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The Tyranny of Numbers When America hit the 300 million mark in October the U.S. Census Bureau held a press conference and their electronic display was on the evening news shows ticking off the numbers of new citizens until it showed…what? It showed there are just way too many people in America if you worry about things like the provision of sufficient energy, dependency on unfriendly nations for our oil imports, overcrowding of cities, uncontrolled immigration, unfunded entitlements, and a whole list of other problems. Hard core ecologists—environmentalists is another name for them—if you get a few drinks in them will tell you we will just have to get rid of a couple of million people every month or so if the Earth is to sustain the six billion taking up space, expecting to be fed every day, driving around in cars or on motorcycles, and making more people.
Demographics have a way of sneaking up on you unnoticed. It’s all those cars and trucks on the road, seemingly driven by maniacs who have no regard for their own lives or yours. I’ll bet you didn’t know that in 2005, traffic deaths reached an all-time high. While the headlines scream about each new U.S. casualty in Iraq, 43,443 people were killed last year, up 1.4 percent from the 42,836 the year before. It was the highest number in any single year since 1990. The ecologists have a virtually unbroken record of getting demographics wrong. As Steyn notes, in 1968 Paul Ehrlich declared in his bestselling book, The Population Bomb, that "In the 1970s the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Wrong. In 1973, a landmark study by the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth, announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, and petroleum by 1992. Wrong. The dumbest man Americans ever elected President, Jimmy Carter, predicted in 1977 that, "we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of next decade." It is a tribute to the Constitutional system that America actually is able to survive the occasionally stupid or venial man we put in the Oval Office. Former President Clinton is showing up everywhere these days telling anyone who will listen that global warming is going to end life as we know it if we don’t give the United Nations the opportunity to run everything everywhere. Wrong. Meanwhile, most of us toiling away at our daily lives need to focus in on "what really did happen between 1970 and 2000", says Steyn. "In that period, the developed world declined from just under 30 percent of the global population to just over 20 percent, and the Muslim nations increased from about 15 percent to 20 percent." Ask the French what that means. They are now into their second year of an all-out Intifada being fought by young Muslims (the press always calls them "youths") who are burning cars and now buses with people still in them. There are areas in cities throughout Europe where no non-Muslim dares to go these days. "The salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan, and Russia," says Steyn, "is that they are running out of babies." It’s all about fertility rates and, in one developed nation after another the native-born population is not replacing itself as they continue to age and retire, living off the largess of the few young people left to do the work. This is what happens when you create a socialist system that pays for just about everything and promises to take care of you in your old age in case your kids will not. When a nation loses its survival instinct, releasing its native population from the responsibilities of adulthood, someone is going to have to pick up the tab and do the work. Europe imported Muslims. America is ignoring a wholesale invasion of Mexicans. It’s all about the tyranny of numbers. America, we’re told, is the lone superpower in the world. Lord knows we have a mighty military machine. We need it because our major export to the rest of the world is defense or, to put it another way, protection. We’re protecting the Saudi oil fields. We’re protecting the Japanese and South Koreans against a crazy man with nukes. We protect the world’s sea lanes to keep oil and products of every description moving around. We have been protecting Europe since the end of World War II against the Red Menace despite the fact that they have embraced socialism. And do we get any thanks for this? Hell no! That’s because we have lost our talent for waging a really nasty war to reduce our enemy’s cities to rubble and destroy their armies in the field. That’s how wars have always been won in the past. But World War II was a different kind of war you say. You’re right. However, the stakes of the war in which we now find ourselves are no less critical. Thousands of young Muslims led by a fanatical core and funded by those afloat in oil money and religious passion have decided that America does not have the stomach for war. "Our enemies," Steyn says, "have made a bet—that the West in general and the United States in particular are soft and decadent, and have no attention span." If your attention span to this brief polemic on demographics and the guts to defend America has begun to wander, Steyn is right. Have you purchased your autographed copy of my new book yet? What a great holiday gift for yourself, a member of your family or a friend. To purchase, just click here. You can also order a copy from Amazon.com. And Now a Word From Dr. Zawahiri I’m guessing that most Americans to this day, five years after 9-11, have no idea who Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri is. We have seen him on the television news, frequently sitting beside Osama bin Laden and lately addressing the world without him.
According to his latest pronouncement, standing in its way is the United States, George W. Bush, the Pope, the United Nations, and "bad" Arab regimes that include Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, who are either the "slaves" of the U.S. or have mounted their own operations against al Qaeda. Dr. Zawahiri can probably take Pakistan off the list now that President Pervez Musharraf has signed off on a deal to abandon Waziristan in the north to the control of its tribes. A similar deal is in the works in the south. As Tony Blankley of the Washington Times accurately noted, "If these negotiations are realized, the Taliban and al Qaeda will essentially have their own country again." For the geography-challenged, Pakistan and Afghanistan share a very long border. This is very bad news for the United States because even school children know we have insufficient military forces in Iraq and only enough in Afghanistan to exert security in Kabul and maybe Kandahar. The Soviet Union learned what it means to fight and lose a war in Afghanistan (with covert help provided to the Taliban by the United States). With Iraq threatening to break into separate pieces and the perceived success of Hezbollah in the month-long war in Lebanon against Israel, Dr. Zawahiri has reason to think al Qaeda is winning. Militant Islam is on the march and Dr. Zawahiri’s address to all 1.3 billion Muslims, the Islamic "Umma", and to those in the Middle East and beyond, was especially defiant. He called President Bush a liar, the Pope a crusader, the United Nations "crusaders-in-disguise", and criticized the "bad" Arab regimes. He neither looked, nor sounded like a man on the run. Ignoring Dr. Zawahiri by reporting his views way inside the newspaper, putting him on the television screen for a scant few seconds while intoning a 30-second report describing his latest appearance, or for the rest of us to write him off as a raving maniac is a grave error. He’s been around a long time, beginning with the radical Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1960s, doing jail time there, and ultimately becoming Osama bin Laden’s mentor, means that when he speaks, people should listen. Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the author of "Future Jihad", and widely regarded in high places as having as good an understanding of al Qaeda as anyone. Following Dr. Zawahiri’s latest video, he shared his insights with the counterterrorism community. While Americans are arguing as to who is to blame for 9-11, Dr. Phares reminded his colleagues that, "the struggle against the infidels was a linear one, from the Soviets to the U.S., and thus not really a reaction to American foreign policy exclusively, as argue the dominant academic establishment in the West." In other words, any excuse to avoid this war with Islam ignores the reality that it is at war with the West and has been for over three decades, if one dates its rejuvenation from the Iranian Revolution. One quite extraordinary aspect of Dr. Zawahiri is his view of Christianity. As Dr. Phares noted, "He severely attacked the entire dogma of Christian faith from the nature of Christ, the sanctity of Church, the crucifixion, the resurrection, the Holy Spirit, and many more theological basis of Christian faith, in a manner that was never uttered openly before." Islam, the so-called religion of peace and tolerance, is neither. It is openly contemptuous of Christianity and Judaism, regarding religions that "do not have a book" such as Hinduism to be pagan. This warrior cult has been on the march since Muhammed conceived it. Christians should take note, but the attacks on Christian churches in Muslim nations and even the murder of a nun in Somalia following the Pope’s speech in Germany have begun to fade from memory. Islam almost conquered Europe in the long ago past. Some historians regard the Crusades as a defensive action. Europe is just beginning to awake the enemy in its midst. Muslims in the millions live there, are producing children are a faster rate than native Europeans, and the secularization of Europe has left it filled with an aging population that stopped going to church a long time ago. The West is in very real danger of losing a long-term war with Islam in general and its forces, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Hamas, and the dozens of other Jihadist forces in the world. Dr. Zawahiri only took 18 minutes to remind us. The National Anxiety Center depends on donations. The Center doesn’t receive foundation or corporate grants. So, if you find our weekly review of events and issues of value to you, please make a small donation to the Center. Or you can purchase an autographed copy of my new book. If you prefer, you can send a check to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thanks! |
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Mark Steyn has written one of the most important books published this year. It’s America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It (27.95, Regnery Publishing). Steyn deals with demographics, a topic most people in that particular field of scholarly endeavor manage to make so dull you just want to run screaming from the room. It is the study of human population trends. Steyn, however, is a talented writer and therefore knows how to turn statistics into a lively discourse.
In late September, Dr. Zawahiri spoke for 18 minutes and, in my daily newspaper, the Associated Press story was on page 25. He doesn’t rate the front page because al Qaeda hasn’t attacked the United States homeland of late, though every single intelligence spokesman keeps saying it will. Whether here or someplace else, Dr. Zawahiri makes it plain that al Qaeda is at war with the infidels of the world and will continue to be until a new caliphate is established and everyone is facing Mecca to pray.