NIHILISM ISN'T A WESTERN VALUE:

Steyn Looks Into Geopolitical Future With Worry, Humor (Bradley Vasoli, 11/30/2007, The Philadelphia Bulletin)

A Canadian speaking with a heavy British accent acquired from spending his youth in Birmingham, England, Mr. Steyn now lives in Lyme, New Hampshire. Whatever alarm is stoked in the few westerners who have lived in Middle Eastern terrorist hotbeds, Mr. Steyn has found traversing the English-speaking world sobering enough.

Mr. Steyn, whose writings appear in The Bulletin, National Review, Canada's National Post, The New Criterion and numerous other outlets, spoke to an audience at Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley Wednesday evening about the robustness required of the U.S. and other western nations seeking to preserve peace on their shores.

Preserving peace, he said, will mean preserving the population - something Western nations are doing less and less impressively. He cited in his 2006 book America Alone a U.S. fertility rate of 2.11 children per family, barely hitting full replacement rate. A European family has, on average, 1.38 children, a figure portending population decline.

"There's simply no precedent for managed decline" in a civilization that has risen to such heights, Mr. Steyn said, voicing consternation that European sophisticates have only encouraged the trend.

He cited the example of two British women who opted for sterilization to prevent conceiving children who would consume the earth's natural resources and engage in commercial activities that would worsen climate change.

"Apparently the best way to save the earth for the next generation is not to have a next generation," Mr. Steyn quipped. "Who do you think is going to be around to man the Greenpeace office in 30 years time?"

He described the upshot of the West's predicament in the epigrammatic style for which he is widely known. "They're saving the planet for the culture whose womenfolk don't get sterilized," he said.

With all due regard for a fellow Hampshireman, one wonders on what basis Mr. Steyn can consider secular Europe to be the West? The term is, after all, inextricably wrapped up with Christendom.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 6, 2008 8:51 AM