Farewell to the Reich

A sad tale of European collapse, excerpted from LifeSite News:
Germany’s downward spiral in population is no longer reversible, the country’s federal statistics office said Tuesday. The birthrate has dropped so low that immigration numbers cannot compensate.

“The fall in the population can no longer be stopped,” vice-president Walter Rademacher with the Federal Statistics Office said, reported Agence France-Presse.

Germany has the lowest birthrate in Europe, with an average of 1.36 children per woman. Despite government incentives to encourage larger families, the population is dropping rapidly and that trend will continue, with an expected loss of as much as 12 million by 2050. That would mean about a 15 percent drop from the country’s current population of 82.4 million, the German news source Deutsche Welle reported today.

Only 65 years ago, they were looking for “Lebensraum im Osten,” room in the East for their burgeoning population. (No, I’m not complaining that that’s over!) Soon, I guess, the last living German will have to invade Poland on his own.

[…] With a 22 percent reduction in the workforce and increasing costs for senior assistance and medical care, the drop in population is expected to have a radical impact on the nation’s economy, along with the welfare budget.

“I wouldn’t like to use the word ‘bankrupt’ because it’s a major challenge for the social insurance systems, that’s for certain,” Radermacher said in an interview with DW-Radio. “But the first thing is to reform the social insurance systems…We can learn from other countries…In every case, you need someone who has to work and give you some earnings.”

Don’t we have a word for people who are forced to work for someone else’s benefit? Oh, yeah – “slaves.”

[…] Germany has one of the largest populations of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, with a Muslim community of over 3 million. That trend is expected to continue, leading some demographic trend-watchers to warn that the country is well on the way to becoming a Muslim state by 2050, Deutsche Welle reported.

The Brussels Journal reported last month that one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families by 2025. There are an estimated 50 million Muslims living in Europe today-that number is expected to double over the next twenty years.

It’s a rare event when you actually get to see a civilization commit suicide. I don’t think anything quite this dramatic has happened since the collapse of the Roman Empire – at least not since the first Moslem expansion. At least the first time, the barbarians and the Moslems had to fight for the ruins of the old Empire. This time, the Europeans just seem to be handing them the keys to the city. Do they really think they’ll be allowed to coexist? Have they forgotten that North Africa, the Middle East, and the Arabian Peninsula used to be Christian and part of the Hellenic world?

By the way, just in terms of their retirement system, how long do they expect young Moslems, with big families to feed, will be willing to pay the social security bill for a bunch of old, self-indulgent atheists?

[…] The demographic decline coincides with a dramatic drop in Christian religious belief and a consequent rejection of Christian morality and emphasis on the benefits of family life and children.

Gee, you think? Could the attitude that says “I’ll abort the kid because I want to spend the money on a better stereo system,” actually have something to do with morality and the way you view the world? (I guess I should say “Weltanschauung,” instead of “worldview,” in honor of our soon-to-be-late German friends.)

There is a logical conclusion to atheism, whether it takes the form of a structured philosophy or is just a default godlessness. That logical conclusion is a radical self-centeredness that goes way beyond the ordinary selfishness we all struggle with. It restricts my concerns solely to the narrow slice of history I happen to live in. If there is no eternity, then I owe nothing to a future that doesn’t have me in it. If what I see is all there is, then getting as much pleasure out of it that I can is the sensible response. The Christian notion of charity/love doesn’t become optional or negotiable. It becomes stupid and pointless.

Atheists can be very decent, moral people; I know some. What they can’t be is both moral and logically consistent.