I’m currently reading a book called America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It by Mark Steyn. The book is all about how declining birthrates, particularly those in Europe, combined with the massive influx of Muslim Immigrants are threatening the very future of Western civilization.

Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children. If something drastic doesn’t change this trajectory, Islamic influence will grow dramatically in Europe in the years to come.

What’s at least as amazing as all of the European demographics is how history repeats itself. In drawing historical parallels Steyn quotes the ancient historian Polybius (circa 150 BC) who commented on the decline of Greece in his day. Polybius writes:

In our own time the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth rate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit, although there have neither been continuous wars nor epidemics….For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensibly grew

As a student of history it never ceases to amaze me how history seems to repeat itself. The writer of Ecclesiastes said that “there is nothing new under the sun”, and it’s true. The same mistakes and sins have been repeatedly committed throughout the millennia.

While I don’t believe it’s possible to create a utopian society in a fallen world, I wish that the testimony of history wasn’t ignored and re-written by so many moderns and post-moderns.

Europeans’ failure to procreate may  allow short term ease but if unchecked it may well lead to a societal collapse.

While it’s easy to point out other’s flaws we are all too often blind to our own. What do you think are the “blind spots” of your own nation or culture? Too many times we live for today, and don’t give due thought to preparing for the future.

[America Alone is a fascinating book, and humorous too, but it does have a small bit of rough language, so consider yourself forewarned if you decide to pick up a copy.]