THOSE STINKIN' LIMEYS TAKE ALL OUR BOOK-REVIEWING JOBS:

Whistling Past the Graveyard (John Derbyshire, Nov. 2006, New English Review)

[...] One of the strongest themes of America Alone is demographic. Practically all advanced Western countries have birthrates below “replacement level”—their women, that is, having less than an average 2.1 children in their lifetimes. In some nations the birth rate is quite dramatically low: Russia and Italy at 1.2, Spain at 1.1. [...]

Our only hope, therefore, says Steyn, is in the reform of Islam. Yet this is not ours to do. “Ultimately, only Muslims can reform Islam. All the free world can do is create conditions that increase the likelihood of Muslim reform, or at any rate do not actively impede it.” Steyn goes on to give a list of suggestions: Support women’s rights ... Support economic and political liberty ... Deny international legitimacy to really bad Muslim regimes ... Transform the energy industry (i.e. to reduce out dependency on oil) ... “Strike militarily when the opportunity presents itself.”

After the pungent brilliance of the preceding 200 pages, this all falls a bit flat. And in fact, the reader who has traversed those 200 pages has been having different thoughts from the ones Steyn tries to guide him to. For example: Is that original list of options—submit to, destroy, or reform Islam—really exhaustive? How about we just fence it off : Expel our own Muslims, forbid Muslims to enter our countries, proscribe Islam, and deal with Muslim nations commercially at arm’s length? (They have to sell their oil to someone, or else starve.) Such actions are, of course, way over the line of politically acceptable discourse today; but in five or ten years, after a couple more jihadist atrocities, they will not be. [...]

And there are, of course, as must always be pointed out nowadays, the Great Unmentionables. Mark Steyn:

The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, “Racism!” To agitate about what proportion of the population is “white” is grotesque and inappropriate. It’s not about race; it’s about culture.

Ah, culture. Of course it’s not about race! Nothing is about race, because there is no such thing as race. (Repeat 100 times.) It’s about culture—the aether, the phlogiston, of current social-anthropological speculation, whose actual nature is mysterious, but whose explanatory power is infinite. You know, culture: those habits, folkways, beliefs, ways of thinking and behaving and connecting that arise from... pure chance! Or geography (see below). Or something... but definitely nothing to do with biology.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am sure Mark Steyn is sincere here. I am sure he believes this stuff about “culture.” Most educated people do. Most will continue to do so for a few more years, while the neuroscientists, geneticists, genomicists, anthropologists, paleontologists, and statistical sociologists sap away beneath them—until the ground gives way.

It's worthwhile to note that Mark Steyn is writing about behavior, and in this excerpt does not even give an opinion as to how culture originates. Mr. Derbyshire proceeds to pound the table about a point Mr. Steyn never even made. If Mr. Steyn's primary concern is behavior, and thus culture, what precisely is Mr. Derbyshire's?