Indeed, for a historian who can establish himself in the past and not the future, the world’s development is full of surprises: in religion, in politics, in social attitudes, there are sudden, almost electrifying, shifts nad changes that would, were they grasped, make historically minded commentators more wary of their confident prognostications. One particular instance is the doom laden modern demographer forecasting standing room only on this planet in another hundred years or so, a recycling of the dismal Malthus with the fear mongering specter of cannibalism, part of a fashion among scientists ignorant of history. Somewhat like the current fear that Muslims will demographically dominate America in the near future.
Renoir. Mosque in Algiers.—Brie Hoffman:In case you didn’t know Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the entire world. Some statisticians have said that for every 1 non-Muslim child born there are 8 Muslim children born in the world and that number is conservative. Others say that the rate is more like 3 to 1. Regardless of the number, think about that. The Muslims don’t have to do anything, they will rule the world by virtue of their numbers.
According to America Speaks Inc.com the birth rate a society needs to break even and not start to disappear is 2.1 babies per woman. Anything less than that, the culture disappears in a matter of three generations or more. The math can’t be argued. No culture has ever survived once it reached the breaking point 1.3 babies per woman. Read More:http://brie-hoffman.hubpages.com/hub/Muslim-World-how-muslims-will-take-over-the-world-via-population-growth
They thoughtlessly expected population to grow in a straight, predictable line, as it were, ever upward. The slightest knowledge of the history of population would have taught them that population growth and population decline occur very oddly. Why did Elizabethan Englishmen want babies, and Stuart Englishmen not? Why did not only Europe’s but China’s, population- indeed the world’s- leap forward in the eighteenth century? Why did France’s population scarcely grow in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
There is no easy, simple, or even satisfactorily complex explanation of the changes, which are sudden and take the societies that experience them by surprise. People aware of these facts are not astonished that population growth should suddenly go into reverse. Indeed, one of the surprises of history in store for us in the twenty-first century may be a sharp decline of global population. And it will not be the first time that great cities have emptied. There should be nothing remarkable in the idea of Chicago ceasing to be nor the automobile going the way of the horse drawn coach raise a historical eyebrow.
—Yes, Steyn is a right winger, a neo-con, a blowhard with a bit of wit to back him up.
But let’s address his central thesis.
The demographic argument is a powerful one, but Steyn deploys it in the most ham-fisted manner possible.
First, Steyn’s article ignores the fact that there are many Muslims who embrace democracy and civil rights, and it ignores the very real differences between Muslim populations. Even Christopher Hitchens, the pro-Iraq War writer, called Steyn to task on this. It’s like assuming that Appalachian snake handlers, Polish Catholics, and Anglicans from Peterborough are all basically the same.
The worst flaw seems to be in Steyn’s crude attempts at math.
In the Macleans excerpt, he tosses out the notion that, within 50 years, there will be more people living in Yemen (population 23 million) than in Russia (population 140 million).
Yemen currently has a high birthrate, at 6.4 children per woman, while Russia’s is below replacement. So if nothing else changes, this is theoretically possible.
Not going to happen, though. Any number of things could happen between now and 2050 to upset current trends.—Read More:http://blogs.canada.com/2012/04/26/annotated-column-the-big-crunch-of-demography/
The future, however, is just as obscure to the professional as to the amateur, although they should be less surprised and quicker to discover “why” changes occur. But at least historians can teach others to be wary, can stress over and over again the element of surprise in the story of humankind and, perhaps, point out that historical surprises seem to occur most frequently, although certainly not always, in periods of rapid inflation, which dislocates belief and rots social structure and institutions. This is particularly true in the sphere of political history and the history of belief. We need to be alert, for all surprise is dangerous and sudden changes in political structure, in belief, or in the style of life rarely take place without creating human misery.
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