The Global Balance of Power in the Twenty First Century

A READER WRITES: Samuel Huntington had his “clash of civilisations”, Francis Fukayama had his “end of history”. Brian Barrington, please turn your own analytical skills to geopolitics and share with us your insights.

BB SAYS: Interesting question. What predictions can be made about the “Great Game” for international influence in the 21st century? Well, we are moving from a unipolar world into a multi-polar world. Yes. It’s true. Remember where you heard it first readers. Because I’m damn sure that wherever you heard it first, it sure as hell wasn’t here.

In the 21st century the three major global centres of power will be the US, China and Europe. The US is still the most powerful place in the world. But China is catching up. That’s my view anyway. So remember where you read this first too: China is doing all sorts of great stuff over there. It’s very much the global dark horse. When are people going to start noticing the rise of China? Isn’t it about time that the media woke up and started noticing this new geopolitical phenomenon? Why should it be left to bloggers like me to point it out?

And what about Europe? Collectively, its economy is currently a bit bigger than that of the US or China, but it is more politically fragmented. The cosseted citizens of Europe don’t want more union – they’d prefer to let the future be largely decided by the US and China, while they wallow in whatever it is that Europeans like to wallow in. But Europe has what I like to call soft power. Europe’s system is admired, and it exercises influence as a result of that – via the EU. So Europe will have some power, but less than the US or China. Europe will be an economic giant, a political dwarf, and a military worm.

The major second tier powers will be Japan, Russia and above all India. These regions and others will be able to play the three powerful centres off each other. The US, China and Europe will compete ferociously for access to resources and markets, as well as for influence, in these other regions.

Latin America will integrate – led by Brazil. It will try to imitate EU integration, in a bid to liberate itself from US dominance. Similar integration will be attempted in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. These regions will start to master the art of playing the big powers off each other for their own advantage. They will develop rapidly.

And the troublesome Middle East? Almost uniquely among geopolitical analysts, I am reasonably sanguine about the prospects for the Middle East. Underneath the surface these societies are modernising. Life-expectancies have been increasing, as have literacy and incomes. Islamic extremism is a sign of weakness and vulnerability rather than strength – the fanatics realise how threatened they are by modernity. Despite media appearances, the Muslim world is modernising, and will continue to modernise, on its own terms, and not be dictated to by the West, or by anyone else. But like developing countries elsewhere, Middle Eastern countries will try to model themselves on China, and ape its method of development.

The boundary between the “developed” world and the “developing” world will become ever more blurred. The United Nations will become ever less important, as will the G7. The G20 will be where all the major global decisions are made.

International wars will become less and less common, because it is counter-productive for countries to start them – it is too costly, and too dangerous. If the country being invaded has any WMDs, it is simply too risky to invade it. And all but the most screwed up countries can have WMDs these days. Even a basket-case like North Korea has nuclear weapons, and therefore cannot be attacked. So the number of countries in the world that can safely be attacked is declining all the time, and hence so are the number of international wars.

So, I am optimistic about the twenty first century. The biggest risk is an international trade war, leading to catastrophic economic collapse, followed by the disintegration of civilisation, combined with climate change disasters, and the unleashing of weapons of mass destruction. But apart from that possibility, I am enormously optimistic.

I intend to come back here in 2099 and see how well I’ve done with my predictions.

George Lee and Charlie Bird: Two tadpoles in a petri dish

So Charlie Bird went to Washington and didn’t like the sensation of being a small fish in a big pond. And George Lee went to the Dail and didn’t like the sensation of being a small fish in a puddle. So it appears they are both now attempting to swim their way back to RTE – where they can return to being two tadpoles in a petri dish.

Poor old George Lee couldn’t make up his mind which taxpayer’s tit he wanted to suck on (if you’ll excuse the shift in metaphor). Would he opt for the cosy gentlemen’s club of Dail Eireann, with its backslapping bonhomie and life of comfortable obscurity? Or would he opt for Montrose, where his sense of self-importance would be sustained by a compulsory yearly payment of 160 euro from every household in the country?

Who knows what will happen next? We’re all on the edge of our seats, waiting to see the next episode of this squalid national non-drama.

Why does Obama do what the banks tell him to do?

Leading Noble Prize winning economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz say banks should be nationalised. But when Obama has an economic summit to decide what to do, people like Krugman and Stiglitz are nowhere to be seen. Why not? Noam Chomsky explains why:

Obama’s plan is the same the Bush plan - it's based on the principle that the financial institutions should remian intact, no matter how much it costs taxpayers. They have to remain intact, and must remain under the control of the same people who destroyed the economy. Why?

“Obama’s constituency is basically the financial institutions. Just take a look at the funding for his campaign. I mean, the final figures haven't come out, but we have preliminary figures, and it seems to be mostly financial institutions. I mean, the financial institutions preferred him to McCain. They are the main funders for both—you know, I mean, core funders for both parties, but considerably more to Obama than McCain ... That's the way the system works: you make risky loans, you make a lot of money, and if you get into trouble, we're here to bail you out, namely the taxpayer … What does ‘too big to fail’ mean? ‘Too big to fail’ is an insurance policy. It's a government insurance policy. Government means the public pays, which says, ‘You can take huge risks and make plenty of profit, and if anything goes wrong, we'll bail you out.’ That's ‘too big to fail.’ Well, that's extreme protectionism … We lectured the third world that they must accept free trade, though we accept protectionism.”

“The modern information revolution—computers, the internet, fancy software and so on—most of that comes straight out of the Pentagon. My own university, MIT, was one of the places where all of this was developed under Pentagon contracts in the 1950s and the 1960s. In fact, that's another critical part of the way the economy works. The public pays the costs and takes the risk of economic development, and if anything works, maybe decades later, it's handed over to private enterprise to make the profits. And that's a core element of the economy. Of course, we don't permit the third world to do that. That's considered a violation of free trade when they do it. But it's the way our economy works. And it's kind of complementary to the ‘too big to fail’ doctrine of protectionism for financial institutions. But in general—we do not have a capitalist economy. We have kind of a state capitalist economy in which the public has a role: pay the costs, take the risks, bail out if they get into trouble. And the private sector has a role: make profit, and then turn to the public if you get into trouble”.

The Tribal Mentality versus the Humanist Mentality

A READER WRITES: “Dear Brian, When I started to read your blog you were promising me increased happiness which I badly needed. Now I am getting increasingly unhappy listening to these intolerant and aggressive exchanges. How can I recover my equilibrium with reds under the beds, Islamists under the carpets and Steyn fans in fear and trembling and a frenzy of hatred. Normally when I feel upset I go to some Buddhist meditation classes but maybe the Buddhists are trying to take over the world so I dont know what to do now and am looking to you for some kind of an injection of happiness, goodwill to all men, restoration of faith in human nature etc. Please help. Unhappy but trying”

BB SAYS: The philosopher Spinoza says: “Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.”

Humans can broadly be divided into two types – those with a Tribal Mentality and those with a Humanist Mentality. Both mentalities exist in most people to varying degrees.

Tribalists tend to be loyal to their own group, community or society. They tend to be nationalist and conservative. In extreme cases Tribalists dehumanise and demonise outgroups. They tend to focus on the conflicts of interest that can exist between various groups. They suffer from what behavioural psychologists call the outgroup homogeneity bias (individuals tend to see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups).

Humanists tend to look at people as individuals, and to see the similarities that exist between different societies, rather than the differences. They tend to be cosmopolitan and progressive. They tend to focus on co-operation between groups, rather than conflicts of interest.

People with a Tribal Mentality regard those with a Humanist Mentality as treacherous, cowardly and naïve. People with a Humanist Mentality regard those with a Tribal Mentality as bigoted, narrow-minded and irrational.

Examples of very Tribalist groups would include German Neo-Nazis, Russian nationalists, Japanese supremacists, Muslim fundamentalists, extremist Irish Catholic Nationalists, American Exceptionalists and so forth. The point is: the tribal mentality is found in all societies. In Sri Lanka, many Buddhist monasteries are hotbeds of ultranationalist, reactionary, anti-Tamil extremism. So even a peaceful religion like Buddhism can be co-opted by Tribalists. All these tribalist groups tend to be xenophobic, but the irony is that they have much more in common with each other than they do with Humanists. For example, an American Exceptionalist has more in common with a Muslim fundamentalist, than either type does with a Humanist – because both the American Exceptionalist and the Muslim fundamentalist have a Tribal Mentality.

Often, the anger of Tribalists is not focused on other tribes, but on what they call “the Liberal Elite” (i.e. Humanists). Humanists also exist in all societies and, what is more, they tend to agree with each other even though they are from different societies. In other words, Humanists everywhere in the world form alliances in a way that Tribalists cannot. The real danger for Tribalists comes not from other tribes (extremists need opposing extremists in order to exist) – the real danger comes from Humanists, who tend to be shrewd. Hence the diatribes from Tribalists about the “Liberal Elites” whom they suspect of trying to take over the world by taking control of universities, internationalist institutions, the media, human rights organisations and so forth. In one sense, the Tribalists are correct – the Enlightenment revolution in philosophy, with its humanist concepts of human rights, democracy, rationality and personal freedom, has made great progress in taking over the world. Humanism has a universal appeal that transcends any particular tribalism. So don’t worry, if anyone is going to take over the world, it is not going to be any particular group of Tribalists – it will be the Humanists. So be happy!

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12 Reasons why Irish people voted No to the Lisbon Treaty

Apparently the government is planning to have another vote on the Lisbon Reform Treaty later on in the year. If the referendum is to pass, we need to take into consideration the reasons why people voted No the first time. So I went out and asked people who voted No why they did so. I would ask all people who want a Yes vote to not to resort to bully tactics or scare-mongering, but to listen carefully to what the No voters have to say for themselves. Here is what I found:

• “I’m voting No to Lisbon because Declan Ganley is telling me to vote No. His organisation, Libertas, is supported by American Neocons and British Eurosceptics. These are the kind of people who have always had Ireland’s best interests at heart”.

• “Newspapers like the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail told me to vote No to Lisbon. I like the idea of Ireland doing the bidding of British Europhobic newspapers while they laugh at us behind our backs for being stupid enough to do their dirty work on their behalf”

• “I’m voting No to Lisbon because I’ve had it up to here with Brian Cowen. What has Brian Cowen ever done for me? As we all know, this treaty has nothing to do with Europe, or with Ireland’s future. It’s all about Brian Cowen”.

• “I’m voting No to Lisbon because I haven’t a clue what it’s all about. But whatever it’s about, I’m against it. Nobody is going to pull the wool over my eyes”.

• “I’m voting No because the German Neo-Nazi party welcomed our first No vote Lisbon. If we vote No again it will make them even happier.”

• “I’ll be voting No to Lisbon because I stubbed my toe while getting out of the shower this morning. Does anybody care? No. What are the bureaucrats in Brussels going to do about my toe? Nothing. That’s what.”

• “I’m voting No because I thought the No campaign’s posters were more scary than the Yes campaign’s posters. Even though I’m aware that the No campaign’s posters were a pack of lies, I still admire the way they struck the fear of God into me”.

• “I’m voting No because the angel Gabriel came to me in a dream and told me that Jesus would vote No”.

• “I’m voting No because I’m as thick as a plank, and I resent people who are more knowledgeable than me telling me to vote Yes. I will not be patronised like this, even if it means doing the wrong thing”.

• “I’m voting No because I think it’s in Ireland’s interests to be isolated in Europe and to piss off all our so-called European partners for no reason whatsoever.”

• “I’m voting No because I don’t want my children to be conscripted into a European army. Our so-called European partners know that without Ireland’s crucial military input, the idea of a co-ordinated European defence policy is a non-starter. So the whole thing is an elaborate plot to undermine our cherished neutrality. Was it for this the wild geese spread the grey wing upon every tide? I don’t think so”.

• “I’m voting No because the treaty gives Ireland the exact same number of Commissioners as larger countries such as Germany, France and the UK. Personally, I think Ireland should have more Commissioners than everyone else”.

So there you have it folks. Memo to Yes campaigners: ignore these reasons at your peril.

PS: Reader makes it a Baker's Dozen (see comment) : "I'm voting No to Lisbon because of the Potato Famine".

Brian Cowen: “I can’t sleep because of the state of the country”

BRIAN COWEN WRITES: “Dear Brian Barrington, I’m having difficulty sleeping at night. I just don’t know what to do about the state of the country. That fecker Eamon Gilmore is having a field day. Even gormless Enda Kenny is making the most of it. I read your frightening post about Ireland’s external debt ( http://brianbarrington.blogspot.com/2009/02/ireland-and-debt_03.html ). The interest rates we need to pay on debt are going through the roof. I sometimes fear that anti-European Anglo-Saxon speculators are targeting Ireland, and trying to drive us out of the Eurozone. But what can I do?”

BRIAN BARRINGTON, PHILOSOPHICAL COUNSELLOR TO THE STARS, REPLIES: You can’t do anything. You can look like you are doing something. But actually you can’t do anything. However, don’t worry. I predict that, just at the moment when it seems that all is lost, and the country has gone irrevocably bankrupt, a hero will come blazing across the sky and save us all. That hero will go by the name of … Germany. Ireland will be bailed out, possibly along with the other basket-case euro economies (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) by the European Central Bank and the Germans, along with a token contribution from the other 10 or so decent eurozone economies. But this bailout will come at an enormous price – we will need to more-or-less surrender control over our economy and our country to Berlin, Brussels and Frankfurt. The price of the bailout will involve:

• A dramatic increase in Irish taxes, to put us in line with other eurozone countries. Including an end to our low corporation tax. This will put an end to Ireland’s tax-haven status. Henceforth we will actually have to earn money by hard-work, productivity and other traditional methods.

• We will have to hand over control of all our banks to the Germans, and slash the pay of top bankers. There is a danger that our top bankers will respond to these cuts in pay by “taking their talent elsewhere”. For example, for destroying Anglo-Irish Bank, Sean Fitzpatrick got paid millions euro a year, and now he gets a pension of 550,000 euro a year (personally, I would have been prepared to destroy the bank for a mere 200,000 euro a year myself). But there is a danger that people like Sean Fitzpatrick will take their entrepreneurial zeal elsewhere. That will be one of the sacrifices we will have to make for handing over control of our banks to the Germans.

• We will have to decrease public spending. The pay of public servants (as well as professionals like lawyers and doctors) will need to be brought in line with that of other eurozone economies. By my back-of-the-envelope calculation, that will mean a pay-reduction of about 35%.

• We will have to vote Yes to Lisbon. You may recall that last year, in a fit of astounding collective national stupidity, we Irish voted No to Lisbon in order to “teach our European colleagues a lesson” or something of that sort. This kind of adolescent hubris and self-delusion will now become a thing of the past.

Should we be worried about handing over control of our economy to the Germans? Given the mess that we have made of it ourselves, I can personally face this eventuality with equanimity.

Canadian reader worried about the condition of Europe

A READER WRITES: “You need to take off your social liberal filters and push away the blinders. Demographics aside, this isn’t about Muslim Hordes with Swords overrunning Europe. It is about cultural suicide in the guise of multiculturalism, the infantilizing welfare state, a sense of entitlement without a sense of liberty and self responsibility, and the cultural apathy of those who accept this. It's easy for a vigorous culture like Islam to simply override tired effete institutions in Europe and replace them with another. Open your eyes. Look at what's happening in Europe and in my country, Canada. You'll understand in a few years.”

BB SAYS: You paint a frightening picture of the decline of Europe - its feeble defence of freedom, its sclerotic socialist economies, its low quality of life. Amidst all this despair and anguish, I feel obliged to try and strike a note of hope:

• According to the Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s quality-of-life index, of the top ten countries in the world with the highest quality of life, 9 are in Europe. (The other one is Australia).
  

• According to Reporters Without Borders, of the top 20 countries in the world with the freest press and media, 18 are in Europe (the other two are Canada and New Zealand).

• According to the UN’s Human Development Index, of the top 20 countries in the world with the highest level of human development, 15 are in Europe.

• According to the Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, of the 20 most democratic countries in the world, 15 are in Europe.

• According to Freedom House, every country in the European Union is classified as “Fully Free”.

• According to the IMF, the World Bank and the CIA, the European Union has the largest and wealthiest economy in the world – it has the highest GDP.

• According to the CIA, the European Union has by far the largest industrial output in the world (i.e. it makes more real stuff than anywhere else). It’s industrial output is 38% higher than that of the US, for example.
  

• According to the UN and the CIA, citizens of the European Union have a higher life-expectancy than citizens of the US.

• According to the UN’s Education Index, 17 of the top 25 best educated populations in the world are in Europe.

• Western Europe is the safest region to live in the world. For example, the murder rate in North America is 440% higher than the murder rate in Western and Central Europe.

• According to the Fortune Global 500, 170 of the largest companies in the world as measured by revenue, are located in the European Union (153 in the US)
  

According to Jared Diamond, the great American scientist writing in the New York Times, “Western Europe’s standard of living is higher than America’s by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts”.

One is almost tempted to think that things are not actually that bad in Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-Life_Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sector_composition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_Global_500

American reader worried about the future of America

A READER WRITES: “Dear Mr. Barrington: I read your article. Every word ( http://brianbarrington.blogspot.com/2009/02/review-of-mark-steyns-america-alone.html ) . The inescapable conclusion is that you are a colossus of ignorance of such monumental proportion as to strain credulity. How does a name-calling idiot like you ever get published? I suppose that's what we have to look forward to for at least another four years because Americans voted for another idiot that thinks America has 57 states and the Speaker of the House thinks "500 million Americans get put out of work every month". The entire Administration is dumber than a bag of rocks, and more venal than illegal drug lords. Why then, should I expect any better from a fool like you? How sad that your admirers respond positively to knee jerk stupidity like yours. How sad you are. Thanks for confirming me in my opinion of leftist jackasses like you. Sincerely, Oodeluph”

BB SAYS: Sorry to hear that you are worried about the future of America. Change can be upsetting, confusing and unsettling for all of us. It can take time to adjust. It can be hard. But I believe that the US is a great nation and that it will survive the threats posed by the current Democratic administration. America has survived other Democratic administrations, including Franklin Roosevelt’s, and he was a communist, as we all know.

I am confident about the future of America for a very simple reason: there are people like you there – people who are ever-alert to the threats to freedom posed by Democrats, liberals, the media, bureaucrats in Washington, the State Department, the elite universities, people who live in US coastal states, Darwinists, feminists, perverts, socialists, the United Nations, Amnesty International, Muslims, Chinese, Russians, Latin Americans (especially Mexicans) and Europeans. By my calculations, over 85% of human beings are a threat to freedom – and that includes a large majority of Americans. So freedom is in peril. There can be no doubt about that. But as long as there are people like you around, people who know what’s going on and who are prepared to take a stand, then there is hope.

Above all the threat to freedom comes from Europeans. Especially the Irish – they pose a much under-rated threat to freedom in my opinion. Did you know that it was the Irish who invented the terrorist warfare that now constitutes the largest threat to freedom in our time? It was the Irish who invented the cowardly guerrilla warfare that precipitated the collapse of the British Empire, which was at the time the greatest force for freedom in the world. Now the British Empire is gone, and the torch of freedom has been passed to Americans like you. I have faith that you will prevail.

Is Ruth Dudley Edwards falling in love with Baron Conrad Black of Crossharbour?

Apparently lonely women sometimes write letters to prison inmates with whom they then fall in love, and subsequently marry. It seems that renowned Irish columnist Ruth Dudley Edwards has added her name to the list of women who suffer from this unfortunate affliction. She has embarked on a email romance with the jailed Lord Conrad Black, the former newspaper magnate, who was imprisoned for Criminal Fraud. But she hasn’t kept the details of this love affair private. Instead, she has shared every moment of this blossoming romance with the lucky readers of the Sunday Independent.

In a series of bizarre articles in the Sunday Indo, Ruth Dudley Edwards has been publicly cooing about her obsession with Lord Black. She fawns about the “exuberant displays of intellectual prowess” that Black’s emails to her contain. “Prison has not dulled his spirit” sighs the besotted Ruth Dudley Edwards. She slobbers about the “admirable” Black who “quickly set about helping to educate the prison inmates”.

For a while Edwards says she tried to stop thinking about Black and writing columns about him – perhaps in order to stop boring everyone to death. But alas, her plan to forget Black did not work because, confesses Edwards, “I fell to thinking about him again last week”. And low and behold, she wrote yet another simpering column in the Sunday Indo about how great he is, praising Black as “exceptionally loyal”. I presume she is talking about Black’s exceptional loyalty to the shareholders whose money he stole, thus causing him to end up in prison?

In any event, Edwards and her friend Mark Steyn have engaged in a campaign to get Black pardoned by George Bush. Bush thought better of it and rejected the plea to pardon Black – Bush’s first sensible decision after eight years in office.

Before a recent legal appeal against his conviction Black said to Edwards: “I still expect justice to prevail. We soldier on.” The appeal was subsequently thrown out, just like all his other appeals, but that has not stopped Edwards continuing to write in the Sunday Indo about the “misfortunes” and “injustices” that her email paramour has had to endure.

But the battle to clear Conrad Blacks name is not over yet. Oh no! A book is currently being written, Edwards assures us, that will expose “the farrago of outrages that has been inflicted on” Black. The book will “emerge next spring, pulling no punches, and laying this mockery of a [legal] system bare for what it is”. Who is writing this vindication of Conrad Black? Why it’s none other than Baron Conrad Black of Crossharbour himself! When the “book” eventually appears we can expect to enjoy more than one slavering review from the smitten Ruth Dudley Edwards.

What is the source of Ruth Dudley Edwards’ passionate attachment to her jailed beloved? Well, some say it might be due to the fact that he is a Baron, and that Edwards has a weakness for anyone with a title. Edwards had been a long-time hanger-on of someone called Dame Ruth Railton. So Edwards has a history of coming over all starry-eyed in the presence of “aristocrats”. Perhaps that’s what is going on here?

In his mails to Edwards, Black sometimes talks about general political issues of the day. For example, before the recent US election, Black attacked Obama as too “ignorant”, “juvenile” and “hubristic” to be President. “He frightens me” added a trembling Black. “If McCain keeps his wits about him, stays on message, and appears to be alive, he should win” predicted Black, demonstrating yet again his firm grip on reality in another exuberant display of intellectual prowess.

Black has also declared his support for the Irish people who voted No to the Lisbon Treaty. “I was proud of the Irish in the referendum” he announces. Well that will make the people who voted No to Lisbon feel better about themselves.

Is there a Vast Right-wing Conspiracy to Subvert this Blog?

A READER WRITES: “Dear BB, In my rush to read your daily dose of wisdom, I mistakenly typed the following:

http://www.brianbarrnigton.blogpot.com/ - only to find the following:

‘WELCOME to an easy to navigate MEGA-SITE of Bible, Christian, church & religious information, sermons & studies. Includes the audio & written Bible, sound doctrine, prophecy, a photo tour of Israel and spiritual warfare. If it's in the Bible, it should be here. Among the Web's most complete Christian sites, by God's mercy (app. 6000 pgs & 4000 subjects). A few minutes reading this page could PROVE to you the Bible is true.’

Ha! I thought, BB would never put his name to this nonsense! Imagine my surprise then, when I corrected my mistake and found that today, you were discussing the anti-Muslim musings of Mark Steyn.... Coincidence? Surely not!

Do you think the Christian right (or indeed Mark Steyn) has been alerted to the atheist leanings of your blog and in an attempt to brainwash the minds of those who clearly cannot type, have registered a blog domain that will certainly receive traffic intended for yours? (As I am sure that of all your virtual followers, there must be many more like me who are typographically challenged from time to time)

Yours etc, Lil Miss Typo”

Do YOU have a problem? Leave an anonymous comment, or send your problem in confidence to brianbarrington@gmail.com

A Review of Mark Steyn’s America Alone

Mark Steyn’s book America Alone has been a New York Times best-seller, and a number 1 seller in Canada. Steyn is a well-known syndicated columnist. Many people accept the central thesis of this book. Many other best-selling books have made a similar argument, such as While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer, Londonistan by Melanie Philips, and Eurabia by Bat Ye’or. What is America Alone’s central thesis? Well, the book is called America Alone, but in fact it is mostly about Europe.

According to Steyn “much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries”. In Europe “native populations are ageing and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. The EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035”. Europe’s population will before long be “very old or very Muslim”. Either way Western Europe is almost certainly doomed. Europe is in the middle of a “population death-spiral” that has in turn bred "civilizational exhaustion," leaving Europeans unprepared to fight for their ways. "Islam is now the principal supplier of new Europeans and Muslims are profoundly changing Europe. Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare. In 2005 European males aged 20-40 outnumbered Muslim males of a similar age by 18:1. By 2025 this ratio could drop to a mere 2:1”. Europeans are “too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia. The average European Muslim has 3.5 children, whereas the average native woman has 1.5. Europe's successor population is already in place and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be. Europe is dying and America isn't”. Europe, says Steyn, is facing increasing violence from its Muslim population – such as the murder of Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands by a Muslim extremist. Europe could soon be run by Muslim fundamentalists and Islamicists.

So, that is a summary of Steyn’s argument. Scary stuff eh? No wonder the book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the US and Canada, and no wonder so many people are worried. Personally, I’m tempted to flee Europe right now this minute before the Muslim hordes take over the place.

Now, if Muslims are taking over Europe, we might reasonably ask, what proportion of the current population of the European Union is Muslim? Steyn never mentions this figure - a peculiar omission in a book which is about Muslims taking over Europe. So what proportion of Europeans are Muslim? 4%. Yes, that’s it: 4% maximum. 3% according to the CIA factbook. These 4% are going to take over the other 96%, according to Steyn. (The world as a whole, by the way, is about 24% Muslim. So Europe is a relatively Muslim-free corner of the world).

And what about this 4% figure anyway? It includes anyone who can possibly be considered a Muslim: secularised Muslims, moderate Muslims, traditional Muslims – as well as the hordes of swivel-eyed Jihadists galloping over the horizon to conquer Europe any second now. But surveys show time and again that a large majority of European Muslims do not want to live in a Muslim fundamentalist state. This is hardly surprising, since a majority of Muslims in the world also do not want to live in Muslim fundamentalist states – that’s why most Muslim fundamentalist states can only maintain their power by brutally oppressing the local Muslim population. Anyway, how Islamicists intend to establish an oppressive Muslim caliphate in Europe against the opposition of a majority of Europeans and against a majority of European Muslims, has yet to be given a persuasive explanation by Mark Steyn. But that does not stop him predicting it will happen.

If anything, the endangered species in Europe is not the non-Muslim Europeans, but the continent's Muslim immigrants. Muslim Europeans are, on average, poorer than other Europeans, more unemployed, less educated, subjected to discrimination and marginalised from positions of power. Steyn insists that countries such as the Netherlands and France are being submerged under an avalanche of Muslim lawlessness. But Muslims in these countries are relatively peaceful. The murder rate in America is 247% of what it is in France and 383% of what it is in the Netherlands. If you ask me, Americans like Steyn who are worried about violence should be fleeing their dangerous nation to go in live in peaceful countries like France and the Netherlands.

OK, I’m sure Steyn would concede that Europe is only 4% Muslim at the moment. But Steyn insists that Muslim Europeans are having more babies than non-Muslim Europeans. That 4% figure that he never mentions is going to grow, enabling Muslims eventually take over the continent. For example, the average Muslim in France, Steyn tells us, has 3 times as many children as the average non-Muslim French woman. He doesn’t tell us where he got this statistic. The fertility rate in France is 1.98 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_fertility_rate ). So the average Muslim woman in France is having well over 5 babies, according to Steyn. Now, most Muslims in France come from Muslim countries in North Africa like Algeria and Tunisia. What are the fertility rates of these countries? Well the fertility rate in Algeria is 1.82. In Tunisia it is 1.73. In both cases, the fertility rate is less than France. Now, unless the fertility rate of Muslims emigrating to France is suddenly shooting up by 300%, it cannot be the case that Muslims in France are having three times as many children as non-Muslim French. “Every Muslim woman in Western Europe is producing 3.5 children” Steyn instructs us. Like Germany for example? Most German Muslims come from Turkey. The fertility rate in Turkey is 2.14.

Question: Are Muslims in Germany suddenly having 3.5 babies each once they move to Germany or is Mark Steyn talking through his hole?

Answer: Mark Steyn is talking through his hole.

Is it the case that Europe is facing "demographic disaster"? The European Union, with its population of 450 million, is one of the most densely populated corners of the world. What about that low fertility rate? Actually, fertility rates are falling everywhere, including in the Muslim world. Steyn warns that fertility rates in Europe are below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Well, a list of non-European countries where fertility rates are below the replacement rate includes – China, Japan, Australia, Iran, Sri Lanka, Burma, Lebanon, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan (and also American non-Hispanic whites by the way). All these countries have fertility rates below the replacement level. Almost everywhere else, fertility rates are falling fast – thankfully, given that the world is overpopulated. In general, the more wealthy and urbanised a country is, the lower its fertility rate is. The reason Europe has relatively low fertility rates is because it is wealthy and urbanised. For example, the countries in the world with the lowest fertility rates are Hong Kong and Singapore. Is Steyn worried about their future? If he is then he doesn’t even mention them. He just drones on endlessly about Europe. In any event, demographic predictions are notoriously inaccurate. Basing policies on dubious demographic extrapolations has been a favourite technique of sophists and cranks since at least the time of Malthus. To do so now, at a time when technological developments and increased mobility could alter populations in unforeseeable ways, is particularly feeble.

Final Question: is Mark Steyn a scaremongering fool indulging in Islamophobic fantasies in order to try and scare Europeans into accepting the anti-Muslim neocon foreign policies that he favours?

Answer: yes he is.

David Brooks and the "Importance of Institutions"

A reader has drawn my attention to an article by David Brooks in today’s New York Times, in which Brooks praises the importance of institutions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/opinion/27brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

David Brooks is a conservative. He is a Republican. He was a supporter of George Bush. He was a supporter of the Iraq War. He has, as far as I recall, equivocated about evolution and "intelligent" design. He was a supporter of John McCain. He has argued against Obama’s Keynesian program of fiscal expansion, and he is sympathetic to free-market fundamentalism. In short, he has been utterly wrong time and time again.

Now Brooks sees fit to instruct us about the dangers of "personal liberation", and tells us that we should learn to love institutions and "institutional thinking". Brooks tut-tuts about modern notions of "personal inquiry, personal self-discovery and personal happiness". He warns against the idea that "individuals should learn to think for themselves". He cautions against the notion that people "should be skeptical of pre-existing arrangements" or that "they should break free from the way they were raised, examine life from the outside". Instead, Brooks sings the praises of "institutional thinking".

Conservatives often imply that things were better in the past, before people started getting uppity and demanding freedom. Conservatives can get away with arguing this because we have all largely forgotten just how crappy life was in the past. Are we to believe that things were better back when slavery existed? When women could not vote? When life-expectancy was about 40 years? When people were ruled by kings and priests? When homosexuals were persecuted? When most people were illiterate? When children worked in factories? When the vast majority of humanity lived like dogs? When women were burned as witches? When people were beheaded in the town square for the public’s entertainment?

The fact is: for most human beings this is the safest, most pleasant time to be alive in the entire history of humanity.

Conservatives always praise "traditions" because traditions apparently embody the cumulative wisdom of the ages. Which traditions are they talking about? The "tradition" of wife-burning that used to exist in India? The "tradition" of female genital mutilation?

The other tactic conservatives use is to argue that the progress in freedom up until now has been fine, but that it has now gone far enough, and that if we go any further society will collapse, and then you’ll all be sorry, just you wait and see, blah blah blah. This is what conservatives have always argued. If most of today’s conservatives had been around a few hundred years ago they would probably have been arguing in "moderate" tones that slavery is a useful institution and that slaves should learn to sing in their chains, because that is the cumulative wisdom of the ages, and that if slaves are set free society will collapse. They would have been telling us that women should get back in their kitchens where they can be happy, or else it will be the end of civilisation as we know it. They would have been telling us that the women they most admire are the ones who stay in their kitchens where they do the work that "gives meaning to their lives". They would have been musing about the "dangers of personal freedom", just like they are still musing about the "dangers of personal freedom".

As an example of Brook’s sophistic argumentation, consider the way he tries to blame progressives for undermining the "banking code" that previously made bankers behave themselves – thus precipitating the current financial collapse. What planet is he living on? When have bankers ever behaved themselves? What did the "banking code" accomplish back in the 1920 and 1930s when bankers did the exact same thing that they have just done now? It has been the progressives who have wanted to regulate banks, and Brook’s conservative chums who have encouraged deregulation. But somehow Brooks manages to blame all of this on the way progressives have been undermining institutions by promoting individualism.

So my question is: who cares Dave Brooks thinks? To hell with him!

“Am I a stupid socialist?”

A READER WRITES: “I once read a quote somewhere to this effect: ‘If one is not a Socialist in his twenties, then one has no heart. However if one is still a Socialist in his thirties, then one has no brain’. I have recently turned thirty and find myself still adhering to a 'quasi' Socialist ideology. Does this mean that I am stoop-id?? Yours worriedly

PS: I read your article on Schopenhauer’s Pessimism. I liked it, but find it slightly irksome that what I consider to be Realism, is constantly rebranded as Pessimism by others.”

BB SAYS: No, it means you are smart. You see through the free-market propaganda and ideology that has facilitated a bunch of greedy scumbags to wreak havoc on the world economy. People who have given up on social justice and progress have no heart – they are missing something. Ultimately people should find a Golden Mean between the head and the heart. We must be realistic idealists, or idealistic realists. Socialism and Progressivism are about to become hot again.

Even, Karl Marx, a philosopher who has been out of fashion for the last couple of decades, is due a Renaissance:

"Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalised and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism." Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867

Reader spills the beans on Roger Scruton

A concerned reader has drawn my attention to the below information on Roger Scruton, the famous Conservative Philosopher:

"There is an interesting little piece on Scruton which mentions:

In early 2002, The Guardian disclosed a leaked confidential e-mail in which he asked Japan Tobacco International for an increase of £1,000 over his existing fee of £4,500 per month and discussed his aim of getting opinion pieces published "in one or other of The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Financial Times, The Economist, The Independent or the New Statesman" on "major topics of current concern" to the tobacco industry. As a result of the disclosure, The Financial Times dropped his weekly column, "This Land". Scruton argues that his relationship with JTI was never concealed, and the new proposal was never acted upon, but his critics respond that his previous articles failed to mention any links to the tobacco industry."

Exchange with Roger Sruton about Conservatism

BRIAN BARRINGTON:
Dear Mr. Scruton,
I am sympathetic to your writing and philosophy, but it seems to me that conservatism suffers from a basic logical problem: the standards conservatism defends did not always exist and were once considered radical. For example, the classical architecture that conservatives defend would have been “revolutionary” when it was first created in Ancient Greece. The Christian “tradition” that many conservatives defend was, at the time of Christ and in the centuries after Christ, a radical new teaching that challenged the pagan view of life that was prevalent at that time. The music of Bach and the painting of the Renaissance were also revolutionary developments. Even farming, and the country life that conservatives defend, would have been “revolutionary” at the time when human beings were moving from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies. Is there a way to overcome this apparent logical problem with conservatism?

ROGER SCRUTON:
To Brian Barrington,
There are two quite different understandings of the word ‘conservatism’. In one understanding the conservative is just anyone who is trying to hang on to the old order of things, regardless of its value, and perhaps because of his own secure position within it. In that sense people used to refer to ‘conservative elements’ in the Soviet Communist Party – i.e. people determined to hold on to the revolutionary doctrines of Marxism-Leninism and who endorsed the oppressive methods needed to put them into practice. In the other sense such people could not be described as conservative at all, but the very opposite. In the other sense the conservative is someone who believes that the solutions to social problems are hard to find, that they emerge over time, through custom and tradition, and that they are solutions precisely because they correspond to something deep in human nature which we must respect. Such a conservative believes that we make mistakes, that mistakes must be corrected, that tradition is a guide but not the sole guide, and that from time to time we must return to our basic intuitions about humanity and the moral life in order to renew the social fabric. Of course Christ was a disturbing figure; but his aim was to return people to the understanding contained in the two commandments given in Leviticus – to love God entirely and to love your neighbour as yourself. His message was addressed to the individual, and concerned the morality of daily life. Such examples are shocking, and people recoil from them, as the Gospels show. But their meaning is not revolution in the modern sense but moral renewal. Who can deny that our society stands in need, now, of such a renewal? My own view is that any such renewal must also be conservative – rediscovering the moral knowledge contained in customs and traditions on which we have trampled or which have been sneered at by the advocates of liberation.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14210188&postID=4200347230388694612

"What caused the Global Credit Crunch?"

A READER WRITES: “What is the real cause of the current Global Credit Crunch? People say that it is the result of a “loss of confidence”, but what causes the loss of confidence? People say it was due to lax mortgage lending, but what causes the lax mortgage lending? What is the REAL cause behind what is going on?”

BB SAYS: Most economists are perplexed by the global credit crunch. That is because most economists are idiots, and have no idea what they are talking about. Given that this is the biggest global recession since the Great Depression, we need to ask: what caused the Great Depression? In order to answer that question we need to see what the man who did most to solve the Great Depression had to say about it. The man who did most to solve the Great Depression was the man who implemented the New Deal in the US, namely President Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary, Marriner Stoddard Eccles. What did he think caused the Great Depression? Well, here is what he said in his autobiography:

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery.

Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.

That is what happened to us in the twenties. We sustained high levels of employment in that period with the aid of an exceptional expansion of debt outside of the banking system. This debt was provided by the large growth of business savings as well as savings by individuals, particularly in the upper-income groups where taxes were relatively low. Private debt outside of the banking system increased about fifty per cent. This debt, which was at high interest rates, largely took the form of mortgage debt on housing, office, and hotel structures, consumer instalment debt, brokers' loans, and foreign debt. The stimulation to spend by debt-creation of this sort was short-lived and could not be counted on to sustain high levels of employment for long periods of time. Had there been a better distribution of the current income from the national product -- in other words, had there been less savings by business and the higher-income groups and more income in the lower groups -- we should have had far greater stability in our economy. Had the six billion dollars, for instance, that were loaned by corporations and wealthy individuals for stock-market speculation been distributed to the public as lower prices or higher wages and with less profits to the corporations and the well-to-do, it would have prevented or greatly moderated the economic collapse that began at the end of 1929.

The time came when there were no more poker chips to be loaned on credit. Debtors thereupon were forced to curtail their consumption in an effort to create a margin that could be applied to the reduction of outstanding debts. This naturally reduced the demand for goods of all kinds and brought on what seemed to be overproduction, but was in reality underconsumption when judged in terms of the real world instead of the money world. This, in turn, brought about a fall in prices and employment.

Unemployment further decreased the consumption of goods, which further increased unemployment, thus closing the circle in a continuing decline of prices. Earnings began to disappear, requiring economies of all kinds in the wages, salaries, and time of those employed. And thus again the vicious circle of deflation was closed until one third of the entire working population was unemployed, with our national income reduced by fifty per cent, and with the aggregate debt burden greater than ever before, not in dollars, but measured by current values and income that represented the ability to pay. Fixed charges, such as taxes, railroad and other utility rates, insurance and interest charges, clung close to the 1929 level and required such a portion of the national income to meet them that the amount left for consumption of goods was not sufficient to support the population.
This then, was my reading of what brought on the depression.

Did something similar cause the current global recession? That global inequality of wealth has increased hugely over the last 30 years is not controversial. The 1996 'Global Report' of the UN Industrial Development Organisation estimates that the disparity between the richest and poorest 20 percent of the world population increased by over 50 percent from 1960 to 1989. The process has increased since then.

In America, there has been huge economic growth and nearly all of that new wealth has gone to the wealthiest 10 percent, and to higher profits for corporations. Median incomes have hardly increased at all. The non-wealthy have only been able to sustain increases in their spending by borrowing the savings of the wealthy.

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/ib239

Look at the graph at the bottom of the above link. Between 1979 and 2005, incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans increased by 250%. Incomes of the wealthiest 20% have increased by nearly 100%. Incomes of the poorest 20% have hardly increased at all. The incomes of people in between have also not increased very much. For 25 years real wages have been in decline for the majority of the American population. Salaries have remained the same, but working hours have increased, and inequality has just soared. Something similar has happened in other countries. Remember: we are not talking about poverty here – absolute poverty (malnutrition etc.) can decline while inequality rises.

We all know that the recent asset bubbles were the result of excessive borrowing by people who do not have sufficient incomes to pay back their loans. Excessive borrowing by some is made possible by excessive saving by others. The non-wealthy have become more indebted; and now they have stopped borrowing and they have stopped spending. The non-wealthy no longer have enough wealth to continue borrowing and spending. The only solution is a radical reduction in inequality of wealth.

Inequality of wealth causes too much saving by some and too much borrowing by others. Now, the wealthy cannot spend all their money. So they save it. This means that there is money for people to borrow – remember that Total Borrowing must ultimately equal Total Saving. Other people then borrow the savings of the wealthy – but if the incomes of the borrowers are not increasing they can only sustain so much borrowing. Eventually there is no productive place for the wealthy to put their savings – and that's when asset bubbles start – that's when assets start to be overpriced – when people are looking for a place to put their savings that will bring them a return. But now there are no good investment opportunities for savings, because ordinary people do not have money to buy extra goods and services.

The period between 1950s to the early 1970s was the period of real economic growth, based on social welfare and egalitarian distribution of income – when societies actually got better and social indicators improved. In the late 1970s the social indicators began to decline and growth fell very sharply and inequality fell back to what it was in the 1920s – leading eventually to a crash similar to the one that happened at the end of the 1920s. We need to abandon the Free Market Fundamentalism and Right Wing Economic Madness of the last 30 years, and return once more to egalitarian and sustainable economic growth.