Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

[I'm reposting this from my old blog since I've had a few discussions with coworkers on this topic recently. It originally appeared at ChristianThinker.net back in May of 2009.]

This video has been very popular on Youtube recently, with over 6 million views:

I’ve blogged about this before, and this is the drum that conservative commentators like Mark Steyn have been beating for years. However, projecting long-term cultural change from current demographic data is always a tricky business. Cultural and demographic changes are often the results of numerous processes and trends. It’s true that fertility rates are a huge factor in projecting these types of cultural changes, maybe even the biggest, but there are other factors to consider. The Network for Strategic Missions has a few quotes up by missions researchers about the video. Hence Jason Mandryk of Operation World:

One element that we cannot possibly accurately estimate (at least I cannot see a mechanism for accurate estimation) is the secularizing effect of European society on immigrants with a religious affiliation and on the children of religion parents . . . Can we have ANY idea about how effective secular materialism will be in converting Muslims, Hindus, non-Western Christians, etc to non-religion? I don’t know, but on an anecdotal basis, the large majority of the Muslims I know in the UK – which would consist of about 40 people, predominantly male and Pakistani and under 35 years old – demonstrate high degrees of nominalism and almost all of the same traits which have seen the exodus of a younger generation from Christianity to non-faith in the last 10-20 years. Many younger Muslims in the UK (and in other Western nations) show the same social values that nominal Christians do – and as great a personal commitment to secular materialism as to their religion – and as such, make for perfectly acceptable and indeed welcomed citizens of a pluralist society.

And Peter Crossing of the World Christian Database questions some of the stats used in the video:

The grain of truth that the Muslim population percentage is increasing in Europe is correct, but WCD projections show Europe overall at 7% by 2050. It may partly be the difference between a straight mathematical extrapolation, and a projection which includes factors that change current growth. (Large growth rates are only sustainable for small populations and inevitably level out as the percentage increases. ie. it’s easy for a population to increase from 20 to 40, but much harder from 20m to 40m).

The base data too, from which the extrapolation is calculated, is very different to WCD:
e.g. Britain Muslims (WCD)
1970: 635,000 1.14%
2010: 1,680,000 2.73%

(as against YouTube’s something like 80,000 in 1970 to 2.5m in 2009–big difference in the extrapolation!)
WCD has 2050: 2,850,000 4.15%

And, by the way, it just seems really unlikely that 1m Muslims in the Netherlands are having the same number of children as 15m non-Muslims. UN says 180,000 births per year, which would mean 90,000 Muslim births. There are 500,000 Muslim females, but say 250,000 at a stretch of child-bearing age–that’s almost every second female giving birth, every year.

If I were a betting man, I’d say the demographic shift described in the video is definitely happening, but not quite at the drastic rates reported. I’ll remain skeptical about any supposed certainties that such demographic numbers can deliver about the future. However, it’s definitely something to think about. If the numbers about European and American birth rates are even close to correct, then it seems clear that the combination of secularism and affluence is poison to a culture’s ability to reproduce itself.

My wife and I watched The Insider last night. Michael Mann is one of my favorite directors, but I held off on watching this one for a decade because of what I perceived to be its leftward tilt. That’s unfortunate because it really is a fine film, made all the more interesting for me since much of the story takes place in Louisville. Although Mann is probably best known for orchestrating spectacular action scenes, The Insider is peculiarly action free, unless you count Russell Crowe hitting golf balls or falling down as action scenes. Nevertheless I think it’s one of Mann’s most engaging films, proving he can create high energy tension with lawsuits and gag orders just as well as he can with epic gun battles.

The leftward tilt is certainly present, but it’s more thematic than anything else, and I found myself rooting for Al Pacino’s plucky journalist as he attempted to stick it to the nasty tobacco corporations. The setup is this: Russell Crowe plays real-life tobacco executive turned company whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, and Pacino plays the feisty ‘60 Minutes’ producer who sticks with Wigand through the whole sordid process, culminating in an industry-shaking interview that Wigand grants to Mike Wallace. It’s a true story made all the more compelling because the most dramatic and incredible plot points actually happened. Mann makes quite a spectacle of the inner machinations of big media and the extraordinary legal power that large corporations can bring to bear on their opponents. That tobacco company lawyers from a firm based in Kentucky could bring a media giant like CBS to its knees is almost unthinkable, and Mann plays the bizarre scenario for all the dramatic impact he can get.

The film is unapologetic in portraying Pacino’s character as a left-wing media activist. He tells Wigand he was part of the “New Left” of the sixties and glowingly reminisces about his political mentor Herbert Marcuse. Nevertheless, I think the film is a good illustration of the way in which the excesses of the free market require a free press to keep it honest. Free market conservatives and libertarians often attempt to absolutize the virtues of the free market, claiming that any state interference into the free market is unjust and bound for failure anyway. This may or may not be the case, but the role of government in regulating the free market is not what I want to address here. Here I want to point out that the free market, like any other hegemonic cultural institution, always needs outside influences to hold it morally accountable. Conservatives often argue that the market requires regular injections of moral virtue to keep it honest, but I rarely hear them talk about the power of the media as the minister of such injections. The true story that inspired Mann’s film is a perfect example of how the free press can act as a cultural regulating power for the free market, exposing particular areas of vice and injustice and opening new doors for legal ramifications.

The market, contrary to the grand claims of some free market advocates, isn’t inherently noble. It’s true that free competition will often weed out undesirable elements in the market, but I don’t think this is enough. The power of the market must be subject to outside checks and balances in the same way as the powers of the state and the press. Since I’m convinced that the state should play a minimalist role in regulating the market (except in clear cases such as prohibiting unjust child labor, enforcing a minimum wage, protecting the environment, and so on), I think other, non-legal checks and balances should be brought to bear on the market as well, such as the power of the free press.

It’s also worth pointing out that, like the market, the free press isn’t inherently noble either, and it requires its own system of checks and balances. Ask a political liberal if he is as interested in the state regulating the free press as he is in regulating the free market and you will get an emphatic “No.” The excesses and injustices of the free press often go unchallenged and unchecked. The only real regulating power for the press (outside of certain laws that govern speech not covered by the First Amendment) is the press itself. The rise of conservative media outlets over the last few decades is a good example of how this works. I’ll never understand why liberals spew hatred for the conservative slant of Fox News, when the very existence of conservative outlets like Fox and the Wall Street Journal act as a balancing force to their left-leaning counterparts in the mainstream media, just as those same leftist counterparts provide much-needed accountability for Fox. Interestingly, the rise of the blogosphere has resulted in a new force for holding the press accountable for its moral failures, as witnessed most clearly in the Rathergate controversy.

We always want the guy on the other side of the aisle to be held accountable, but blind allegiance to political ideals often obscures the need for our own side to be held accountable as well. The Insider is a good reminder of that for free market advocates, and I’m glad I finally watched it. It’s no Last of the Mohicans, but it’s still a great film with a valuable message.