Pearsall Helms sticks it to the EUrabia brigade. And he sticks it good. In particular, he sticks it good to Canada’s biggest asshole, Mark Steyn.
A random example (among many) of Mr Helm’s demolition of Mr Steyn involves this quote from the latter: "Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches".
The actual study, which claimed that more people attend mosques than Anglican churches in the UK, was itself based on some tenuous assumptions. But Mr Steyn must be either a liar or a retard to extrapolate that survey to *all* Christian churches. This not terribly reliable source implies somewhere around 3.6 million total churchgoers for this year, compared to less than a million mosquegoers.
(via Nick)
Well Steyn is guilty of using dubious sources quite often. Recently he mentioned a story about which turned out to be, quite unsurprisingly, nonsense.
But I forgive him a lot of the time. He certainly stirs it up which is, at least, entertaining.
well, i guess i’m just shit at html. that was meant to say something about a man pissing his way out of an avalanche and that unwieldy link goes to a story about him.
At least its not as bad wishing for the thoeretical collapse of a notional civilisation as to wish for the actual deaths of US troops in Iraq, as many on the left have done.
Ed – point me towards these Many on the Left, and I’ll condemn them too. I haven’t yet managed to find them, outside of the imagination of the right…
Also, I would add that Mr Pearsall talks as much crap as he claims to notice. Steyn, if you actually read him ever, thinks very little of CIA predictions, and admits as much regularly. This time he covers his backside with ‘But either way’- which Pearsall might have noticed had he had his thinking cap on while reading instead of frantically trying to ram Steyn from behind. And, while we’re talking about misunderstanding, for ‘misleading statements’ you have to read ‘rhetoric that’s rather clever which we can’t answer ’cause it’s based in solid and recognised trends we’re hoping won’t spoil our retirement’.
Answer the trends, not the wheedling little semantic niggles which are amplified by those lacking in imagination into some tremendous act of RWD (Right Wing Deception).
Ah, you’re here I gather.
Ok, well what about Michael Moore’s comparison of the Iraqi ‘resistance’ with the minutemen of US folklore? Wasn’t that making a positive comparison designed to encourage sympathy for those whose aim was to kill US – and British- troops?
Whatever we think of minutemen to US minds it’s a positive comparison, encouraging a degree of support for their murderous activities.
You know, the Michael Moore literally embraced by the Democrat mainstream and lionised across Europe.
So you’ve already toned the claim down from "wishing for the actual deaths of US troops" to "making a positive comparison designed to encourage sympathy for those whose aim was to kill US – and British- troops"? Come on, there must be some real troop-death-wishers out there…
Also, if Michael Moore is literally embraced by the Democrat mainstream, then I’m Jimmy Carter. He was invited to the party conference by a minority figure within the party, while the Dems’ 2004 election campaign deliberately distanced itself from him and his message (if you remember, they had terminally boring John Kerry running on a broadly pro-war message instead.)
Steyn, if you actually read him ever, thinks very little of CIA predictions, and admits as much regularly. This time he covers his backside with ‘But either way’- which Pearsall might have noticed had he had his thinking cap on
Steyn’s ‘covering his backside’ amounted to saying ‘either Europe will collapse in 15 years according to the CIA, or sooner according to me’.
And, yeah, I’ve read him before. Isn’t it somewhat hypocritical of him to quote the same CIA analysts that he lambasts elsewhere with seeming approval when it suits his particular polemical point?
Answer the trends, not the wheedling little semantic niggles which are amplified by those lacking in imagination into some tremendous act of RWD
The thing is, I’ve written elsewhere about these trends (in the post that John has linked to I even linked to some of these other things I’ve written). I’m hardly a ‘everything is gravy’ type (and I’m certainly not much of a leftist), but this article was lazy rubbish and clearly involved little research. The ‘semantic niggles’ are facts, and it’s not much of an analysis if you need to lie for the sake of your point.
Admittedly my defence of Steyn was ropey- I’ll come to that-, but I am sure that John B. is wrong when he tries to defend the Mooreon fraternity. When Michael Moore made the comparison he did he was appealing to a romantic stereotype from US history. The clear intent was to popularise the Iraqi resistance. Very few people can be found who say that they wish someone’s death, thankfully, but it’s naive not to think that a state of advocacy of a particular POV can be confined to a single formulation of words or some synonymical construction.
To return to Pearsall’s commentary, there are a number of points to raise.
It is possible to get too enthusiastic about European probems in the wake of the kind of cheerleading that has occurred there for terrorists and fascists in Iraq, but it has to be said that as least as many left-wing Americans as Europeans have cheerleaded that way, so it’s not really the answer to say that’s the cause of it. Since you don’t address the trends, demographic and social, in relation to the fine balances of power that underlie cultural and social models it’s difficult to judge if they have a point. Glib, is what I would call this dismissal in the light of acknowledged trends. Can we really trust the politicians of today to be honest over statistics, for instance? It’s a serious problem that we can’t, in any sphere actually, because the challenge of cultural change- and I mean radical cultural change- is hard to assess until we can.
When Steyn alludes to Bush’s allusion to Holland and Theo Van Gogh, he is really making the point that we are changing our culture, our notion of outrage and so on, to accomodate a new reality. Now, I think this is where we can link to the supposedly dishonest statistic about Muslim populations. First of all I would say Steyn only said ‘according to some projections’. A projection is obviously just one way of looking at data and you don’t mention one area of data that may have been used- proselytisation. Trends in religion can’t be analysed effectively simply by looking at demographics. Demographics may be the kickstarter to wider phenomena though. If you analysed the fundamentalist population of the US prior to Billy Graham’s fifties ‘Crusades’ according to birthrate you’d have no idea that their numbers would be so great in the latter half of the century. Similarly could you have predicted the fundamentalism of Iran while the Shah was in power? Current population movements and fertility numbers are important only up to a certain point in this kind of analysis.
If you accept this, and acknowledging as you do that 15 percent of Europe’s population could be Muslim- without allowing for proselytisation- in the not too distant future, it must surely be alarming, and worthy of a little alarmism.
When Steyn alluded to the number of practising Christians I am sure he is well aware that it’s a complex statistic to use. I know in fact that he writes as a Protestant and you will be aware that the schisms in the churches lead to constant warfare over the definition of an adherent to The Faith. The fact is that nominalism is particularly strong in RC attendees, which is somewhat unlike Protestant attendees since nominal Protestants don’t go except at Christmas- maybe. Nominalism is a factor in all religions of course, but the danger in most religions is that the coercive aspects- and all have them- win over the personal dimension. Thus the hijab is a controversial item in Islam. The point I am using to defend Steyn is that given the weakness of Christian churches it is difficult to underestimate the likelihood that the founding religion of Western culture will be overwhelmed by the influence of the aggressive Mohammedism that is undoubtedly growing. This will have consequences which not even the great European Constitution may have envisaged.
Perhaps it would be better not to write of trends in demographics and religion at all, given the complexity of the issue, but I’m sure you’d accept that can’t be allowed to happen.
Ed, you see, that’s a much more reasonable and nuanced case than the one presented by Steyn. His piece read to me like one of many right-wing American hysterically anti-Muslim articles. OK, he’s Canadian, but he’s of an ideological piece with people like Coulter and Hannity and the Freeper legions, except he’s a much better writer.
In regards to Europe being overwhelmed by Islam there are a couple of issues. One, I simply don’t see any prospect of mass conversion to Islam. If people can’t be bothered with the relative laxity of the modern churches, I can’t see a movement on any mass scale to Islam. If I recall correctly the largest community of native converts to Islam in Europe is in France, and even there it’s only like 50-60,000, which is a tiny fraction of the white French population. Sure, there will probably be a steady annual drip of conversions (although of course a significant amount of those people will end up dropping it after the initial curiosity has worn off) but long term it won’t amount to much. Then there is the issue of natural increase. For one thing, fertility rates among different immigrant Muslim ethnic groups in a variety of countries seem to be following a downward pattern. Now, whether or not these will stabilize at a certain level above replacement fertility or whether they will ultimately end up at the same level as those of native populations is open to question. I think it’s pretty tied in to economic opportunity; ie if Muslim groups remain relatively poor their fertility will probably be higher than if (on average) they advance further in society. Tied into this is whether or not, or to what degree anyways, European countries continue to allow the practice of arranging for marriage partners to be brought in from countries of origin. Denmark, in particular, and Holland have brought in laws sharply cracking down on that in recent years and I can’t see it being far off in other places, because that is one practice that really accelerates population growth. The third question is migration, what levels are accepted, where it is sourced from, and here to I think the political trend is towards a greater closing.
So, basically, I don’t think that some kind of Muslim takeover is completely impossible, I just think it’s far far faaaaaar less likely than some kind of muddling through, some kind of imperfect solution that avoids major conflict. Hell, I think massive pogroms and possible genocide are more likely than the star and crescent flying from the Elysee Palace. What gets my goat the most about this particular style of neo-con gloating is that they present it as some kind of fait accompli.