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How does the French fertility rate fit into this Armageddon scenario for example?
Its around 2 per pair and its unlike some would perhaps claim automatically not centered around immigrants but caused significantly by medium fertility across the entire society.
If France manages that, it can't be impossible for other European countries to manage it as well.
Beside this, when are we reading about the downfall of Russia or Japan, countries with similarly bad or even worse fertility rates and last but not least, China has a big demographic problem as well, not with the fertility but with the over aging of its society. The US probably sees a major demographic change over the next years as well.
The list could go on...
The highest I've read for TFR for the French is 1.92, overall. This sounds not so bad.
On the other hand, the French go out of their way not to permit much in the way of statistics to be collected. If, therefore, Muslim TFR in France remains at about the 3-4 children per woman level, and those are rolled in with non-Muslims, it indicates a culturally French TFR of about a kid and a half.
But do they? We don't know. I've seen a study purporting to show that Muslim women in France have had the same TFR drop they've had elsewhere in most of the Muslim world. I've also seen a French obstetrician's recent report that his almost entirely Muslim clientele is still having 3.6 or so kids each.
I am, at best, suspicious of the study. Why? Well, truth is the first casualty of war; politics is war; and this is an intensely political question. Moreover, when I consider the objective realities of Muslim life in France - unassimilated, ghettoized, patriarchal, and with the social welfare state to make childbearing perhaps the only profitable activity many Muslims can engage in - I think it unlikely that Muslim TFR rates there would have dropped that much.
Mike, I didn't invent the term, "tranzi." See: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/gl...ves/
001967.html
How ironic, that the unification crowd closes in on their dream, while trying to ignore the viper in their nest. Talk about bad timing.
Beside this, when are we reading about the downfall of Russia or Japan...
Slartibartfas, I didn't bring it up in the review, but Laqueur devotes an entire chapter to Russia in The Last Days of Europe entitled "Russia: A False Dawn?" Just within the last decade Russia's population, particularly in the far eastern provinces and Siberia, has declined drastically due to internal migration. Laqueur speculates that this, along with the declining birthrate, could someday lead to Russian territorial losses in Asia.
As for the population implosions in Japan and China, I think only time will tell what global impact they have. I think Europe's population implosion is on the minds of many in the West right now because it has been going on for so long and is directly affecting the political and economic situations of countries (like the US) that have long had close ties to the continent.
Mike, I didn't invent the term, "tranzi." See: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/gl...ves/ 001967.html
Hi Tom. I just added your correction to the post.
How ironic, that the unification crowd closes in on their dream, while trying to ignore the viper in their nest. Talk about bad timing.
Cassandra, that reminds me of a saying I heard from former Reagan aide Morton C. Blackwell: "Better a snake in the grass than a viper in your bosom." Bad timing, indeed.
Now, on the other hand, I did (I think) invent the term "cosmopolitan progressive" or "Kosmo," which is perhaps more accurate. ;) But that was mostly to be different, and mostly for a book. (Oh, and to dig at Daily Kos, too.)
Yes, I came across "Kosmo" in A Desert Called Peace a couple of days ago! :) I'm about 200 pages into the novel right now.
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