Immigrants or Cultural Suicide

The Infertility Trap

The sad reality is that Europe needs immigration to "survive" as a civilisation.  Demographic realities progress very slowly.  Like the frog in a heating pot, they do not present an immediate crisis to focus the mind.  Nor do they admit quick fixes.  Demographic catastrophes, when they arrive, are too late to stop.  They cannot be corrected--at least not in the short term--if ever.

Europe is in the midst of a looming demographic crisis.   In general terms, the civilisation that is Europe has decided that it is chic and culturally correct to have small families, few children. Consequently, Europe is not producing enough children to sustain its culture or civilisation.

For a society to remain the same size, the average woman needs to have 2.1 children in a lifetime (the so-called "total fertility rate").  All European countries except Muslim Albania are well below it.   There is a "safe zone" above 1.6 children per woman, where population declines are gradual and easily reversed.  Below that, population tends to collapse rather than decline.  A society that maintains a 1.8 total fertility rate will be 80% as large at the end of a century;  a society with a total fertility of  1.3 (Italy, Spain, Eastern Germany and the Baltic nations are such societies) will fall to a quarter of its size.

At current rates of decline, Italy's native population will be half its current size by the middle of this century little more than a generation from now.  [Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West (New York: The Penguin Group, 2009), p.13.]

We can assume, therefore, that one reason why European authorities are sanguine about admitting huge numbers of immigrants is their understanding of these demographic realities.
 Europe needs more bodies in order to survive.  Europe, as it stands, is a dying civilisation.  It cannot reproduce itself out of it.  External "help" is needed.  Humanitarianism is the useful condign moral ideology which provides a patina of justification for such "open border" policies.

Birth rates can be affected by some short term measures.  One is to pay for children.  If you have a child, the state can shower the parents with welfare benefits.  What you pay for, you get more of. In addition there are some shorter term measures.  Having a child can be "framed" as a fashion accessory can have an impact amongst the fashion-conscious.  Bearing children can be portrayed as the new chic.  You can take some tips from Putin's Russia and run holiday camps for young people so they can "hook up" and have children.  Negative perceptions towards bearing and raising children can be made the subject of propaganda campaigns.

But none of these measures can compare to the deep heart convictions that arise out of one's religious beliefs.  Bearing and raising children is deeply affected and informed by one's view of the future.  One's view of the future is derived from one's eschatological beliefs about what is going to happen to humanity and the world in the future.  Pessimism over the future leads to little to no commitment to bearing and raising children in the present.  Europe is so awash with Greenist ideology it has accepted the precept that fewer children means a cleaner environment.

The Christian faith is bound by the original command given to our first parents, Adam and Eve in the Garden: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth."  The coming of the Kingdom of God is intrinsically related to our Christian duty to bear and raise children in the faith, training and teaching them in the "way they should go".  Once-Christian Europe, however, long ago threw out obedience to God as a factor in its culture.  "God" is now nothing more than a verbal ejaculation, slightly more polite than "Shit".

Islam is also committed to bearing and raising children because it (correctly) sees this as a critical step towards taking control in the future.

Muslim culture is unusually full of messages laying out the practical advantages of procreation.  As the hadith saying has it: "Marry, for I will outnumber peoples by you. [Ibn Majah, 1: 599]  The late Yasir Arafat, considering the sevenfold increase in Palestinian population over one generation (from 450,000 in 1967 to 3.3 million  in 2002) called the wombs of Palestinian woman the "secret weapon" of his cause.  [Ibid., p.15.]

These realities do not create headlines.  They fail to secure attention.  But they are nonetheless real. It remains true that one of the most potent, powerful contributions Christians can make to the coming of the Kingdom of God is to bear and raise children in the faith, lots of them.   The spiritual health and vitality of every Christian congregation can be measured to a significant degree by this barometer.

"Be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth" is an intrinsic and necessary aspect of carrying out, "Go and made disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." (Matthew 28: 19-20)  Long ago Europe decided that secular humanism was the only religion worthy of its arrogant pretensions.  At that point, it began to wither from within.  It began to decay and die.  Europe has lost its place in the vanguard of God's Kingdom.  It is being replaced by Islam--which has a not-so-secret weapon--children.  Lots of them.