Violent Death in America is an Equal Opportunity Crime

By Alan Caruba

I have had an interest in demography, the study of populations and trends within populations, for a long time. Racial animosities in America have been a factor from the moment white colonists stepped off the boat and were greeted by Native Americans and, not that long after, when the first blacks arrived from Africa where slavery had flourished for centuries.

I lived in the South when Jim Crow laws were on the books and public facilities were segregated. I was a young reporter during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s and even met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on one occasion. I have seen the best and worst of what race represents in America.

I would count the initial reporting on the killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, as among the worst media coverage in a while because, as the facts begin to emerge after a month, it turns out that there was an eye witness to the incident in which George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, suffered a broken nose and injuries to the back of his head consistent with an attack.

The Black Panther Party issued a reward for Zimmerman’s “capture.” In the meantime, Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson, have been out doing what they always do, stirring up black anger and blaming all whites for what occurred.

Let’s look at the demographic facts. In 2007 the Associated Press reported that “Nearly half of the nation’s murder victims were black and the number of black men who were slain is on the rise.” The other half were murdered white victims.

Murder in America is an equal opportunity crime.

The article went on to note that black people represented an estimated 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2005, the latest data then available, but were the victims of 49 percent of all murders and 15 percent of rapes, assaults and other nonfatal violent crimes nationwide.”

The U.S. Justice Department study found that “Most of the black murder victims—93 percent—were killed by other black people.”

The study also found that 85 percent of white victims were slain by other white people. Of the black victims, 51 percent were in their late teens and twenties.

More recent statistics from 2009, posted on the website of the U.S. Department of Justice show pretty much the same trend. That year, 2,604 blacks were killed by blacks, along with 454 whites, but whites managed to kill each other to the tune of 2,963 victims, while killing 209 black victims.

Nationally by 2010, homicide was the leading cause of death for black young men ages 10-24 and the second leading cause of death for black women ages 15-24.

Overall, between 1974 and 2004, 52 percent of murderers were black, 48 percent were white, while 51 percent of the victims were white and 47 percent were black. If one can spin these statistics to suggest that the killing of Trayvon Martin was racial, be my guest.

Appearing on the Sean Hannity program Monday evening, Zimmerman’s friend, Joe Oliver, calmly defended him saying “he is not a racist.” Oliver is black.

Why Barack Obama felt it necessary to insert himself into the situation before the facts are established was a reminder of an earlier situation in 2009 when he took issue with an incident between Cambridge, Massachusetts police and a black professor who was hauled off to jail for failing to cooperate with them. Always assuming the police are to blame or inferring that Trayvon Martin was killed because he could have looked like Obama’s son, if he had one, is a serious breach of judgment. To say it out loud is even worse.

Finally, lost in all the hasty assumptions and accusations is the fact that Zimmerman was, as previously noted, a neighborhood watch volunteer and this suggests the Sanford, Florida neighborhood had crime problems. Trayvon, we’re learning, had some earlier experiences with the local police, so he was on that evening a subject of concern to Zimmerman who reported his presence to the police and was returning to his car when the shooting occurred.

No one takes any pleasure in the death of Trayvon Martin or any other young black man. It is a tragedy, but it is also one that is repeated far too many times in too many American cities for reasons that cannot be passed off as racism. His death reflects the pathologies that plague too many of America’s black population.

We should be celebrating the black men and women that escape their cultural bondage, embrace middle class values, and ennoble their lives through their personal achievements.

Exploiting his death is a disservice to both America’s black and white population.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The New American Elite

By Alan Caruba

The only constant in the life of individuals and nations is change. Since the beginning of the last century, the process or rate of change has accelerated with the invention and availability of a myriad of machines, technologies that have altered the lifestyle of Americans as well as of millions around the world.

Let me put it in personal terms. When I was born in the late 1930s, my Mother washed the family laundry by hand and hung it out to dry on sunny days or in the basement of our home if it was raining. We were not poor. We were middle class. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and we lived in a spacious suburban home in an upscale New Jersey community. Mass produced washers and dryers would arrive after the end of World War Two.

The differences between lower economic classes, the middle class, and upper classes were well defined back then. All, however, generally held the same values regarding societal institutions such as marriage, religion, national pride. Those values have eroded since the 1960s and Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, whose new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” ($27.00, Crown Forum) tells you how and why.

Murray takes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22,, 1963 as the starting point, noting, for example, that “Not only were Americans almost always married, mothers normally stayed at home to raise their children. More than 80 percent of married women with children were not working outside the home in 1963.”

“Part of these widely shared values lay in the religiosity of America in 1963” and Murray compares this to a 1963 Gallup poll in which “Only one percent of respondents said they did not have a religious preference, and half said they had attended a worship service in the previous seven days. These answers showed almost no variations across classes.”

“The racial differences in income, education, and occupations were all huge, noted Murray. “The civil rights movement was the biggest domestic issue of the early 1960s…” By 1963, “Poverty had been dropping so rapidly for so many years that Americans thought things were going well.”

The changes in values that many Americans deplore today were coming. “The first oral contraceptive pill had gone on the market in 1960 and its use was spreading widely.” Murray points out that “The leading cohorts of the baby boomers were in their teens by November 21, 1963, and, for better or worse, they were going to be who they were going to be. No one understood at the time what a big difference it could make if one age group of a population is abnormally large. Everyone was about to find out.”

“This book,” wrote Murray, “is about the evolution in American society that has taken place since November 21, 1963, leading to the formation of classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything that the nation has ever known.”

The culture that Americans shared uniquely and in contrast to much of the world, warns Murray “is unraveling” as “America is coming apart at the seams—not the seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.”

Murray defines the new upper class “as the most successful five percent of adults ages 25 and older who are working in managerial positions, in the professions (medicine, the law, engineering and architecture, the sciences, and university faculty), and in content-production jobs in the media.”

“As of 2010, about 23 percent of all employed persons aged 25 or older were in these occupations, which means that about 1,427,000 persons constituted the top 5 percent. Since 69 percent of adults in these occupations who were ages 25 and older were married in 2010, about 2.4 million adults were in new-upper-class families as heads of households or spouse.” That’s a very small slice of 330 million Americans.

They are not the “millionaires and billionaires” that President Obama is always blathering about. They are the new “establishment” that determine much about the nation’s culture, economy, and future.

To boil down Murray’s extensive research and reporting, that top 5 percent are largely isolated from the rest of the population because they tend to live where their counterparts live and interact mostly with one another in all aspects of their lives. They are the new “elite.”

“Rolling back income inequality won’t make any difference in the isolation of the new upper class from the rest of America.” They are wealthy by most standards and Murray expects them to become wealthier over time. Thus, all the talk of “fairness” and “a fair share” is meaningless.

“Fairness” as many point out, is just another word for “class warfare.” It has always been the siren call of communism.

Efforts in America and in Europe to create “fairness” in the form of our “entitlement” programs and the extensive European socialism have reached a point where they threaten to collapse our own and the economies of many European nations.

Murray says “We have been the product of the cultural capital bequeathed to us by the system the founders laid down; a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government’s job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the government’s job to stage-manage how people interact with one another. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we have loved about Americans will go away.”

The system, of course, is free-market capitalism, deregulation, and lower marginal income tax rates, all within the context of the U.S. Constitution. It is under attack by the President of the United States and a cohort of civil service and industrial unions, along with liberal members of Congress.

It is why the Republican primaries have been, in part, a desperate effort to educate Americans to the reason America is in peril and why Americans must strive to restore the values that were shared on November 22, 1963.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Immigration, Migration, Politics and Policies

By Alan Caruba

When early humans got the hang of walking upright, the first thing many did was to walk out of Africa and, eventually, to all parts of the Earth from Asia to Europe, to North and South America, proliferating into different races.

Always restless to see what was over the horizon, they populated continents. There will shortly be seven billion of us on planet Earth, an extraordinary number and one with considerable consequences regarding issues of food, water, housing, transportation, trade, and energy.

In terms of our DNA, we are all one big family, closely and uncomfortably related to chimpanzees. A look back at the past five thousand years we call civilization reveals that, in addition to developing agriculture, building cities, and establishing trade, we have never stopped engaging in wars great and small.

In good times we reproduced like rabbits. In bad times, we gathered around the fire and hoped the food would hold out. Many packed up and went someplace else, anywhere else.

America is not called a nation of immigrants for nothing. Aside from the native tribes that were here for centuries, it was waves of immigration, first from Europe and then from everywhere else, that created the most unique citizen on planet Earth, the American. The lure was a fairly scarce commodity in the world, freedom and opportunity.

Anyone who takes an interest in demography, the study of the changes in age, birth and death rates, and racial identity, knows that the pressures of population and events cause people to move from nation to nation or, in our case, state to state. To an extraordinary degree migration has shaped history.

The United States is home to approximately 311 million people, natural born and immigrants, legal and illegal. In 2012, issues surrounding illegal immigration will be a factor in selecting candidates. The decision by Texas Governor Rick Perry to become a Republican candidate for President has required him to explain his state’s policies, but in truth many states are wrestling with growing illegal immigrant populations.

Data released by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) are extremely useful in understanding what is occurring now and how it will affect the future of America. It is culled from Census Bureau data.

Knowing how many people reside in the nation is incorporated in the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 2. “(An) enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct.” The composition of the House of Representatives depends on such information.

The CIS reports that “the nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached 40 million in 2010, the highest number in American history. Nearly 14 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the country from 2000 to 2010, making it the highest decade of immigration in American history.”

“The nation’s immigrant population has doubled since 1990, nearly tripled since 1980, and quadrupled since 1970 when it stood at 9.7 million.”

The following states saw significant increases between 2000 and 2010: Alabama (92%), South Carolina (88%), Tennessee (82%), Arkansas (79%), Kentucky (75%), North Carolina (67%), South Dakota (65%), Georgia (63%), Indiana (61%), Nevada (61%), Delaware (60%), Virginia (60%), and Oklahoma (57%).

States with the largest numerical increase over the last decade were California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Overall, the immigrant population grew by 28% between 2000 and 2010.

The U.S. is going to add “roughly 30 million new residents each decade for the foreseeable future.” Americans in recent times have been struggling with immigration policy in earnest since the 1980s, debating amnesty for those here illegally, struggling to deal with the impact of more children in our schools, the need for more housing, more congestion on our highways, crime, and more competition for jobs.

The CIS estimates that every ten years America will need to build and pay for 8,000 new schools. It will need to develop land to accommodate 11.5 million new housing units and construct enough roads to handle 23.6 million more vehicles.

By mid-century, racial and ethnic minorities will become the majority population in America. More minority babies are being born, outnumbering the white population which is aging. A look back tells us that, in the past, it was the Italians, the Irish, the Russians, the Germans, and others who were the “minority” populations.

Immigration and in particular illegal immigration will force Americans to focus on these changes. As governor of a major border state, Perry is correct when he says “the federal government has failed in its basic duty to protect our borders. States are forced to deal with illegal immigration issues.”

In 2010 Latinos accounted for 65% of Texas’s population growth over the past decade. They are excellent citizens, no less than previous immigrants who came here. There’s a bit of irony insofar as Texas used to belong to Mexico, but so did California and much of the Southwest. .

Predictably, some politicians will demagogue these changes, but the nation must address them in a sensible way recognizing that while we need to stem the illegal flow across our southern border, there is a wealth of brains and talent eager to legally immigrate to the United States from around the world and studies demonstrate they bring innovation and job creation with them when invited to share the American dream.

And then there is the reality of those who are already here. We cannot wish away millions of illegal immigrants. We cannot wish away their children. For now, the states affected are seeking their own solutions in lieu of the failure of a federal government that has not addressed border security in a serious way.

The issues surrounding immigration are as old as the nation and the world. People, as always, are on the move and a lot of them want to live in America.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Multicultural Suicide

By Alan Caruba

In his famed poem, Mending Wall, the American poet, Robert Frost chided the rock wall that he and his neighbor would mend each spring, replacing fallen rocks. “He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

You can see the Great Wall of China from outer space. It is an astonishing piece of work

Begun in the fifth century B.C. and added to by later dynasties, it succeeded in defending China from invasions by northern tribes. In 1600, it helped the Ming dynasty defend against the Manchu, but when the gates at Shanhaiguan were opened in 1644 by a dissident Ming border general, the Manchus quickly seized Beijing and that was the end of the Ming dynasty.

There has been a growing call for a wall on the U.S. southern border with Mexico. Given the way Mexico has fallen into a state of barbaric anarchy by warring narcotics gangs, including increasing murders of Americans foolish enough to go there, it is a very good idea.

There are currently an estimated twelve million Mexicans and “other” illegal aliens residing in the United States, enjoying many benefits. Instead of aggressively dealing with the problem, the government under several administrations and the current one has opted to offer “amnesty” and grant them a citizenship they have not earned and do not deserve in the context of our laws.

The only thing these amnesties managed to accomplish was to encourage more millions of illegal aliens to cross our borders, to stay on beyond their visas, and to otherwise flout our immigration laws. They are not “undocumented”. They are criminals.

Naturally, when British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently gave speeches or expressed their opposition to “multiculturalism”, it made news when it turned out they were appalled by the failure of this idiotic concept. Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, had already expressed that opinion.

There was a time when someone was proudly British, French or German. Today, their distinctive cultures are being hollowed out by waves of immigrants who have no desire to assimilate or adopt the values of their new homelands.

All of which raises the question of why, here in America, you have to “press one” to conduct a conversation in English, Islamic foot baths have been installed in the Kansas City airport, why ‘Islamic immersion’ classes have been inflicted on children in a California school district, there was a demand an Arabic public school in New York and a mosque within sight of Ground Zero, and why government documents are often printed in foreign languages.

The victory over Europe that the Muslims could not achieve by invasion and which ended with the defeat of a Muslim army outside of Vienna on September 11, 1683, has been achieved by a constant flow of immigrants from the Middle East and northern Africa as Europe opened its doors because their indigenous populations failed to reproduce in enough numbers to maintain their economies.

It is a principle of demographics that, as a nation becomes more prosperous its population tends to replace itself more slowly. Birthrates in America across the racial spectrum are in decline, reflecting those in Europe By contrast, places like China and India are where you find a billion or more people.

In 2008 Los Angeles County, population 10.2 million, was where 42% of workers were paid cash and did not pay taxes; 90% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; more than two-thirds of all births were to illegal aliens; nearly 40% of all inmates in California were Mexican nationals who were there illegally; and, nationally, while less than 2% of illegal aliens were picking crops, 37% were on welfare.

These and a mountain of other statistics testify to the failure of the American government to enforce its immigration laws and deter an army of illegal immigrants from invading the nation.

The argument will be raised that America is “a nation of immigrants”, but that was then and this is now. The earlier flow of immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Germany and Russia were needed in the 1800s to provide workers for the nation’s industrial base and as farmers for its expanding land mass. And they were white and Christian.

The importation of Afro-Americans as slaves, starting early in America’s history, led to the Civil War, followed by the horrid “Jim Crow” era until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. These days they are minority population smaller than Hispanics and, thanks to a variety of liberal welfare programs, are too often a dysfunctional element of American society.

There is an unrelenting tyranny to demographics; the statistical study of migrations and birth rates of peoples throughout the world. Unless Europe and America address it, putting the breaks on further immigration, they are at risk of falling prey to it and failing as a result of it.

England, France and Germany’s leaders have finally begun to speak out about and against it. It may be too late. America refuses to even acknowledge it.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

And, Now, for Some Good News!

By Alan Caruba

After the State of the Union speech and the instant analyses on television and the punditry that follows on newspaper’s editorial pages and, of course, on news/opinion websites and countless blogs and forums, the tendency is likely to dwell on how it portends more of the same bad policies.

It is obvious to the “experts” and to the general population that this President and Congress has burdened the nation with an insane amount of debt, something in the area of $45,000 for every man, woman and child. Babies born today will arrive with that burden. That’s not what American’s voted for in 2008. That’s not what they wanted or expected in 2009.

That, however, is what they got and what they will continue to get in the contemptuous nonsense that pours forth out of the White House like an infected wound. However, the triage of the American economy and future began in Virginia, in New Jersey, and in Massachusetts. The next bailouts you will read about between now and next November will be Democrat members of Congress announcing they will not run again.

“Après moi le déluge” is attributed to the French king, Louis XV (1710-1774) who bankrupted his nation and would cost his grandson, Louis XVI, his head in a revolution (1789-1799) that went so badly that Napolean eventually took over and annointed himself Emperor. If only Barack Hussein Obama had the old king’s grasp of economics and history.

The Tea Party movement is the modern equivalent of the American Revolution that went quite well, albeit taking some seven years to wear out the British resolve to hold onto its colonies. Within six months, the new nation had signed agreements with Great Britain to get trade going again though, in 1812, there was another disagreement involving a bit of military conflict. Since then, we have been good friends through thick and thin.

I cite all this history because the history of America, along with a careful analysis of its demographics, its population, native-born and naturalized, portends that, once we get past the megolomania and Marxist ideology of the current pretender to the throne…oops, I mean to the Oval Office, America is ideally poised to dig itself out of its current financial difficulties.

And that, dear reader, is the good news!

An excellent analysis of the current and future demographics of the United States appears in an issue of World Affairs. It is titled, “Undying Creed: The Acceleration of Our Exceptionalism”, written by Joel Kotkin, a scholar at the New America Foundation.

It is important to keep in mind that America has had some really bad and mediocre Presidents in his short history. We are dealing with only the 44th one and he, like several of his predecessors will be assigned to the chapter titled “What Were We Thinking?”

Kotkin has looked at the population trends around the world in places like Europe, China, India, Japan and South Korea, and come up with some very interesting conclusions. Unlike these nations, the American population has a higher rate of fertility, assuring new generations to be raised with values that have led to what is called our national “exceptionalism.”

Americans work hard. Harder, in fact, than most other nations and the reason is that we believe that hard work will lead to a better life, not one on the dole from the government. We attract skilled labor from nations that don’t offer as much opportunity as we do. And, while our population is expected to add at least 100 million people by 2050, it will not consist of a largely aging population in places like Europe and the Far East that will outnumber its more productive members. Even our older people will continue to work well beyond “retirement” age and are likely to become a rich source of volunteerism.

By contrast, China’s one-child policy will, by 2050, leave it with a rapidly aging population. Russia is already on the precipice of both a diminishing and aging population. Japan, too, has an aging population and no real diversity.

Then, too, Americans like raising children, have a strong, commonly shared moral code, and religious values. According to a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey, about sixty percent of Americans think religion is “very important.” A Marxist will never understand this.

While we just avoided a total financial meltdown (largely by infusing billions into several banking institutions---eagerly paying it back) the real beneficiaries have been the many local banks that avoided the high risk loans and other investments. All across America they are having the assets of failed banks transferred to their administration as the government steps in to avoid the horrors that befell Americans in the 1930s. This also accounts in part for the slowdown in credit and loans by both large and smaller banks as they get themselves back to normal, prudent banking standards.

Contrast the Recession’s impact with Japan whose “rate of decline in Gross National Product was three times that of the U.S., while Germany and Britain contracted by twice as much.” America’s economy is simply more resilient. We have lost a great number of jobs, but they will return more swiftly than in other nations. If, of course, the government gets out of the way!

By 2050, Americans will look different. The infusion of Asians and Hispanics will lead to a new kind of American civilization that will exist “across the entirety of human cultures and racial types. No other advanced populous country will enjoy this kind of ethnic diversity.”

Kotkin predicts that America “will probably not be the hegemonic giant it remains today, but the America of 2050 may well evolve into the one truly transcendent superpower in terms of our society, technology, and culture.”

By the time 2010 ends, President Obama will have been politically neutered. Power will shift to a chastened Republican Party whose new leaders will renew the fundamental principles of conservatism and redirect national priorities from the ideologies of liberalism to a pragmatic determination to meet our present and future needs.

John Quincy Adams said, “Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.” We have seen courage in the town hall meetings, in the Tea Party events, in elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. We have it in spades!

Editor’s Note: You can read Joel Kotkin’s article at
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2010%20-%20JanFeb/full-Kotkin-JF-2010.html

Demography Decides Everything

By Alan Caruba

When I listen to politicians arguing the merits of some piece of legislation, I am usually 99% sure they have no idea how demography-—population—-will affect the outcome of their grand schemes.

This is particularly true of advocates of fixed and often flawed ideas about the environment. Most “save the Earth” true believers want to see huge reductions in the population of the planet. They don’t much care for human beings.

Demography is the study of population; focusing on things like fertility rates, aging, ethnic identity, and immigration. Knowing the accurate demographics of a nation is central to its governance and this is particularly true for a democracy. It is no accident that both words have the same root, demos as in people.

Knowing the size and distribution of the U.S. population was a serious concern for the Founders and it is part of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution which states that "[An] Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct." Congress first met in 1789, and the first national census was held in 1790.

For the world in general, fertility rates have been falling as more women receive education and become part of the workplace. Higher standards of living and education reduce birth rates. It makes it easier for women to be part of the workforce and households have more money for savings as well as the consumption of goods. As nations like India and China improve their economic status, their populations will stabilize and population growth will slow. The odious one-child policy in China will, in time, pass into history.

Thus, industrialization, the increased spread of electrical power, a global economy with fewer trade restrictions, all will favorably impact population growth by slowing it. In contrast, the objectives of the environmental movement such as the reduction of energy use based on the false assertion that it produces carbon dioxide that, in turn, will heat the Earth, are in direct conflict with population stabilization and reduction.

In the United States, government policies have been in direct contradiction of what native-born and naturalized citizens want. If the latter had there way, there would not have been a sharp increase in the population. Instead, the government has pursued policies that increase, largely through legal and illegal immigration, the number of people in the nation.

In 1970, the U.S. population was about 203 million. This followed the unprecedented “Baby Boom” years,1946-1964. Today the population has surpassed 293 million. These numbers come from the Census Bureau. At no other time in U.S. history have recent immigrants and their children dominated population growth.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s official estimate is that there are eight million illegal immigrants currently in the nation. Most observers of illegal immigrant believe that the actual number range from twelve to seventeen million.

So, since 1970, each Congress and each President has adopted policies not only allowing, but encouraging, legal, and in particular, illegal immigration far above traditional levels and setting the stage for increasing economic and social problems.

As reported by USA Today, the U.S. population is expected to “soar to 438 million by 2050 and the Hispanic population will triple according to projections…by the Pew Reseach Center.

Moreover, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that “the future age structure of the population will be older than it is now. Very nearly 40% will be senior citizens, over 65, by 2050. The last members of the Baby Boom will reach 65 by 2029. All will be eligible for Social Security and Medicare if, in fact, these two entitlement programs have not become insolvent by then.

Here, again, we see government policy ignoring or just ignorant of population changes as the Congress moves toward passing a healthcare reform package that 80% of the voters disapprove; one that will slash a trillion dollars from Medicare funds and institute rationing of care as the number of older Americans increase. The harm to the current healthcare system is incalculable.

In addition, yet another amnesty bill has been introduced in Congress at a time when it is obvious that a growth in the genera population will only exacerbate and increase the costs of educating the children of the newly enfranchised, formerly illegal immigrants, along with the cost providing medical care to those who cannot afford it, and incarcerating those who break the law. These costs will add billions at all levels of society.

So, demographics do matter, even if politicians and other special interests ignore them. They have local, national, and international ramifications as populations either stabilize or increase worldwide.

A lesson for the United States can be drawn from the decline of the Roman Empire. It was a combination of the cost of far-flung military commitments and the invasions of populations from outside of the empire that ultimately caused its collapse through an inability to impose Pax Romana or stop the depredations of northern European tribes and threats from the Huns.

Policies that deliberately deny the benefits of the provision of widespread energy availability and of education to increase literary; policies that deny protection against the scurge of malaria and other diseases; discourage the use of genetically modified crops to avoid deforestation and to provide ample food supplies; policies that impose foolish mandates such as ethanol or even attempt to regulate carbon dioxide with the false claim that it is a harmful gas, all contribute to the waste of the Earth’s greatest resource, its human population.

There are, of course, events beyond our imagination, though not necessarily our control. As the great physicist Albert Einstein warned, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

How Empires Die

By Alan Caruba

I recently read an interesting book by Christopher Kelly, “The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and The Fall of Rome.” Our popular image of Attila is that of a barbaric pagan, but Priscus of Panium set off to meet Attila in 449 AD and, as Kelly relates, “Attila turned out to be surprisingly civilized and a dangerously shrewd player of international politics.”

It’s always a good idea to review one’s assumptions about the world in which one lives, such as the current politically correct view that Islam is “a religion of peace” and that the barbarity of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Arab groups is an anomaly, the result of their incorrect interpretation of the Koran. Their interpretation, however, is quite accurate and the Koran is a call to arms and battle plan for the conquest of the world.

From America’s earliest years, it has had to deal with marauding Arabs and in modern times we have put our troops in harm’s way in the Middle East in Beirut in the 1980s and to drive Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait in August 1990.

Following 9/11 we returned in 2001 to drive Al Qaeda and the Taliban out of Afghanistan. They took refuge in the frontier provinces of Pakistan and have since returned to the killing fields of our choosing…if killing one’s sworn enemies can be called a choice.

On March 20, 2003, the Second Gulf War was launched against Iraq and we are now beginning to withdraw troops from Iraq’s cities. A large contingent of U.S. military will remain in Iraq. At the same time, there has been a buildup of troops in Afghanistan. Historically, no empire has ever successfully conquered or subdued the Afghani tribes and, in modern times, the most recent effort brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is generally agreed that the real threat to Mideast stability is Iran and that the shakiest nation in the region is Pakistan.

History teaches us that the emperors of the Roman Empire had to make choices about where they too would place their troops throughout the vast expanse under their control; it surrounded the Mediterranean which they called Mare Nostrum, our sea.

At the end of his book, Kelly asks “What makes great empires endure or collapse? How do governments defend their actions? What causes the breakup of a leviathan superstate? When is it right to go to war, or purchase peace, or pay off an enemy? These are issues of enduring importance.”

When an empire gets too large for its military and financial resources to maintain, it becomes highly vulnerable. An empire, too, depends on its alliances. When they go bad, the empire—any empire—is in trouble.

The Roman Empire fell for many reasons, but chief among them was the relentless arithmetic of demography, the movement of populations of people.

The Romans regarded the Goths and Vandals as “barbarians”, but the Goth tribes were people who were just as challenged by the Huns as the Romans and they were on the move to find more land for their growing population. In doing so, they crossed the Danube to trespass on Roman lands in France, in Spain, and down into Northern Africa.

By contrast, “the Huns seemingly offered no moral or religious justification, however thin or unconvincing. They sought neither to find a new homeland on Roman territory nor to glorify themselves as heroic freedom fighters warring down a harsh imperial regime.”

“The Huns appear more brutal precisely because they had no known motive for their raids beyond the acquisition of booty and captives.” This last observation is particularly important because the rise of Islam can be traced directly to the same purpose. It was, however, masked by Mohammed’s promise of paradise for anyone who fell in battle and servitude for those conquered.

Here’s where the similarities between America and the ancient Romans get really interesting. At the same time the nation engages Islamic terrorism, our national sovereignty—the integrity of our borders—is being challenged as not just thousands, but millions have invaded to take up residence among us. This repeats the pattern that brought down the Roman Empire.

Having forsaken universal conscription, the U.S. depends on an all-voluntary military to project our power. The Romans, toward the end, often allied with the Goths to fight the Huns and, on occasion, allied with the Huns as well. With the exception of the British, Canadians and Australians, our military allies are mostly for show.

Not only is our financial stability at risk, but since the 1960s, the level of decadence in our society has risen, reflected in popular culture and media. Our primary and secondary educational system has become an abject failure.

Recently, while in Russia, President Obama said, “The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground.”

This ignores the entire history of civilization. It is criminally naïve. The future, just as in the past, will belong to whoever has the greatest military with the financial power and the willingness to use it.

Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

And as John Adams warned, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

A Numbers Game and a Losing One

By Alan Caruba

In 2006, Mark Steyn made a big splash with his book, “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It”, in which he said that, “much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries.”

The subject of the book was the science of demographics, tracking and predicting the growth and loss of various elements of the planet’s population. It’s all about the mathematics of birth rates, migratory shifts of people moving about the Earth in search of jobs, freedom, et cetera.

If you have no real experience with political freedom, however, it is hard to know how to maintain it, particularly since it requires free speech, a free press, and other infrastructure.

For those who read the book, it stirred up a lot of discussion, but that has since receded. We are blessed or afflicted—depending on your point of view—with short memories and, for the vast bulk of the population, very little knowledge or even a sense of history. None of this, however, slows the inexorable arithmetic of birth and death among the world’s six billion-plus population.

Let me provide such one example. We all know about the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, but did you know that on September 11, 1683 a Muslim army was decisively defeated near Vienna? That battle saved Europe.

For Americans, Europe is a nice place to visit. It is the “old country” for many people whose grandparents and parents migrated from there in search of a better life here for themselves and their descendents. America was still a young nation in the 1800s when millions flooded in, mostly at the invitation of those in need of their labor. By the end of World War II, America emerged intact and as a great power. By the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed, it was declared a superpower.

Most Americans have no memory of the Depression of the 1930s. Those born after World War II, the “Boomer” generation, are now beginning to retire. The only memories of America anyone has today is of a nation triumphant, albeit one that engaged in two wars, Korea and Vietnam, that turned out poorly at the time, but a look at a thriving South Korea today suggest it was worth it and Vietnam now is eager to do business with us.

Wars in the Middle East stir memories of those previous ones and, being quite different in nature, tend to make most Americans eager to just leave. We are not facing a massed army. Instead, we are killing the enemies of progress and freedom a few at a time. It’s tedious work, but necessary, and we have few friends to help us.

What does this have to do with demographics? The answer is that Muslims from the Middle East, the northern nations of Africa known as the Maghreb, and immigrants in general from Asia and Africa have been pouring into Europe to replace the dwindling native populations, providing labor. It is a migration comparable to our own but this group of immigrants either does not want to integrate with the European culture or are not invited to. They are building mosques or taking over abandoned churches.

Meanwhile, a flow of Mexicans and others from nations south of us is reconquering America while our nation’s leaders look the other way. Why? No one seems to know.

As Patrick J. Buchanan notes in a recent column, “In 1950, whites were 28 percent of the world population and Africans 9 percent. In 2060, the ratio will remain the same. But the colors will be reversed.”

No one is suggesting that whites are genetically superior to other races, but they have a history of cultural and technological development with which few can compare. My guess is that the Chinese will pick up where we leave off, when we leave off, as we will surely do if our economic and political system is subsumed in a population that is indifferent to what made it different.

Pax Romana is no more. Pax Americana could be looking at the end as well if the numbers continue. As Buchanan put it, “The Caucasian race is going the way of the Mohicans.”