SPENGLER Spain's elections show why radical Islam can win
Radical Islam has scored its first unambiguous victory against the West, and it
should have been visible at a long distance (Why
radical Islam might defeat the West, July 8, 2003). Winston
Churchill's quip that the appeaser hopes the crocodile will eat him last does
not apply when the prospective victim expects to be in another world before the
crocodile comes around.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party crushed Prime Minister Jose
Maria Aznar's Popular Party in Spanish elections on Sunday. US
commentators expressed consternation that Spanish voters would reject America's
ally in the Iraq war after al-Qaeda's apparent act of
retaliation last Thursday, March 11.
Spain's death-knell sounded long before the train bombings in Madrid, however.
No country in the world is more determined to disappear. The country~{!/~}s
fertility rate of 1.12 live births per female is the lowest in the world. As
recently as 1975, at the death of strongman Francisco Franco, the fertility
rate stood at 3 births per female in 1976. By 2050 Spain will have lost a
quarter of its population. Germany and Italy, whose fertility rates fell
earlier than Spain's, will lose a third, according to economist Anthony
Scholefield.
Half a millennium after the Reconquista, when Spanish Catholicism expelled the
country's Muslims and Jews, Spain has no choice but to ask the Muslims to
return and take possession of its land by stages.
Every Spanish worker in 2050 will support one pensioner, which is to say that
the pension system will be bankrupt. According to one academic study, 5
million additional immmigrants must be working in Spain in 2050 to save the
pension system, out of a projected population of 37 million - and that assumes
an immediate recovery in the fertility rate to 1.5. At this point, it hardly
matters what future fertility rate Spanish demographers might project. The
demographic catastrophe of the past 30 years puts the pension system on a crash
course toward bankruptcy, unless Spain attracts an army of immigrants.
Except for a trickle of immigrants from Latin America, North Africa provides
most of Spain's immigrants at present. Two hundred thousand Muslims now reside
in Spain, and they have built 100 new mosques in the past 10 years. Unless
Spain were, most improbably, to attempt a recolonization from Latin America, it
cannot do without more Muslims.
Socialist voters may not have worked out the arithmetic; Jose Zapatero's
supporter in the street simply does not want to be burdened with America's
distant wars, especially if they draw fire at home. It all amounts to the same
thing. Countries too lazy to produce their next generation will not fight. Who
will lay down his life for future generations when the future generations
simply will not be there?
Like other former strongholds of Catholicism, Spain has made an abrupt and
terrible shift away from traditional family life toward egregious hedonism.
Alone among Europe's great powers, Spain nipped Protestantism in the bud,
avoiding the terrible religious wars that ravaged France during the 16th
century, and killed off perhaps half the German population during the 17th
century. By expelling its Jews, its Inquisition cut off access to the Hebrew
language and Bible translation. By burning several thousand heretics in public,
it offered a terrible object lesson to prospective dissenters. Not until 1936,
when Catholic generals rose to overthrow the communist-tinged republic, did
Spain finally have its religious war, with half a million deaths, of which
one-quarter were from executions.
The victorious General Francisco Franco kept Spain firmly in the Catholic fold
until his death in 1975, after which Catholicism shriveled in Spain like a
vampire exposed to the light of day. Along with church attendance, the
birthrate fell from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the world. That
already has been the fate of other Catholic strongholds, such as Canada's
province of Quebec. There the fertility rate dropped from 4.95 children per
woman in 1961 to 1.57 in 1996.
Old Europe's people, religion, culture and fighting mettle have imploded
together. The Europeans are not so much defeatist as resigned to extinction.
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