Dennis Dale on Mark Steyn

Blogger Dennis Dale offers an insightful analysis of Mark Steyn's recent essay, which takes far too much pleasure in Europe's collapsing demographic, and the consequences of a simultaneously diminishing birth rate among native Europeans and rising Muslim immigration. Steyn makes a number of good points throughout the piece, but his glee at Europe's crisis is inappropriate. Europe was the cradle of Western Civilization and remains home to most of its historical wonders (the Acropolis, the Vatican, the Louvre). It's loss or diminishment only weakens the rest of the West, and should be no source of satisfaction, no matter what our differences with our European cousins. Europeans may be smug and irritating, but taking any sort of pleasure out of their demographic/immigration dilemma only spites ourselves. Instead of making merry with their errors, we should be encouraging them to change direction and save themselves. And we might want to take a harder look at our own issues and apply correction there as well.

Dale trenchantly takes Steyn to task for glossing over America's own immigration problem.

Those who are out-breeding the rest of us are largely Latin American immigrants, hostile toward caucasian gringos and feeling that they have been cheated by the very existence of the U.S. and, yes, rapidly multiplying. Meanwhile, multiculturalists stand waiting for these ostensibly conservative voters. They are taking the conservatives' bet.

Steyn might want to stick around to see what becomes of the children of these people he so condescendingly thinks of as docile breeders. Spending time in a working class neighborhood anywhere in L.A. County might quickly disabuse Steyn et al. of any silly notions they have about this demographic saving us from our cultural decline. A good recreational mugging at the hands of congenitally mean-spirited cholos has a way of relieving one of his liberal conceits; and this canard about “red state” Latino immigrants saving us from effete white liberals seems to have found its way by insensible circularity to a naiveté practically indistinct from that of liberal Democrats. Having titled his essay, “It’s the Demography, Stupid”, Steyn ignores the demography and concentrates on the stupid...

Of course, Steve Sailer has been making this point for some time:

Okay, so will the United States be an economic powerhouse if it's populated by Latin Americans? Exactly how many economic powerhouses have Latin Americans run? That would seem to be another tricky proposition, but it's the kind of question that apparently never occurs to Steyn, who lives in a small town in New Hampshire. I could see America continuing on at a high rate of prosperity for awhile, but losing its economic dynamism as the culture comes to be dominated by a people who have never shown much interest in scientific, technological, or economic progress.