to 1.4 million from 1950 to 2006), then we wouldn’t have had a population of 5.5 million (compared to 4.3 million in 1950), but 25 million, thus more than New Zealand and Australia combined. In that case the median age of Danes would be 15 (in reality it is 39), and there would be 3.6 million men in battle-ready age (15-29), while the real number is only 470,000. (Median age must not be confused with average age. The median age of 15 means that there are as many people below 15 as there are above 15).

Compared to countries which, like Germany and Japan, have capitulated, are countries that are characterized by “Demographic Rearmament”. Apart from Gaza there are amongst others the three Muslim countries Afghanistan (100/403), Iraq (100/351) and Somalia (100/364). It is thus not random that they are marked by widespread and extreme acts of violence, and will be for several more years into the future. This also holds for Gaza and the Palestinian people in general.

So you don’t believe that the so-called “Peace Process” between Israel and the Palestinians is realistic?

“No, and the main reason is the big mistake that was made in Oslo in 1991, when the secret negotiations between Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin started. The error was that nobody took any notice of the Palestinian population explosion. The Palestinian population has grown almost 6 times as large within the last 50 years. We should have done two things: Israel should have stopped their settlements, and the world community should have said to the Palestinian people: Every child in Palestine will be fed by the world community as before, because by accepting that every Palestinian child is a refugee, the world community have a responsibility for the number of children born. But from January 1st 1992 you will have to pay for your own children, just as a woman does in Lebanon, in Tunisia, and in Algeria. That’s what they should have told the Palestinians. Why am I mentioning these three countries? Because in those societies a women has fewer than two children on the average. Had we done that 15 years ago, we would have seen a generation of young Palestinian men with few reasons to commit violence against each other or against the Jews. But we didn’t, and therefore I do not believe in the peace process, even if Hamas should decide to sign everything. Their youth will tear such agreements apart.”

Heinsohn points out that it is the USA and EU, and particularly the Scandinavian countries, that pay for the enormous child production of the Palestinian people. We must cease this support, so that the Palestinians pay for the children they bring into the world after a certain point in time.

Why can’t the Palestinians just work like everybody else and earn their own keep?

“Palestine is a special matter. They never had any chance to develop, because they have always been on international support.”

Poverty and Religion

From your book one gets the notion that youth bulges creates poverty, while we in the West have seen the relation in the opposite way and seen youth bulges as a result of poverty?

“If a youth bulge changes a state to a failed state, then one will see a breakdown of the market and the production, and it will lead to poverty. If we look at a case in which we now see an escalation of violence — Pakistan and Bangladesh — we can see that they both have a steady increase in the average income per citizen — and even a significant growth. Thus we have created the primary conditions for making the young men both well-fed and well-educated, which leads to them becoming unruly. If these young men successfully destroy the infrastructure of the country, it will result in poverty. I have followed this process closely in the West African state Cote d’Ivoire. Here they had a system with seven children for every woman, and at the same time the average income grew. When the killings started to rise, so did the average income.”

How do you explain the fact that the Muslim Middle-East was deeply underdeveloped, before there was any sign of a youth bulge, even before the Europeans — who get the blame for most things — had set foot in the Middle-East? Isn’t it necessary to add religion to the explanation?

“Let’s look at the small countries in Europe that were capable of conquering and colonising large parts of the world after around 1500, starting with Portugal and Spain. Our explanation is usually that there was a pressure on resources because of overpopulation. The opposite was the case. When Spain started their conquests in 1493 with Columbus’ second expedition, Spain had a population of six million, but in 1350 it had nine million citizens. Spain wasn’t overpopulated. On the contrary there was a sudden a growth in childbirths, because pope Innocent VIII in 1484 had decreed that birth-control was punishable by death, which caused an immediate explosion in births. In the Middle Ages the average number of children per family was 2-3; now it was suddenly 6-7. That caused the median age in the population of six million to be 15, while it in the nine-million population in 1350 had been 28-30. So there wasn’t a lack of land or food. However, there was a sudden scarcity of positions. Earlier one had raised one or two boys in the family. One could take over the farm and one could start a new one. Now they had three boys who had food, but no positions, and these boys started the conquests and the colonising. The Spaniards call these secundones, the “secondaries”.

“Where does the religion enter the picture? These young men — 95% of them — were normal, good boys and saw it as a sin to kill or mistreat the conquered populations in the colonies. They knew the difference between themselves and a psychopath or a common murderer. So when they went into action, they had religion to tell them that they weren’t murderers, but people who with an honest heart killed infidels, sinners and unjust people. One executed orders from a higher power, since one wouldn’t want to be seen as disobedient.

“Thus I don’t call these conquerors and colonisers — Spaniards, Englishmen and Danes — Christian, but Christianists. The same distinction as with a Muslim and an Islamist. These young Spaniards weren’t Christian, but Christianists, who needed this ideology to justify their terrible killings.”

New Religions arise in no time

Heinsohn is also hesitant in ascribing a core cause to which one can later refer acts and patterns of actions. As an example he mentions the movement of 1968, which he belonged to when young.

“When the time comes, then new religious pamphlets and books will be written on the spot and in no time. One manipulates one’s religion in such a way that one takes from ones holy books — The Qur’an, The Bible, The Communist Manifesto — the sentences that fit with one’s purpose. One knows that one is going to use violence, but wants a justification. Because one is a just man. But when the youth bulge is spent, these books that were distributed in millions of copies will not even be sold in second hand shops. Everybody knows that they are full of rubbish. But while the movement is on the move, these young men are impervious to arguments. So the false ideas do not arise from holy scripture. The young originate them themselves. Because they need the wrong ideas to justify their actions. Thus one cannot stop them by explaining that their ideas are wrong. Thus it is not the wrong ideas that create the movement, it is the movement that creates the wrong ideas. Islam doesn’t create Islamism, the young Muslims do.”

According to Heinsohn’s calculations there will be approx. 300 million young Muslim men in 2020, but not all of them will be angry. A growing number of Muslim nations — Algeria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Iran, Turkey, and the rich Emirates — have all fallen under the replacement production limit. Iran now has a fertility rate of 1.7. That is the same as in Denmark, but less than France. These countries still have a youth surplus from earlier, but in a few years they will no longer have a surplus that makes them pose any danger.

Thus he doesn’t believe that the Iranian masses will put the whole region into flames. This scenario is a projection of the situation immediately before the Islamic revolution in 1979 and during the war between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988, where Iran could send hundred of thousands of boys out into the minefields. These teenagers no longer exist.

A class of losers

Wouldn’t it be a solution to bring the superfluous sons to Europe?

“What happens in Europe is that all the nations — there are no exceptions — are ageing nations which do not fully reproduce themselves. Thus they are entering into a process where they eat each other’s talent. Why aren’t they looking for the talent in Africa, where the population has grown from 100 million in 1900 to an estimated 2 billion in 2050? Why not in Islam, where we have a similar population explosion? Why is America looking for talent in Germany, why is Denmark looking for Polish people? Because the Third World countries don’t have the educational level that is needed in the developed countries, which can only maintain their position through innovation. For that purpose they need young people who have grown up in a high-tech society. It is not because Africans or Muslims aren’t as intelligent as others, they just aren’t socialized in a way that makes them useful in our societies.”

In Demark we now have a number of highly-educated immigrants, and their descendents, from Muslim countries — doctors, lawyers, etc. But many are not as interested in our society as the large number of uneducated. Are they just as extreme and Islamistic as others?

“I will leave the evaluation of Danish conditions to the Danes; however we have the same phenomenon in England. There we have a population within the population, namely the Pakistanis, who have the highest birthrate in the country, and who are most dependent on social system. In Western countries we have a social system which is hardly being used by the local population. In contrast to this we have in immigrant population whose women cannot compete in the local workforce. For them the social benefits that are too low for Danish and German women are particularly attractive. So what we see in England, France, Germany and the Netherlands are immigrant women who take some low-paid jobs, which they supplement with public benefits. It is not a fantastic income, but sufficient for them. And they are creating a career type, which is for women only, and which their daughters continue.

“But the sons don’t have these possibilities. They grow up on the bottom of society, and don’t have the intellectual skills they need to improve their social position. It is these boys that burn Paris, that burn parts of Bremen. Some of them make it to university, and become leaders of the others — not poor, but young men with low status, who believe that they are suppressed because of their Islamic faith, but in reality it is the welfare-state itself that has created this class of losers.

“If, on the other hand, one goes to Canada, where I have lived part of each year for the last 20 years, they have a completely different policy. They say: Our immigration policy has a simple base. Every newborn Canadian and every new Canadian who comes from abroad, has to be more intelligent than those who were here before. Because only through innovation can we keep our position in world competition. Therefore I want my son to be smarter than me. And believe it or not: Of 100 adult Canadian immigrants, 98 have work skills higher than the Canadian average. In Germany and France the corresponding number is 10%. So we went for quantity, and they went for quality.

“And why? In Germany because everybody was afraid of being called racists, and it looks like all European nations suffer from the same fear of making choices.”

The Fifth Village

Might some of it also be explained by the left-wing importing their voter corps?

“In France we have seen that Africans and Algerians have voted for Ségolène Royal. Add to that another phenomenon that we can watch in Germany, among other places. Here we have those whom we now have begun to call “ethno-Germans”, which comprise 85% of the German population, starting to emigrate. Annually about 150,000 Germans emigrate, most of them to the Anglo-Saxon world. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are ready to receive 1.5 million well-educated immigrants yearly, and they are doing everything to ease the way for them.

“It is not strange that young, hard-working people in France and Germany choose to emigrate. It is not just that they have to support their own ageing population. If we take 100 20-year-olds, then the 70 Frenchmen and Germans also have to support 30 immigrants their own age and their offspring. This creates dejection in the local population, particularly in France, Germany, and the Netherlands. So they emigrate.

“Europe just finalized their immigration principles in January 2007. And they are quite different from the Canadian ones. Our first criterion for letting people into the EU is whether the person has been victim of discrimination. Next principle: If the person already has family in EU, then he has privileged access. Third principle: People who are already illegally in Europe should be legalized. And finally, only as principle number four do we have the Anglo-Saxon principle that the immigrant should fit into our workforce.

“The purpose is to make Europe look stronger than the Anglo-Saxons, when its about ‘soft force’.

“I view the future very pessimistically. Europe’s situation reminds of the principle that is called ‘The Fifth Village’ in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg. They have experienced a thinning of the population, so four villages are being abandoned and the remaining population is moved to the fifth village; however, that doesn’t increase the population growth in the fifth village. And after some time the fifth village as well is populated by old people, and there are no young people in the vicinity to work for their pensions.

“The same will happen to the approximately 40 nations between Brittany and Vladivostok. Some of them will become Fifth Villages and will have a new lease, others will just implode. I predict that all the Slavic nations will implode. Same thing with the three Baltic states and all of the Balkan states. The question is whether Germany and France will become Fifth Villages. I see Scandinavia as a Fifth Village. The same thing with the Iberian Peninsula. The same with Ireland and England. But I’m not sure the rest of the Continent will make it.”

The Young Are Leaving

But will we even deal with nations in the future? If Europe gets a Muslim majority, it isn’t certain that Danes, Germans, Frenchmen, etc. will bow to Sharia. Could the result be that the indigenous population withdraws to their own enclaves, from which they will try to defend themselves, as we have seen in Bosnia?

“That is of course a possibility, but one must ask oneself, who is it that will stay and fight? It is possible, that I would, because I am more or less forced to stay here. But if I was a young 18-year-old ethnic German, done with high school, then I would do like most others are already doing. I would want to study in the Anglo-Saxon world, and then I would emigrate. I wouldn’t want to stay and fight. The Anglo-Saxon world needs 50 million well qualified immigrants within the next 30-40 years, so well qualified young people from Western Europe will have every incentive to go there instead of staying and fighting.

“A possibility is to aim for Chinese immigration. If we in Germany had the same number of Chinese immigrants as they have in Canada, we would have had 3 million. But immigration from China has not even been considered in Europe.

“China is the fastest-ageing nation in the world after Germany, Japan and South Korea. We usually view China as a sleeping giant. I on the other hand see China as a source, from where the Western nations can skim the best. And they will get them. Currently, rich Chinese are preoccupied with moving their riches to Switzerland, because with the few children being born in China, people in their 40s have no chance of ever getting a pension. China is down to a fertility rate of 1.6 children per woman. Already today China loses 500,000 of their best. The young see no hope of ever being able to build a pension plan in their home country. Therefore they settle in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, etc.

“In East Germany they have just decided to demolish an additional 400,000 apartments. There are no people for them, and the empty apartments ruin the banks by pressing the rents and the housing costs upwards. Also in West-Germany we are losing population. We have to stop taking the least-adapted immigrants. To attract young and competent people, we could give them a house. That was the way Brandenburg secured the French Huguenots in the 17th century. But I doubt it will work today.”

Demographic Rearmament?

Would it be possible to imagine that Europeans might suddenly start to procreate more as a moral obligation to maintain the people and the culture? It was what happened after the British had conquered the French Quebec. Then the priests pressed to get the families to put up to 15 children into the world, and this demographic effort was successful.

Gunnar Heinsohn, doesn’t give much of a chance to such a strategy. It would require draconian measures, which the Europeans wouldn’t accept. Promises of money don’t work, except on those with a little education and status — which just makes the situation worse.

“If you look at the Polish people,” says Heinsohn — who was born in 1943 in the city now known as Gdansk, but which he still calls Danzig, a son of a German submarine captain who lost his life near Newfoundland five months before his son was born — “here is a nation with proud traditions. Poland saved Europe from the Mongols, the Turks and the Bolsheviks and ended up bringing down Communism. And yet their birthrate is lower than the Germans. They are down to 1.2 children per woman. In addition they have already in the last 15 years lost 2 million of their best people. Perhaps they tell their parents that they’re coming back, but they won’t. That’s why I’m saying that countries such as Poland, Latvia and Lithuania are doomed. They have no attraction for immigrants. The same thing is happening with Russia. Who wants to move to Russia? And look at the newest members of the EU, Bulgaria and Romania. Romania is the first country in the world where there are more retirees than active workers, and we gave them access. The same with Bulgaria, which has the fastest-dwindling population. The young are moving out, and with a clean conscience, because they believe that tomorrow Brussels will pay for their parents. So the EU has accepted 27 million people, who wanted to get inside to secure their pension. And in the European center they are still overjoyed to have gotten millions more than the USA. That will make us strong, they believe.

“So I see few possibilities. Though as I mention in my book the example of California, which experienced a turn-around around 1990, which meant that even the white population — excluding the Latinos who have a much higher birthrate — went from 1.3 to 1.8 child per woman. It is not full reproduction, but anyway a significant improvement. It was a huge surprise, because California is the world’s most advanced region. In the end of the 1980s the prognosis was for continued falling birthrates, but in the beginning of the 1990s new studies found that the women no longer were satisfied with just working, and shortly afterwards the birthrates went up.

“In Europe it was dismissed with the explanation that Americans are so conservative, but that’s not true in California, which in many ways has been the pioneer of the West. However, I cannot see a similar change in Europe. Of course France has 2 children per woman, but out of five newborns, two are already Arabic or African. In Germany it is already true that 35% of all newborns come from a non-German background, and non-Germans commit 90% of violent crimes. As I’ve said — mothers get money to put children in the world, the daughters do the same, while the men lean towards crime.

“Or take the Tunisian example. A woman in Tunisia has 1.7 children. In France she may have six, because the French government pays her for it. Naturally, it is not the intention that money should flow to the Tunisian women, but French women won’t touch this money, while the Tunisian wants to.”

Then we need to discriminate?

“That won’t work. It’s too late. In the moment you start, you will be dragged into each and every international court in existence. This is what the Anglo-Saxon world has escaped by discriminating at the border. Not based on race or ethnicity, but based on qualifications. They are discriminating against the unqualified. Yet they are friendly towards them, when rejecting them. When a person has been rejected in Ottawa or Canberra, they are being advised by the friendly authority to go to Germany. Because they have a different system there.”

The end of the welfare state

How do you see the political situation in Europe in twenty years? Is the welfare state gone, is democracy gone?

“Concerning the European continent apart from Scandinavia, Ireland and England, I believe that the even the pessimistic population prognoses will turn out to be too optimistic. They assume that the young people will stay in Europe and bring up their own children, but it won’t turn out that way. A study in Germany from 2005 showed that 52% of the Germans between 18 and 32 wanted to leave. They might not mean it but they’re entertaining the thought. The really qualified are leaving. The only ones who are truly loyal towards France and Germany are those who are living off the welfare system. Because there is no other place in the world that offers to pay for them. America, Canada and Australia count on receiving our best-qualified youth, and they will get many of them. That will put an end to innovation and put a damper on economical growth in Europe. In Germany this is already so that we miss billions upon billions in revenue because we lack qualified people to take on the jobs. On one hand we have two million positions that we cannot fill, on the other a welfare-dependent population of six million, and there is no exchange between the two. The welfare group grows each year because of new babies, but the vacant job slots are not filled.

“You can talk about two different states which are radically closed to each other. The welfare state cannot continue. We cannot hope to cover the demographic holes through immigration from China either, since the Chinese don’t want to immigrate to a welfare system, where they will have to pay for an ageing population’s pensions in addition to a welfare population of millions.

“We have to say that there is only one category of people who can count on help from the government, and that is the mentally or physically handicapped. Nobody else should expect help. This sounds cold and cynical in the beginning, but our welfare states were founded the 19th century, when families had 10 children and when the father fell down a scaffold, somebody had to look after the family. This is not the situation we’re facing today.

“If you go to Australia, you don’t get money to have children. You can get a slight tax-relief. On the other hand a citizen of Australia can keep 80 out of every 100 dollars he earns.”

How could it go so wrong in a Europe, which otherwise had these grandiose plans about peace, cooperation, and prosperity, and in the beginning had unlimited trust in their own abilities?

“It started to go wrong around 1980. But the great turn in Germany came as late as 1990. It was when we opened the gates for a mass immigration of roughly speaking unqualified people. In the period between 1990-2002 Germany allowed an immigration of 13 million. At almost the same time it started to go wrong in France. We can only stop this burden on the welfare state though the law. We have to pass a bill that declares that new children born after a certain date will have to be paid for by the parents. It will be a revolution. But it isn’t even being discussed here in Europe.”

Clinton’s social reform

“But let me point out what happened in the USA. During the election campaign in 1992 Bill Clinton promised with a famous pronouncement to end welfare as it had been previously known. In 1935 the USA had issued a bill by the name “Aid to Dependent Children” (from 1960 known as “Aid to Families with Dependent Children”, ed.), which guaranteed every mother with small children help from the public. There was again the question about the father who had fallen from the scaffold, and very few received support because of this bill. However in 1965 the morals had changed. Until then it would have been unthinkable to a mother — whether she was white or black — to be pregnant, hide the identity of the father and then let the public pay for her kids. Now she didn’t even have to push the father out of a tall building. This caused an explosion of the number of welfare-dependent American families. From 1965 to 1995 the share of these rose to 10% of all American families and 15% of the children. That was the reality that Clinton had to face.

“Most of these welfare-dependents were blacks, and that made racists claim that the problem was in the black genes. But the Republicans and the Democrats worked together on a new law, “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families”, which was a smart law. It told American women: We will give you welfare up to five years. You decide whether it should be five years straight, or whether you want to divide the five years into shorter periods. The new law was passed in 1996 and took effect on January 1, 1997. It caused several top officials in the Clinton administration to walk out in protest, stating the law was a racist attack on the weakest — single mothers and their children. They had made a prediction for 1997-98, which showed that the number of children affected by this law would grow from 12 to 14 million. As it turned out, it was these well-meaning people who were the racists. The black girls were smart enough to go on the pill with the result that the welfare-dependent population shrank from 12 million to 4 million. It was the most successful social reform in history.

“In Europe we haven’t even begun to discuss such a reform.”

Leave the youth bulges alone

Lately there has been a discussion about whether we in the West have anything to do in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan or with populations as the Palestinian. Thus a pessimistic message that, we have let them fight against each other, if they want, and it isn’t something that we should or ought to interfere in?

“Among American strategists some are beginning to question whether the USA with its one-son families can send out troops to fight populations with many sons. That is the mistake we have committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you have to go in because you have been attacked, then you have to do it, but as soon as the danger has been defeated, it is necessary to withdraw. The Iraqis and the Afghans have to ensure the balance between the populations and positions in society themselves. And as far back in history we look, we can see that this balance has been created by young men who have killed each other. We have done it in Europe, and it have happened elsewhere. We cannot allow then to send their young men over the borders to kill others.

“My personal view is, that when faced with a youth bulge, then the phenomenon must be allowed to play out with the consequences we know. We should stay away. If we interfere, we cannot avoid having to side with one party and then help kill that party’s opponents. And then you end up in a situation where you appear to the population as the ones who do the dirty work for one side in different conflicts. Instead one can arm the most sympathetic side, which was what the French did in Algeria, after the Islamists started their killings of the secularists in 1992. France then sent weapons aid to the secularists. Back then there was nobody who said that we had to send money and food for the families of the Islamists, as they do in Palestine.”


Hat tip: Steen.

26 comments:

Anonymous said... 1

Sorry this is not directly related to this (very interesting!) post, but I thought everyone would be interested in this piece of news -- although it's become an all-too-familiar scenario in Europe nowadays (sadly)...

Man killed wife, but pleads ‘not guilty’
May 29, 2007

An Iranian man charged with stabbing his wife to death outside a crisis center in Drammen last autumn pleaded not guilty when his trial started on Tuesday.

The 44-year-old man also said in court that he was certain his wife had cheated on him, and he blamed her brother for being a bad influence on her. The brother, he claimed, had become "too European," and gave the dead woman "inappropriate advice."

The 39-year-old mother of three was stabbed more than 20 times outside the Betzy Crisis Center in Drammen last year. She'd been moved there from another crisis center in Bærum, just west of Oslo, for her own protection after she left her husband, but he tracked her down.

"I asked her if she would come back home with me," her husband said. "I told her the children weren't doing well without her. She said that she would come back."

He waited for her outside the center until she emerged with a girlfriend. He’s charged with stabbing her in broad daylight after he approached her, but he testified that he doesn’t remember much about what happened that day last October.

He claimed he didn't stab her more than 20 times. "I don't think it was more than four or five times," he said in court. [Oh, that makes it okay then.... !!]

The murder is the first outside a crisis center in Norway ever.

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1809892.ece

Whiskey said... 2

I see a lot of problems with this article.

1. Similar problems of demography have been faced by the West before, and surmounted, i.e. Classical Greece vs. Persia. The Western tradition of shock battle of annihilation by citizen soldiers of some sort seeking out and totally destroying the enemy has not come into play. Iraq and Afghanistan are "politically correct wars" without the WWII style annihilation.

Alexander faced a lot of resistance in Afghanistan. Till he simply annihilated any village he even thought was against him.

2. What is it that turned California's white birth rate around? Was it IVF? If so perhaps improvements in cost and controlling for autism and other issues might be more worthwhile than other welfare spending.

3. Why are Tunisian, Turkish, Iranian, and Algerian women who live in non-Welfare state, non-Western, fairly to deeply religious societies having children at essentially the same rate as white Californians? The author glosses over this issue, trying to ignore the implications. Also the cause of the Chinese collapse. Why there as well?

Are rising income levels causing birth-rate collapse? Or at least strongly related to the collapse? It would be nice to understand this.

4. Inheritance and Land. Existing Europeans expect to inherit some position, land, and so on. Many of them own property and cannot easily sell it or wish to sell it. Simply put, they will fight to keep what is theirs, unless human nature has strongly changed. I don't see either the Mafia or Camorra, to use one extreme example, deciding to self-liquidate because Albanian and North African Gangsters decide to muscle in.

5. The role of warfare against enemies as a spur to nationalism, and birth rates. Nationalism is a dirty word right now, but I already detect signs of it in Europe and elsewhere. Sakorzy wrapped himself in the Tricolor after being elected, and he got elected largely to deal with the racalle in the banlieus. Because Frenchman are defining themselves as Frenchman again.

You've probably seen the or read about the French Movie Red Lights. A layabout husband with a high powered wife who is a wealthy attorney avenges her rape by a beared convict (who is suggested but not defined as Muslim) by killing said convict. Between Tours and Poitiers. Hmmm ... right where Charles Martel turned back the Arab invaders. After the killing the husband and wife grow closer, as he re-asserts his role as protector.

If FRANCE can make a movie like that (a huge hit in France it presaged Sakorzy's election) then there will very likely be a number, likely large, who will fight to defend their property and culture. Even if or especially if it requires killing on a massive and organized scale. Frenchmen and Germans are not that different from Serbians. Who had their own solution to demography, post-Tito.

6. Trivial but I can't let it pass, the writer unfairly tags the Spaniards in the New World as inhuman. Perhaps by current standards, but overthrowing the Aztec and Incan empires ruled by slavery and human sacrifice were seen as positive actions for humanity by the Spaniards, who knew at any rate nothing of the diseases they carried, only the ones they contracted in the New World. Spanish nationalism of course had only been enhanced by the long struggle to throw out the Arabs. When Columbus set sail the Emir of Granada finally surrendered.

In short, I don't think Europe is "doomed" but will have it's usual bloody wars for land and control. People have a stake and won't leave on either side without fighting.

Paul Weston said... 3

"According to Heinsohn’s calculations there will be approx. 300 million young Muslim men in 2020."

As this figure will gradually decline after this point, it is imperative, according to Spengler, of the Asian Times, that Islam makes it's move whilst at the height of it's male fighting age demographic curve.

I wrote on this theme at GoV recently, and concluded that an inevitable Islam V European war would erupt before 2025.

We racist right wingers know it, the radical Muslims know it, most of the propagandised and ignorant West does not.

This article is one of the most important that GoV has posted. Thankyou Baron, for digging it up, and thankyou Zonka, for translating it.

I am going to attempt to link it to my articles, if they do not show up in the next couple of hours could I ask you, Baron, to do so? I am pretty dim when it comes to computers I'm afraid.

Vol-in-Law said... 4

Very powerful argument, with a lot to think about. I think the 'youth bulge' analysis is essentially correct, along with the foreign-policy recommendation - don't send the sons of the West oveseas to mess with youth bulge countries, let them kill each other. And don't subsidise those youth bulges either.

Re the future of Europe, my experience of France is that the rural French seem very tied to the soil, and are unlikely to flee en masse. The Nordic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic and some Mediterranean countries do seem likely to be hollowed out by demographic decline and emigration of the best and brightest.

Britain is a bit of an odd case, our Muslim population is the most aggressive in Europe, though not the largest, but we are also attractive to white European immigrants; French and German as well as Polish and Lithuanian. Also unlike the rest of Europe we also have a large non-Muslim non-white immigrant population, which creates some different dynamics.
Currently we seem to be moving rapidly towards the destruction of European civilisation but my hope would be that we could at least achieve a patchwork of survival, rather than complete annihilation.
A big worry though is the USA - while Islamists see the USA as the enemy, its government has normally acted to further the Islamist agenda. Propelled by the US ideology of universalist multiculturalism it may intervene against any attempts to preserve European civilisation. The recent history of Yugoslavia does not bode well.

Unknown said... 5

The New Zealand Herald (nzherald.co.nz) published March 26th an interesting article titled: "Shortage of women leaves surplus of disaffected men".
.....
China now has 119 men for every 100 women, as boys are highly valued. In India, woman trafficking and prostitution is on the rise as the gender imbalance grows.
The deadly combination of a nation's preference for boys over girls, and the modern medical technology to carry out this preference, threatens the future stability of the world at large.
Fanning the flames of injustice and Islamic fundamentalism is the country's sex imbalance. Dispossessed, displaced and testosterone-stuffed men with no prospect of ever finding a partner more readily take to the streets; violence demonstrates masculine meaning.
Earlier this year, an official Chinese report projected that by 2020, one in 10 men between 20 and 45 would be unable to find a wife. Professor Valerie Hudson of Brigham Young University in the United States estimates that by 2020, there will be 28 million surplus Chinese men and 31 million surplus Indian men.

Henrik said... 6

While I have only a few quibbles with Soehnleins views as stated (Whiskey_199 hit on most of them), Id like to mention what I found out while searching for his book, which seemed immensely interesting to me:

1) In 2005 he put out the book "Die Vernichtung der weisen Frauen" (The Extermination of the wise Women), that over most of its almost 500 pages argues that the witch hunts were actually a campaign by the church to hunt down the midwives, who through their knowledge of natural ways of birth control were keeping births, and thus population, down after the Black Death hit. Also one of the books I considered buying. He has, however, taken quite a few hits by historians who claim that he shopped around in historical sources to get them to say what he wanted.

2) Before that, he dabbled in something a bit more....peculiar, namely the total rewriting of human history pre-Jesus. Specifically, he first put out the book "Wie alt ist das Menschengeschlecht?" (How old is Humankind?) that argued that evolution acts a lot faster than science says, and that the jump from Homo Erectus over Neanderthal man to todays humans happened in only 5.000 years, not the 1.500.000 we are normally told. That was in 2000. He followed that book up with "Wann lebten die Pharaonen?" (When did the Pharao´s live?) in 2003, which argued that you could without problems ditch another 2000 years of world history. Instead of starting out in ca 3500BC, the Pharaos came about only 2000 years later.

In other words, this guy is very innovative in his research, but at times probably a bit innovative.

Henrik

gjd said... 7

This is a link to a debate at the Cato Institute tilted "Is Old Europe Doomed?".
http://www.cato-unbound.org/archives/february-2006/

Mission Impossible said... 8

I came to post the most obvious comment but Paul Weston [5/30/2007 5:45 AM] beat me to it: re. his 5th para. I second that!

The article has been a quite fascinating read (note my English understatement) and rendered me breathless for quite some time. Congratulations and appreciations to all those involved with its appearance here at GoV.

But, I do need to correct Paul Weston with his reference to Spengler. Spengler did not say Islam [must] make it's move whilst at the height of it's male fighting age demographic curve. No offence meant Paul.

What Spengler has said is that Iran (not 'Islam') must make its move before its demographic situation goes into terminal decline. The window for aggessive action is roughly any time before 2015. After that, it is well and truly 'curtains' for Iran.

Paul Weston said... 9

Mission Impossible, I am glad you share my opinion on the importance of this article.

You certainly keep me on my toes with regard to mentioning Spengler, whose article I drew on was just a distant memory.

I have now spent bloody ages trying to find it!

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GH23Aa01.html

In it, Spengler writes the following:

"Islam has one generation in which to establish a global theocracy before hitting a demographic barrier. Islam has enough young men - the pool of unemployed Arabs is expected to reach 25 million by 2010 - to fight a war during the next 30 years. Because of mass migration to Western Europe, the worst of the war might be fought on European soil."

turn said... 10

This Europe/demographic/predictions thing is almost becoming a meme here at GoV-- and that's not bad.

Certain key points in the above are virtually unassailable but a lot has been left out in the interview and subsquent comments.

If there are not sufficient young Euro males in 2007 that have essentially banded together to fight the rising tide islamist enclaves then what can we expect to witness in 2017?

Statism and pan-statism have replaced the family and dismissal of tradional values has weakened the individual.

Emmigration of the best and brightest led to the building of the Berlin wall in 1960 and after relatively minor lifting of restrictions in 1989 allowed a flood from Eastern Europe that demolished that wall and brought down the Soviet empire in less than three years.

While America cheered the end of an era of fear one prevailing attitude among W. Germans was that reunification would just bring an additional financial burden to them as the remaining E. Germans were less educated and more culturally dependent on the state.

But now that mean-age population of 39 are mostly settled into their careers and planning for retirement. Who'e going to pick up a gun?

Evan said... 11

Fascinating post, and chilling for the demographic determinist.

Of course France has 2 children per woman, but out of five newborns, two are already Arabic or African.

This is a rare citation of hard numbers for differential ethnoracial birth rates in France. I wish he had a citation from ajn original source. I wonder if any of his scholarly work, presumably containing such citations or data, has been translated into English.

At least one book has been written on the security implications of huge numbers of surplus young men, but for India and China. I am always hungry for hard, citation-backed data on the demographic and sex mix among the young in Europe. So if anyone knows any please send it along.

History Snark said... 12

Great article! I'm gonna send it to a few correspondents.

One part of me is nodding wisely, while noting that this idea is one of those "Well, duh" moments. The theory isn't all that new, which is not a criticism.

On a slightly different note, the China problem is going to come to a head. Stratfor.com (which I'll again plug here- worth every dime that it costs) has pointed out that China has a growing "Youth Bulge", and a neighboring country (Russia) with lots of open space and natural resources. There's also a growing problem of Chinese illegal immigration into Siberia. So eventually, eastern Russia will have a majority of Chinese, which could lead to a war.

Unless Russia once again realises they won't be able to hold a distant territory against a growing neighbor, and sells it. It worked for them in the 1860s, recall.

But back on topic. The idea is a very solid one. What worries me is that, as we GoV types have discussed before, Europe will have to decide, if they go to the 5th village, what to do with all their open space and abandoned towns. If they can't hold it, someone will take it. Any guesses? And then it would be a matter of fight, flight, or collaborate.

When Steyn wrote his latest, "America Alone", I read a review of it, which contrasted his book to another. The other book basically said that Europe would have to fight, and that things get really, really ugly when Europe decides to fight against "outsiders". However, the author asserted that because of that, the Euros would win, perhaps finding a "Final Solution to the Islamic Question".

As the review stated, it's strange to find that the book which spoke of genocide was the more optimistic one. Strange times, indeed.

So I don't know. It's nice to at least see some evidence that Islamism might be approaching it's high tide. But we'll have to see if the tide washes everything away.

Evan said... 13

gun-totin'-wacko wrote:

Stratfor.com (which I'll again plug here- worth every dime that it costs) has pointed out that China has a growing "Youth Bulge"...<

Hence the growing tide of rural unrest in China, which has received some attention in the Western media, and which even the Chinese government acknowledges in official announcements.

Profitsbeard said... 14

Mere demographics, in an age of potential man-made plagues, are not the necessary advantage they might seem.

If the West were threatened with survival, what would prevent its sceintists from spreading a sterilizing virus among the unvaccinated enemy?

I have more faith in our ingenuity over the opponents' mere numbers.

And, as noted, in vitro can boost the West's birthrates astronomically overnight, if needed.

I applaud the author's vital warnings, but we in the West have more resources up our technological sleeves than he seems to take notice of.

(Sheer masses of people, to a deccimating bacteria/virus, only look like a smorgasbord.)

Our instinct for self-preservation gave us Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It will keep us alive against the new islamo-kamikazis as well.

Zonka said... 15

@profitsbeard,
I agree that we have the means to fight a technological war that will make the numbers almost irrelevant. However, the main problem that the article points out is that Europe is demographically dwindling, and unless something is done the European youth will flee to other places to escape having to support a growing number of old people... And that is the real danger, the muslims already in place in Europe will become the majority without a fight!

Vol-in-Law said... 16

Profitsbeard, you're living in a fantasy land. It won't be long before half of combatant age males in France are Muslim - French citizens. They're already here.

Whiskey said... 17

Turn -- the middle aged men who have no place else to go will pick up the gun.

Ever see "Falling Down" the movie with Michael Douglas? That writ large is Europe's future. If you are say 45, have your whole life invested in France, Germany, England, Poland, Italy or Spain, have property you can't sell easily, you will indeed fight.

You might not be young. As physically fit. But you would not approach slaughter of the enemy as some rave. But rather, a piece of work to be done. Slowly. Methodically. Without passion. Simply because it had to be done. To preserve what is yours. Who do you think constituted the great bulk of the murder squads in Serbia's militias? Young men? Think again.

Young men want opportunistic conquest. But tend to fight less effectively historically against middle aged Europeans acting defensively. Poitiers is one example. So too Lepanto. Or Vienna itself in 1538 and 1688.

Demography is not always destiny: the hollowed Greeks under Alexander (many farms and settlements being abandoned due to lack of people) conquered the far more numerous Persian Empire with a tiny numerical force. So too the Mongols against the Islamic empires and China.

kepiblanc said... 18

Zonka said :"the European youth will flee to other places to escape having to support a growing number of old people... And that is the real danger, the Muslims already in place in Europe will become the majority without a fight!"

I'm with Whiskey here. Let's just say that the "youths" will outnumber our young men and try to get "positions". Haven't we all seen those "youths" in Palestine, in in Paris and in out own streets "fighting"? - Bah... - They are very, very brave when attacking an old woman and gang-raping a girl. And very, very skilled in ululululating while firing their AK-47's into the sky. They are marksmen when it comes to blowing holes in the air but cannot hit a barn from 10 meters away. But when something nasty hits the fan a middle-aged Danish accountant will outnumber 10 of those savages. To take over something need some sort of organization and Muslims cant' even organize a trip to the john let alone their own 'societies'.

And what positions exactly do they want ? Up here in the cold North we haven't many positions for illiterate-to-analphabetic , ignorant, lazy and criminal losers. Nor have I seen that many ads for cutthroats, rapists, or child molesters lately...

And just who will feed and cuddle them?

Chris Bering said... 19

"Promises of money don’t work, except on those with a little education and status"

The natural conclusion from the results of current experiences - that a little money is only interesting to families with a little education - is stretched to also say that any amount of money won't work.

Suppose the state paid 60k+65k+75k = 200,000 Euros to women having three kids ? Of course, tax deductions would be used as the form of payment, so 200k is the best case scenario, only realized by women paying top tier progressive taxes. Women with lower incomes, are thus compensated less.

Would this only work on "those with a little education and status" ?

Btw, some of the financing would come from the removal of all other child related subsidies, with the exception of the educational system.

Zonka said... 20

@Whiskey & kepiblanc,

I'm usually an optimist and I hope you're both right, and the muslims aren't being smart and patient (which would go against the youth bulge theory and the M.O. of Islam). But my point was that unless the current trend in European demography changes, it doesn't really matter much whether the muslims will come or not, the European populations will dwindle and the system will crumble from within because most of those left will be hopelessly dependent on the welfare state that will no longer be viable. Granted a lot of things can happen, California did turn a downward spiral around (yet was invaded by mexicans), question is whether Europe can do the trick of persuading its indigenous population to raise the fertility rate.

I like the idea of making such an incentive a tax-reduction so that it will benefit the active workforce instead of the welfare recipients.

turn said... 21

I swear--swear--from the deepest parts of my heart that you optimists are correct--that Euro youth, middle-aged and even elderly men will take the necessary arms and steps to save yourselves. Forgive me if I believe otherwise.

When given the choice, the vast majority of people take the easier route--in this case emmigration. I'm not saying that I approve--only that I understand. Why take the considerable chance of laying down your life for a nation that has clearly lost whatever struggle it maintains to preserve its ways?

Euros can't even arm themselves without becoming outlaws.

In the absence of certain despised American attitudes about a variety of ideologies the verdict on Europe is "in".

Sorry fellas.

Profitsbeard said... 22

vol-in-law-

I meant the West, in general, not specifically Europe, which has been busy cutting its own throat since it started inviting in "guest workers".

We Americans are not going so gently into that good night.

If the EU won't rage against the dying of their light, we sure as hell will.

I have friends in The Netherlands and France and I've been a Cassandra about the Islamic invasion into their countries since the late 1980's.

They scoffed at me until Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh's fate proved the true intentions of the Mohammedan "migration".

When pressed against the wall, I'm hoping their survival instincts kick in for real.

Sarkozy is a start. And Geert Wilders.

Keep the faith.

(And practice the rest at a shooting range.)

turn said... 23

Forgive me for paraphrasing the inimitable Mark Steyn but I lent the book to my sister and simply have to do my best.

Steyn's statemen went very close to this--that subjects of the UK of 1906, when the empire was at its height, could never imagine that their country could or would ever lose its power and prestige.

This is one of those lessons that I hope my American compatriots do not scoff at.

The very same pathetic seeds that currently currently grow as choking masses of weeds in Europe have been planted here. Today, many of the prime proponents of such hold positions of considerable authority--power given by a minority of Americans and an apathy to participate in the election of '06 by a large majority.On this last day of May 2007 the public seems to be clearly saying that the present immigration bill is not acceptable but there's a clear danger that it will be passed.

Many voting districts have already legislated that it is against the law to demand any form of identification before voting.

We face the prospect of 12 to 20 million new 'voters' with no investment in American ideals.

It truly is the immigration bill and the election next year that the long-term future of this nation hinge upon.

Mission Impossible said... 24

@ Paul Weston ... Ref your 5/30/2007 9:36 AM comment.

Well found! Good work. Thanks for the correction on my earlier correction!

Always dangerous to write a comment on a popular Blog (or attempt to correct another commenter) from memory! I usually comment late at night (local time) so I try to avoid getting too involved else I miss my bed-time, but I have made an exception tonight to sort out this issue.

[NB. My comment is given a time stamp by the Server as it is received, and does not reflect the very early morning time I actually posted it!]

Spengler has been writing so much (and in the same vein) about Iran that I was convinced his particular prediction --- which you referred to (correctly) as an Arab phenomena --- about the Youth Bulge and Empire Building (in ATol) only applied to the Shias.

I shall also have to correct myself, as my comment (above) stated Iran's threshold for action was circa 2015. But, it seems Spengler actually wrote 2030.

As an act of atonement, here is my short selection of quotes from Spengler's earlier articles on the topic under discussion --- sans links to their original articles else I shall be here all night --- concerning the nuclear wannabee Iran:

SPENGLER
---------------------------
(1)
These distasteful facts bear directly upon Iran's national decline, and the impulses that push the Iranian leadership toward strategic flight forward. Iran's plunging birth rate, I observed in essays past, will burden the country with an elderly population proportionately as large as Western Europe's within a generation, just at the point at which this impoverished country will have ceased to export oil. By 2030, Iranian society will collapse.
------------------------
(2)
Iranians already behave like a defeated people. That is why they are so unstable, and so dangerous. The new Persian Empire masquerading as an Islamic Republic is a wounded beast.
-------------------------
(3)
As for the Persians: they have been rather a nuisance since Thermopylae in 480 BC, and it is time that someone taught them a lesson.
-------------------------
(4)
All that matters is the coming confrontation between the United States and Iran. Iran's own demographic future resembles that of Europe more than it does the United States. By mid-century, Iran's aged will compose nearly a third of its population, and its population pyramid will invert. Social and economic catastrophe threatens Iran, persuading its present leaders to establish a regional empire while they still have the opportunity.
------------------------
(5)
In the US, pensioners now are 18% of the population, but will become 33% by 2050, according to the United Nations' medium forecast. In other words, a full additional 15% of the population will require support from the remaining population. Shifting a full 15% of the population from the ranks of the working to the ranks of the retired will place an uncomfortable burden on American taxpayers, to be sure. But the shift in the case of Muslim countries is much worse. Between 2005 and 2050, the shift from workers to pensioners will comprise 21% of Iranians, 19% of Turks and Indonesians, and 20% of Algerians. That is almost as bad as the German predicament, where the proportion of dependent elderly will rise from 28% in 2005 to 50% in 2050.
------------------------
(6)
Iran's oil exports will shrink to zero in 20 years, just at the demographic inflection point when the costs of maintaining an aged population will crush its state finances
------------------------
(7)
Impending demographic collapse, I have argued in the past, impels Iran towards an imperial design (Ref: Demographics and Iran's imperial design, September 13). Iran's elderly dependent population will soar to nearly 30% from just 7% today by mid-century, the consequence of the country's collapsing birth rate. The demographic disaster will hit just as oil exports dry up during the 2020s. To break out of the trap, Iran must make an all-or-nothing bet during the present generation.
------------------------

end of comment

Anonymous said... 25

"We face the prospect of 12 to 20 million new 'voters' with no investment in American ideals."

However, Americans have a history of taking things into their own hands when the government ignores their opinions. I think we'll increasingly see states asserting their rights by refusing to go along with Federal laws, as they are with the 'REAL ID' ID card program.

The Federal government has stolen vast amounts of power that it was never given in the Constitution; if Americans choose to take those powers back, they can still do so. Though in another twenty years it may be too late.

BTW, it's an interesting theory; I've seen people mention before the correlation between birth-rate of young men and warfare, but never in quite this level of detail.

Anonymous said... 26

This article is quite interesting. Almost every other immigrant woman that I know who lives in Northern Europe works in a nursing home looking after the elderly-feeding them, giving them baths, turning them over so they will not get bed sores. That is the one job that seems available all the time.


Most immigrants in Europe want to leave Europe too, and they dream of going to America where they can work or start a business easily. They want to work because they find welfare degrading. After all, what is welfare but keeping the poor comfortably miserable. It is not just immigrants that are on welfare in Europe. The middle class natives have incredible benefits and employment guarantees we would not dream of in America. Western Europe's high taxes are to support the middle class as well. Europe has stirct labor laws that makes it difficult for companies to fier people. the high taxes and labor laws hamper small businesses from starting up, which in turn means less jobs for young immigrants.
When the French govt.
about a year ago tried to change the labor laws to make it easier for companies hire and fire their employees, the middle class college students rioted. The relaxed labor laws would have opened up the labor market for the immigrant youths because companies would have been more willing to take a risk hiring them if they knew they could lay them off during hard times. The French students would not have any of this and the strict hiring/firing laws stayed the same. So the immigrants youths remain unemployed, the limited number of secure cushy jobs go to the natives , and when the latter gets old, the immigrant women will be there to look after them.

Z