The Sorriest Generation

[STEED]

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/chuckwagon.html

Fascinating bit of reading what do you guys think about it in the U.S?

[The Avon Lady]

I disagree with his level of pessimism. That is, I don't think the US is about to fall off the cliff of doom and gloom. I actually think Europe is in much more immediate danger.

Normally, I don't like to copy full article for Jerusalem Post subscribers but I'll make an exception. This article, by an acquaintence of ours, appeared in this past Friday's JPost Magazine.

Think Again: The greatest threat

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Jonathan Rosenblum, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 23, 2006

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One of radical Islam's signal successes has been to give credence to those who believe that religion constitutes the greatest threat to mankind. In the short run, a nuclear Iran presents the strongest candidacy for triggering an apocalypse.

A strong case can be made, however, that too little religion constitutes as great a threat, in the long run. An economically stagnant, increasingly depopulated Europe is Exhibit A. The United States, which is both the developed world's most dynamic and most religious country, is Exhibit B.

The Talmud in Ta'anit (23a) describes an incident involving Honi Hame'agel. One day, Honi saw an old man planting a carob tree, and asked him how long it would be before the tree bore fruit. The man answered, "Seventy years." Why, then, Honi inquired, was the man bothering to plant a tree whose fruits he would never eat. The man replied, "Just as my fathers planted for me, so am I planting for my children."

Only as long as people conceive themselves as part of a chain of generations will they plant carob trees. That sense of generational continuity - the Burkean social contract between "those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born" - no longer exists in Europe. Europe is rapidly becoming a childless society, whose citizens have neither the incentive nor the inclination to plan, much less sacrifice, for the future. With current birthrates, there will be a hundred million fewer Europeans by mid-century. Spain's birthrate is 1.1 children per couple, and a number of European nations and Canada are not far ahead.

In the 1970s, the great fear was that an exploding world population would result in the rapid depletion of the earth's natural resources. Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich predicted in his best-selling The Population Bomb (1968) that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s. Four years later, the Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of a long list of crucial minerals - gold, mercury, tin, zinc, petroleum and gas - by 1993. None of those dire predictions came remotely close to fulfillment.

But one natural resource is rapidly disappearing in many parts of the globe: human beings. And human beings, as Mark Steyn notes dryly in a recent New Criterion article, "It's the Demographics, Stupid," are the "one indispensable natural resource." Europe by the end of the century will resemble a continent hit by a slew of neutron bombs. The great buildings will still stand, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living, observes Steyn, through a period of "self-extinction of the races that built the modern world."

This population decline is of immense consequence for Western nations. Societies with few children are by definition aging societies. A dwindling cohort of younger workers cannot foot the bill for the vast panoply of social benefits to which oldsters have become accustomed. As Steyn puts it, if only one million babies are born in 2006, it's a pretty good bet that a country will not be able to fill two million job openings in 2026.

THE ONLY way to make up the shortfall is by importing a million foreign workers, most of them from Muslim countries. But that process will only expedite the transformation of Western Europe into an extension of the Maghreb, already predicted by Bernard Lewis.

Not surprisingly, those who no longer take the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply seriously do less multiplying. The United States is both the Western world's most religious country and that with the highest birthrate. The "red states" carried by George W. Bush in 2004 included 25 out of the 26 states with the highest birthrates; John Kerry's "blue states" included the 16 with the lowest.

A lack of children, however, is only one aspect of the West's lack of future orientation. Those who lack belief in an afterlife, indeed in any transcendent values that might give meaning to their lives, gravitate toward a hedonistic, here-and-now existence.

Asked by Foreign Policy magazine what current ideas, values and institutions may disappear in the next 35 years, Princeton "ethicist" Peter Singer confidently predicted, "The traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological and demographic developments."

The proliferation of assisted suicide and euthanasia laws in Europe, and even in some American states, suggests that Singer's dystopian prediction may well come to pass.

Singer himself denies any higher value to human life over that of animals. Human beings, he avers, are nothing more than the sum total of their pleasures, i.e., more sophisticated pleasure-seeking animals.

Animals, however, do not generally plan for the future. Nor will citizens who have no one to whom to transfer their accumulated wealth, and who have long since ceased viewing their own countries as the embodiment of enduring values worthy of preservation be inclined to worry much about tomorrow.

European workers have proven notoriously unwilling to consider any alteration in their increasingly unsupportable employment benefits. The attitude is: If the coffers run dry, that'll be someone else's problem. Why should I worry?

EVEN THE most fundamental task of self-defense is beyond most of the West. For the past half century, European countries have been content to rely on the US for protection, while spending almost nothing on their own defense. Appeasement has become their default response to external and internal threats. Always better to push off danger to the indefinite future, which has ceased to be of concern.

Confrontation, on the other hand, risks war, and with war goes death. If one's life has no meaning outside of itself, and death represents the end of everything, then one would be insane to opt for a course that increases the immediate risk to life, even if it results in greatly reduced future danger. Europe's inability to confront the threat of a nuclear Iran is but the latest example of the habit of appeasement.

"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder," observed historian Arnold Toynbee. By losing their connection to the future, the post-Christian societies of the West find themselves hurtling towards extinction.

[Skybird]

Well, I'm sorry myself and thus find this topic deeply depressing.

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Well, I'm sorry myself and thus find this topic deeply depressing.

Don't tell Kiwi about it!

[CB..]

what we are really talking about here is perhaps the seperation of church from state--and the increasing intolerance towards religious thought that requires the extinction of all opposing religious thought--because when it boils right down to the last dot on the last page of the last Holy book---that's what most religions require of the world---most civilised people do actually want to believe in a higher power (in some form or another IMO) but the failure of organised religion to provide a believable universe in which we can all live as equals has created the "fingers down the black board" schizm between religiuos thought and the secular world--made worse i believe by the failure to notice that most people do in fact believe in something regardless of wether that belief falls into any of the available pidgeon holes currently established by religious thought-- personaly i don't find it at all difficult to find something bigger than me to believe in---(and lets face it that's the baisc key) all i need do is look out the window--
there is an infinite universe out there --and if that isn't big enough and or impressive enough and or thought provoking enough then we really are too "full of ourselves" to progress intelligently thru life

[STEED]

Originally Posted by CB..

we really are too "full of ourselves" to progress intelligently thru life

YES :/\!!

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

I disagree with his level of pessimism. That is, I don't think the US is about to fall off the cliff of doom and gloom. I actually think Europe is in much more immediate danger.

Normally, I don't like to copy full article for Jerusalem Post subscribers but I'll make an exception. This article, by an acquaintence of ours, appeared in this past Friday's JPost Magazine.

This is about the best article I have seen on this subject in a long time. Good post!!!

-S

[STEED]

European countries have been content to rely on the US for protection, while spending almost nothing on their own defense.

Well here in the UK our Prime Minister is spending 500,000,000 over the next 5 years on updating our stocks of Nuclear Weapons.

[August]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

I disagree with his level of pessimism. That is, I don't think the US is about to fall off the cliff of doom and gloom. I actually think Europe is in much more immediate danger.

That's about my take on it.

[STEED]

The whole world is sliding towards New World Order and that stinks.

[Type941]

We are losing our borders and our resolve to protect them. Foreigners control our debt, and now President Bush wants to give them control of our ports

So that's what it it's all about.

I'd say he's right in one thing - morally the country is messed up and before our american friends start hissing 'look at your own country' I'll say that the rest of the world is morally decaying too. But I think it's largely America's fault in that, indirectly, thanks to Hollywood and double standards it preaches in world politics. It becomes OK and that's that. It's sad. Disagree if you like.

[TteFAboB]

I disagree with you entirely because the American foreign policy is the opposite of Hollywood.

You haven't seen the list of the Oscar nominees and winners, or watched any Hollywood political movies in the past months, have you?

If that was the case, America would be sending an ambiguous dual message, W Bush says share Democracy but fails in his plan, Hollywood says isolate and also fail at that.

Then what is the world catching? If they aren't catching one or the other, but both, then they can choose if they agree to isolationism or interventionism, if they are choosing what they pick, America isn't preaching anything at all.

Here's some morality for you:http://www.bbt.com/about/media/newsr...9%3A48%3A52+AM

[Type941]

US is double faced in politics because they say they bring democracy, but forget to mention that the 'lucky country' that gets it will have to either go through a war or invasion, or better, sell off all its national interest in the sake of american (Ukraine, Georgia for example). So yes, double standards. Than it acts like a bully towards weak countries and can't do crap against countries which can fight back (like China for instance).

Hollywood on the other hand is doing its best to convince everyone that no matter what happens the US will save the day.

Than about political movies - I don't watch the garbage made by the likes of Michael Moore and I don't recommend that to anyone else. Most of the once respected actors now preaching on how to lead life, the likes of Jolie and Penn going out of their skin to portray themselves as some fekin saviours of humanity. Comon. Tell me about bloody Hollywood a bit more. MOst of them are rediculous people with enourmous ego's, comletely detached from real life. Most of them because there are some really talented people but majority - it's a hard to watch. That's why I find myself watching many old american movies, even from the 80s and early 90s. From new ones, I can probably name 3 movies in last 5 years that I actually remembered what they were about. Here's an example - a good movie dealing with racism issues, Crash, by the end turns into some very predictable story, though starting rather nicely.

One of the worst things in america now IMO is this political correctness, that's unfortunately exhibited more and more by even users in the forum. You can't say anything there without being called a racist, a hypocrite, a non-patriot, and so on and on. Well, that's the culture. That's decay. Look at the damn cartoons that we have here, and it's a proof that the issue is not just america, it's everywhere. ANd the political correctness took on nicely here in europe too. What about that Mayor in London being ousted? Talk about democracy at the heart of it.

[STEED]

Type941 has raised some interesting points worth thinking about

[TteFAboB]

Hollywood is vehemently opposing to Bush's foreign policy.

But you can't be naive, whatever Bush wanted to do with the world, he can't fight the entire world at the same time alone, he can't bring Democracy from Africa to the Pacific even if he wanted to, or could or knew how.

That would have to be a global goal from all Democracies. But the Chinese dragon won't have to be taught any Democracy, the Chinese people are giving the example and pushing it more and more, remember the newspaper censorship that had to be revoked due to popular demand some weeks ago?

So if anyone's on a mission to spread real Democracy, don't even worry about China, if anything, it will be the Chinese people who will give a lesson.

All the movies nominated for the Oscar and those who won a statue are against the interventionist foreign policy, Bush or "American culture", in favour of political correctness. I don't know where you picked the "in the end the US will save the day". The only movie I've seen with that message was "Team America", and that's a (very good, highly recommended) comedy. I agree with everything you said about Hollywood's celebrities, you can add lots of names to that list.

I disagree however that political correctness is cultural, it's anti-cultural in any culture you pick, because you replace real culture for PC, people are no longer what they are or used to be, they become a new label, history is rewritten, and so on.