News from the New Party

The gates of Vienna are wide open

There is a basic difference between our circumstances now and the Cold War order. In the first place, it was an order. The threat was terrible but it was also predictable. We could analyse our enemies, understand them, even compromise with them. In the grimmest paradox of all, peace and stability had found a secure footing, upon the rock of mutual, assured destruction. Then, the enemy had a name, a capability, an order of battle. We had insights into his intentions, diplomatic means of mitigation, geopolitical concepts. Now, we do not even have a map of our ignorance. We are blundering in the dark, wrestling with unknown unknowns.

Europe has immense strengths. The resources of civilisation are not exhausted. Yet many of my conference colleagues were defeatists who believed that those strengths could never be mobilised. Some even argued that Islam would inevitably prevail and, within a few decades, Europe would decline into Eurabia.

It is easy to make the pessimists' case. In essence, Europe has become the victim of one of its undoubted successes. Over the last century, despite the destruction of so much human and economic capital, Western Europe has made a decisive break with scarcity, that mighty constraint which had overshadowed all earlier societies. Europeans no longer needed to fear starvation.

As a result, however, they have thrown off two other constraints which marched in step with scarcity: religion and family life. Much of Europe is post-religious, post-familial – and also post-reproductive. With average child-bearing rates of 1.5 per female, many countries are condemned to declining populations. Unless they import immigrants to produce the wealth to sustain an ageing population, they might even rediscover hunger.

Yet immigration is not cost-free. As the Romans were the first to discover with their barbarian legions, you decide that you need manpower but you end up by importing people. People bring problems. Large-scale immigration would change the character of the host societies.So would population decline. In Mark Steyn's words, the future belongs to those who show up.

Cultural and religious decline could reinforce population decline. A Europe without God and without the civilising disciplines of family is condemned to the devaluation of all values. This is exacerbated by the cultural self-hatred of many European elites, at least outside France. Under the guise of cultural relativism, they enforce their contempt for European traditions, using their control of the educational system to ensure that youngsters are brought up in cultural and historical darkness.