Questioning those prophecies of demographic doom

Stephen T. writes:

You were wondering about the basis for Matthew Stubbs’s assertion that Muslim domination of European demographics was far from the slam dunk Mark Steyn thinks it is. Maybe it came from this piece by J.R. Dunn in January, called “How Demography Fails”.

I posted the link on another site back in Jan. and everyone jumped down my throat for even suggesting there might be a faint glimmer of hope for Europe. Still, the article seems pretty well-reasoned to me, though I know nothing of the statistics.

The Dunn article makes (at unnecessary length) a simple and obvious point, which pundits such as Steyn don’t get. Circumstances change, human beings change, and birthrates change. But in the pundits’ world of pseudo-wisdom, the trend of this moment is the final truth of the universe, which they, the self-announced seers of the historical process, project out into the future as far as they can see. Curiously, the columnist “Spengler” is Dunn’s main source for this welcome demographic revisionism. This is a hopeful sign, since Spengler had previously indulged in the same demographic doom-ism, as I discussed here in February. I made the same obvious point as Dunn, that birthrates oscillate in response to changing conditions, and among those changing conditions are birthrates themselves.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 08, 2006 06:08 PM | Send