Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The dying of Europe's light

"Like all of Europe," writes Pat Buchanan, "Germany grows nervous." Are Germans finally, this late in the day, growing nervous about the five million Muslims, among other foreign groups, they have allowed to populate their country since the 1960s?

In Tribalism Returns to Europe, Buchanan describes the grim consequences of the glorious mosaic of multicultural diversity, that was supposed to bring harmony and progress to European nations. How was it ever possible to put aside common sense and buy the notion that a homogeneous people, one of shared history, language, values and disciplines, could benefit from the intrusion of heterogeneous masses of foreigners?

Because the United States was forced to make the best of its unique circumstances, as it dealt from the beginning with several existing ethnic groups, did observers come to think that this was normal? Did others not take notice that during America's best years a common culture prevailed, guided and steered by a dominant Anglo-Euro authority and sensibility? Although beset with social frictions, the country was not confronted with the challenge of an alien civilization in its midst.

In The Multicultural Cult, Thomas Sowell reminds us that, "In countries around the world, and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language, cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist." He mocks "the cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about 'diversity,' without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits."

Of course, those who have been following this migrant scenario, know that it's much too late for Germany or any other European country to turn back the clock, as Buchanan has been warning for at least a couple of decades. Globalism may be "in retreat before tribalism," yet, he writes, "Germany’s problem is insoluble. She is running out of Germans. ... For not one European nation, save Iceland and Albania, has had a birth rate for decades that is not below zero population growth. Baby boomer Europe decided in the 1960s and 1970s it wanted La Dolce Vita, not the hassle of children. It had that sweet life. Now the bill comes due. And the bill is the end of their tribes and countries as we have known them."

In Europe, are the populist and nationalist stirrings of recent years just the last protests of those ethnically conscious whites who are, as Buchanan puts it, "raging against the dying of the light?"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Diversity, like so many idealistic ideas, sounds good, but it just doesn't work. Rome fell due, in part, to diversity, when they included foreigners into their civilization.

Anonymous said...

Germany's immigrant population, while large, is overwhelmingly European. The largest group is the Turks, but I think they're only around 5% of the population. The rest of the immigrant population is from an assortment of European nations (Russia, Italy, Poland, etc...) who aren't as different culturally as the immigrant populations in, say, Britain or France, or the US for that matter.