I saw Buchanan on the Today Show. The interviewer seemed to have a lot of trouble taking Buchanan seriously, and asked some fairly pointed and pertinent questions that were way outside the norm for Today. I had more than a few reservations about his ideas, too.
He's taken a few facts (birthrate) and then tried to tie them in to a tale of doom for Life As We Know It(TM). I missed the bits about Russia losing Siberia to China, but he did mention the Reconquista and Islam storming the gates of Spain and Vienna again. Certainly the aging populations in the west (as a proportion of total population) does mean that welfare/pension schemes could run into trouble. But that is as much a problem with how common wealth is redistributed than anything else. Now, if you don't believe government should be involved in redistributing wealth, then it is a huge problem - who's going to pay for all these old fogeys, and it better bloody well not be me. If you do believe, then it is a problem of how best and most equitably to arrange the transfer. A very different question. Yes, Christianity is on the wane in the west. While those who profess to be Christian are more and more of the born-again variety, the fastest growing religious category in Australia's census is "No religion" To some extent, the more people are free to think for themselves, this is probably always likely. I gather that Buchanan is Roman Catholic, especially from some of the terms he used. How does he expect a concerted re-Christianising to happen - surely not Government fostering religion? Papal encyclicals, Christian "mullahs"? Is that really Western? I like the phrasing of "Islam has already surpassed Catholicism as the largest religion on earth." Of course, when you add all those Protestants and Orthodox Christians the figures come out a wee bit different. As well, something he missed, is that a large part of the Moslem world is becoming westernised too and will be in the same position within a generation or so. Iran is slowly but definitely working towards a less fundamental and more "westernised" (or at least reformed) Islam. So are Malaysia and Indonesia at least at the elite levels of government, business and bureaucracy. Thousands of Moslems come each year to Australia for tertiary education. They've done so for more than 30 years. Indonesia's current Environment Minister once collected fares on Melbourne trams, while acquiring his environmental science degree. Many of Indonesia's political up and comers have spent time in Australia (and the US) and these are the people who are now most likely to carry on reforms in their homeland. These reforms will be more "western" than fundamentalist, if not quite Christian in orientation. Don't forget, Indonesia's President is female, which is more than can be said for Australia or the US. And, like the West, Indonesia and Malaysia and Singapore also have declining birthrates. Education, political and gender reform seem to have much the same effect regardless of the base belief system within a country. As for the reconquista and harbouring "a nation within a nation," surely this is only a problem when rights are not granted to all. It is by passing on rights of citizenship, of voting, of education and health that you break down the likelihood of creating these onion-like layers of nations. And hasn't California, Texas and New Mexico always made something of their Latin past? Where did Zorro and Chili and Taco Bell come from? Weren't there a whole bunch of Spanish Texans fighting alongside Bowie and co at the Alamo? It's good to see that Europe is now recognising its Gastarbeiters (guest workers, all those North Africans and Turks etc who've been living and working in Germany for so long) and allowing them to become citizens. As an Australian, it has always been something hard to grasp that someone bon in a country cannot take on citizenship of that country. I suppose it was when Germany etc found themselves with Turkish and Moroccan etc kids getting into the national soccer, Olympic and hockey teams that things had to change. Here in Oz, any citizen whether born here or not could become Prime Minister (assuming they become leader of the political party voted into office) or Governor General, the de facto head of state. The State Governor of Victoria, Justice Gobbo, was I believe born in Italy. He was previously a barrister and senior judge. However, unfortunately, an Australian citizen cannot become the true Australian Head of State. That job resides with the Mountbatten-Windsor family, dammit. Apart from that one glitch, anyone can become an Australian citizen - so long as you can get into the country that is. BTW, if anyone wants to point out about the inhumane treatment currently meted out to asylum seekers by the Australian government I, for one, can only drop my head and mumble a heartfelt sorry. The trick to being an illegal immigrant to Australia is to come as a European, New Zealand, British or North American backpacker and just overstay the visa by a few years. Just don't try it as a refugee fleeing on an unseaworthy boat. And we all know that any terrorists who want to enter Australia are most likely to do so flying first class on Qantas. As with Buchanan, some part at least of the problem with illegal emigration as far as Australia's govt is concerned is that most of the entry seekers are Moslem. Even though Moslems make up less than 5 percent of the population, and that most of our near neighbours are Moslem - Indonesia, frex, being the most populous Moslem country on Earth. Shades of the old White Australia policy keep popping up, even though the facts of Australian migration and integration of more than 60 years show how little we really have to fear. > I remember sitting at a party with my daughter's friends and talking with > 2nd generation Americans (parents were immigrants) about us all being > equally American..one was Chinese, the other was Hispanic. And, it was > perfectly true. The backgrounds they had added a bit of > spice...variety and > all, but I truely believe they are as American as I am. Third generations > Turks in Germany are still considered foreign workers. > Here we don't even have "Italian-Australian", "Baltic-Australian" or "Asian-Australian" as designators. We're pretty much just Australians. About 25% of Australia's population are foreign born and while food and customs etc from overseas have changed all of us in some way each year, the kids from overseas very quickly themselves become Australian. It's a two-way street. Oh, and judging by the way families here form up, it gets bloody hard to tell who started out as what after a generation or two. My wife and I are both 4-gen Aussies (Anglo-Celtic plus), while one of my brothers is married to a Welsh born girl and another is married to a Portuguese born girl. As a family, some of our best friends are either migrants from or first gen Aussies from Hungary, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Germany, Singapore, USA, Canada, Slovenia, Britain, France and New Zealand. Not so long ago, I worked with a bloke whose father won the Military Cross in the Australian Army, and whose father-in-law won the Iron Cross fighting in the Wehrmacht, both of them in Crete in 1941. Forty years ago, as Greeks, Russians etc started migrating in large numbers it was the fear of the Slav Orthodox churches that was part of the problem. Nowadays, little problem has occurred, and in fact the Blessing of the Boats (a Greek Orthodox ceremony blessing fishing vessels) has become a bit of an attraction, always making the news. In the 70s and 80s, of course, we were worried about the influx of Indo Chinese - again largely without subsequent trauma. This time last year I was teaching some teenage refugees from Iraq, Sudan, Burma, Bosnia, etc. Most were very recent arrivals, most were Moslem, the girls tapped into Iraqi singer's and actor's web pages while the boys were into soccer, cars and Tupac Shakur. In the main, they were already becoming Australian, in that they had freedoms they and their parents were not used to, were as chatty and cheeky as any other teenager, and liked pretty much the same films and TV programs as my similarly aged kids. The things they wanted for themselves were not too dissimilar from what 5th generation Australian kids also want. Within ten years, I bet they'll nearly be as much a skippy as me, and most will have an Australian accent. In 20 or 30 years, one of them could be Prime Minister. (If one of them is, I'll lay odds it'll be the girl from Burma). > The US is a country that, except for the natives that were > decimated (mostly > by disease but by war and genocide too), is a nation of > immigrants. I think > that one reason that the US culture is so all encompassing is > that it is the > first truely cosmopolitian culture. This will be the real strength of the > United States in the next 50 years. IMHO, Europe is just starting to > consider a problem we're well on the way to solving. > Ditto Australia, for the (generally) encompassing. Most of our population growth is through migration, and has been since at least WW2. I can look back fairly reliably on the last 30 years and see the changes. The next 50 or so years should also be pretty good for Australia because of our cosmopolitan culture. Brett
