TelegramSam wrote:Or you could just ignore me completely, that's great too...
Sorry, TelegramSam, I wasn't ignoring you; The first paragraph of my last post
was an attempt at expressing total concurrence with you. I simply omitted to address
my remarks to you personally (mea culpa).
But for Elendil et al, I really believe this Weigel piece is nothing more
than Anti-Muslim propaganda cleverly designed to appeal specifically to "God Bless
America" Patriotism. And no, there's nothing wrong with patriotism, nor "God Bless America".
Elendil suggests I've ignored (or more accurately am obdurately resisting) simple, non-invidious statements of fact... But there are no facts in Weigel's article. Merely cunningly crafted and juxtaposed questions designed to have the reader believe that the questions are statements of fact:
For those who can't be bothered to wade through the whole article, here's an executive summary:
1. There's a problem in Europe, and watch out America it's coming here too!
2. Europe's population is falling (we're killing ourselves, apparently).
3. Europeans don't believe in God any more and are turning their places of worship into museums (gasp, you have to pay to get in too!).
4. There's a shedload of muslim fundamentalists in Europe and they're insidioiusly worming their way into society and acquiring political power.
5. Europe is doomed to become a massive Islamic Fundamentalist power-base. Which
will threaten the USA. And watch out guys, it's happening here too.
Throw in a bunch of tedious and irrelevant out-of-context quotes, and pseudo-intellectual jingoism to add a touch of academic plausibility, and there you have it. Goebbels would have been proud of this piece.
He hooks you with the title "The European Problem..." (hey, bud, we all know Europe's a problem right?) "...And Ours" (holy spit! Ours?)
Then he presents some "facts" to tie the line to the hook:
"why is Europe systematically depopulating itself?
"Why is Europe committing demographic suicide?
"Why does no Western European country have a replacement-level birthrate?
"Why will Spain’s population likely decline from 40 million to 31.3 million by the middle of the century?
"Why will 42 percent of Italians be over age sixty by 2050?
"What is happening when an entire continent, wealthier and healthier than ever before, declines to create the human future in the most elemental sense, by producing a next generation?
"Why will Europeans not admit that these demographics—which are without parallel in human history, absent wars, plagues, or natural catastrophes—are the defining reality of their twenty-first century?"
To answer the last question first, because it's all bollocks.
Weigel gives no footnotes, no references, no readily-verifiable authenticated sources for his "facts".
Notice how very clever the juxtaposition of the questions are, and how craftily he makes you think there are facts here by giving a date, a couple of numbers, and a percentage.
Why does he not give figures for all European countries and for the USA? And why no sources? Because if 42 percent of Italians are over age 60 TODAY, his question is meaningless. Even if we believe his figures...thank you medical science for extending the average lifespan (and not just in Italy).
As for Spain, why single them out? (because they don't believe in God any more, are bad catholics, and are obviously practicing safe sex, the dirty heathen rascals). Where are the predicted demographics for the USA and the rest of the world...who knows, maybe the rising tide of oestrogen in our waterways is indeed to blame for the rising incidence of male infertility and falling birth-rates (thank you again, medical science, The Pill, and HRT).
Weigel doesn't say, of course. He wants you to believe we're all doomed over here...
Having established in the reader's mind that Europe is committing suicide and can't handle the world the way it once did (references to WWII, and another shedload of subliminal-implant questions like "Why do European states find it virtually impossible to make hard domestic political decisions—as on the length of the work week or the funding of pensions?" no evidence, by the way, just questions, and this from a bloke who lives in the land of 401k...hope your pension isn't in European stocks and shares chaps)
Weigel then adds more Plausible Academia with another bunch of questions:
"Why are so many European public intellectuals “Christophobic,” as international legal scholar J. H. H. Weiler (himself an observant Jew) puts it? Why is European high culture so enamored of the present and so contemptuous of both religious and secular tradition, as French philosopher Rémi Brague has pointed out?
(holy spit doods, he's quoting, uhm, some people we never heard of...one of them's a Jew, obviously a really religious fellow!...and a philosopher! it must be true!!)
Then of course the whole point of the message:
"One can see the effects of Europe’s self-inflicted depopulation in the tensions experienced in France, Germany, and elsewhere by rising tides of immigration from North Africa, Turkey, and other parts of the Islamic world."
"a Europe increasingly influenced, and perhaps even dominated, by radicalized Islamic populations, convinced that their long-delayed triumph in the European heartland is at hand."
To make all this work, of course, he has to appeal to the traditional and religious values which (and here I confess I'm on thin ice) are taught to every American child from day one of school. And so the specious claims in respect of modern Europeans all becoming godless heathens, turning our backs on our good W.A.S.P heritage. Sigh. Really.
No facts. Nothing more than nasty anti-muslim propaganda. Cleverly done and plausible. (I did wonder why on earth John Rhys-Davies, the Welsh actor who played Gimli in LOTR, soundly started spouting all this kind of BS while he was being interviewed about his role in the films. Now I know why...he'd obviously read this stuff and like many others,
believed it without thinking, and without asking questions. Someone posted the link to the interview on the forum, but I can't find it at the moment).
But let's be honest...if the Mayflower hove to off the coast of MA today, you can pretty much bet that all 101 of the Pilgrims would promptly be labelled Religious Fundamentalists, arrested, and whisked off to an open-air cage somewhere in Cuba in no time at all. Weigel would doubtless be happy about that.
"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin Milner
