Western civilization in decline — Part 1: Danger ahead with cultural and national suicide by Miguel A. Faria, MD

Western civilization and the American culture of freedom with responsibility face a serious challenge, and very few politicians have the courage and conviction to discuss and explain the nature of this emergent and unspoken crisis. True, we face Islamic jihad and repeated acts of terrorism on the one hand, and a resurgent China, politically, economically and militarily growing stronger, on the other.

We also face the unspoken crisis of quietly committing national suicide, slow death being brought about, not only by rampant illegal immigration and insecure borders, but also, and even more ominously, by a critical loss of population in Western countries and the United States. In short, the citizens of the West no longer seem to believe in their civilization, don’t care about its survival, and are no longer having enough children to sustain what they must consider their doomed Western civilization! At the same time, a cultural suicide is taking place as a result of an unjustified rejection of Western civilization promoted by the left-wing intelligentsia sitting in the ivory towers of academia in conjunction with the progressive, media elite.

And yet while fertility rates continue to fall in European countries and the United States, most countries in Africa and Asia with vastly different and more rigid cultures, more authoritarian governments, and less tolerant religions, are having a surplus in population — surges of people that many of these countries have difficulty feeding. Many of these third world nations have large Muslim populations, teeming with young people who, indoctrinated since childhood to hate the West and the American way of life, turn to radicalism and terrorism. The World Map above shows countries by fertility rate. According to The World FactBook (CIA), 2015 estimates, fertility rates are shown in color-coded squares referring to the number of children per woman in that part of the world.

Islam is the fastest growing religion and with over one billion adherents, it recently surpassed Catholicism as the largest religion in the world. Suffice to say that if there was one culture with a veritable population explosion, it is the Islamic East. Muslims emigrate from that part of the world to Europe; others travel to the United States and Canada. Most of them are good immigrants who want a better way of life for their families. Unfortunately, many others are not, and they travel to Western nations, not to celebrate our culture and become part of the melting pot of European and American culture, but to destroy it. The West and the United States are committing cultural and national suicide because of declining population coupled with uncontrolled illegal immigration by people who do not share our heritage and legacy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“As for the Western Europeans,” essayist and noted scholar Dr. David Stolinsky writes, “the future remains in serious doubt. They need a new Charles Martel. Thus far, none has appeared on the horizon. All we can do is hope, because we can’t save them again. We could save Western Europe from Hitler and Stalin, but we can’t save it from its own cowardice and spiritual emptiness.”

But why this “emptiness” and rejection of their civilization? Dr. Stolinsky provides an answer: “European welfare states have chronically high unemployment rates. Socialism is good at paying unemployment benefits, but not so great at creating jobs. Job growth in Western Europe is low. With few jobs available, applicants with French names often are preferred. And with generous unemployment benefits, young Muslim men may choose to collect benefits rather than risk repeated rejection of job applications. Socialism fosters a sense of childish helplessness: ‘The government is responsible for my well-being; I’m not.’ ”

Conflict is inevitable when the benefits and largesse of socialism clash with immigrants who come for those benefits while at the same time deeply hating Western culture and civilization that they consider their enemy. Again referring to Western Europe, Dr. Stolinsky further writes: “So what do you get when you combine chronic unemployment, degrading welfare payments, racial and ethnic discrimination, and resistance to integration by both the natives and the immigrants — and then you add a fanatical belief system and a fierce contempt for European culture? You get burning cars, and eventually burning cities.” Therein national suicide follows cultural degradation.

Another critical observer who sounded the alarm years ago was Patrick J. Buchanan, but very few listened. In his 2002 book, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization, Buchanan describes the cataclysmic consequences of doing nothing. Instead, his warning went unheeded and his message was lost in personal attacks launched against the messenger.

In a related article, Buchanan notes Europe’s decline: “Between now and 2050, Europe will lose 32 million people. Not one European nation has a fertility rate — 2.1 children per woman — sufficient to keep it alive. A quarter of all Europeans are 60 or older.” In contrast, “The Arab-Muslim population of North Africa alone, from the western Sahara and Morocco to Egypt and Sudan, will add 130 million people in 35 years. Egypt will add 60 million, to reach a population of 151 million by 2050. Yet Egypt will still have only the fifth-highest population of Muslims, behind Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.”

Buchanan is correct. According to Wikipedia no European nation has a total fertility rate above 2.1, the replacement rate for a population and the bare minimum necessary to maintain a civilization. Below are some total fertility rates from the European Union and Russia:

• European Union: 1.58 (2014)
• Germany: 1.47
• France: 2.01
• United Kingdom: 1.81
• Italy: 1.37
• Greece: 1.31
• Spain: 1.32
• Russia: 1.77 (2015)

Russia at 1.77 has the largest total fertility rate in Eastern Europe. Germany, Italy, Rumania, Greece, Hungary, and several other countries in the EU, not only have fertility rates well below 2.1 but actually had negative population growths, more people dying than live births!

Only Turkey, a secular nation but with an Islamic population, has barely a sustainable population; stradling Europe and Asia, Turkey has a fertility rate that has gone from 2.37 in 2001, up and down, to 2.14 in 2015. Its Islamic largely Arabic neighbors, as we have seen, are a different story.

The United States is not immune to this gradual national demise. Buchanan notes: “Though the U.S. is projected to grow by 67 million people in 35 years, this growth will be wholly among Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans. In each of the past four years, non-Hispanic white Americans have registered more deaths than births.”

Buchanan is once again correct. According to Wikipedia, the U.S. total fertility rate as of the 2010 census is only 1.931. Based on race and ethnicity the total fertility rates for Americans is as follow:

• White Americans and White Hispanics:  1.948
• Black Americans and Black Hispanics:   1.972
• Native Americans and Asians: less than 1.700

Whether America survives as the epitome of Western civilization, as I like to exult it, and as an ideal based on the vision of our founders depends on the degree of assimilation of the newcomers and the achievement of the American dream. In fact, within the United States, only foreign-born Hispanics have a fertility rate above 2.1 at 2.4, followed by immigrant Blacks at 2.35, according to Wikipedia. This melting pot assimilation will depend, though, on controlled and well-ordered immigration allowing for learning and acceptance of American institutions, traditions, values, and cherished ideals.

Over the years Buchanan, unfairly in my opinion, has been harshly criticized and pilloried as a supposed racist and anti-Semite — the heavy price a citizen pays in this country (and in Western social[ist] democracies) for going beyond the prescribed limits of “freedom of speech,” as laid out by the Left and their rules of political correctness (PC). Going against the grain and against the prescribed limits set by the opinion cartel molders of the mainstream liberal media and progressive academia — the 21st century embodiment of George Orwell’s 1984’s Thought Police — can result in personal ridicule, ostracism by colleagues, and dire professional repercussions. This ostracism can be as bad or worse than anything that allegedly occurred in the much-publicized dark days of Hollywood’s blacklisting and persecutions in the 1950s.

In Part 2 of this essay we will discuss the problem further and attempt to discern why hardly any politician is talking, much less trying to solve the problem.

Written by Dr. Miguel Faria

Miguel A. Faria, M.D. is a retired clinical professor of neurosurgery and long time medical editor. He is the author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (1995); Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine (1997); and Cuba in Revolution — Escape From a Lost Paradise (2002). His website is https://HaciendaPublishing.com

This article may be cited as: Faria MA. Western civilization in decline — Part 1: Danger ahead with cultural and national suicide. HaciendaPublishing.com, May 12, 2017. Available from: https://haciendapublishing.com/western-civilization-in-decline-part-1-danger-ahead-with-cultural-and-national-suicide-by-miguel-a-faria-md/

A similar version of this article appeared in GOPUSA, May 12, 2017, and in The Telegraph (Macon), May 26, 2017.

Copyright ©2017 Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D.